Why are they disallowed? And more importantly, why is this not transparent in the pinned post about Lemmy.one as a rule?
I was blindsided by this when I saw another user mention it, and while I enjoy Lemmy.one very much, I’m considering moving on because of this. I rarely, very rarely, down-vote, but at times it’s handy to push down misinformation or adverse content.
It feels a bit too much like YouTube and the removal of the dislike button to me. What are other’s thoughts?
Downvotes are strictly unnecessary. If you see something that breaks the rules you can report it. (I imagine that covers “adverse content.”) If you want to downrank something, just upvote something that’s better than it. That has the exact same effect as a downvote.
In Reddit only time I downvoted was when somebody was clearly trolling and trying to get a reaction.
Btw. In Reddit I witnessed couple of times suspiciously quick downvote influxes in political discussions. Could bot accounts be used to achieve this, to bury opposing arguments with ton of downvotes?
Downvote devolved into a Fuck You button. That’s all it is anymore. So if you wanna say Fuck You, just reply with it. If a post is actually problematic, report it.
While I tend to disagree with your assessment of the situation of this…I can understand your stance
It is possible that people can and do abuse the downvote button. I actually intentionally chose this instance because of that. It prevents the trolls and hateful people from having an easy thing to organize around and abuse silently.
I’d rather people comment if they have a disagreement with my words anyways…because it’s not anonymous. I can address their concerns if they are valid and ignore them if not.
While I do miss the ability to downvote things; it does improve things when used correctly. However if a userbase is simply too juvenile to use it correctly; it quickly becomes a senseless signal that’s better off ignored.
I genuinely wish Lemmy had a “Hide” button though. There are posts I feel are deeply problematic that another moderator may not.
I prefer the lack of downvotes, personally. As others have said, they usually just turned into a pile-on, and trolls/bigots are better dealt with by reports and moderation.
There’s been an influx of downvote brigading across instances, it’s a way to protect users from getting instantly buried.
Or maybe the admins just don’t want downvotes.
There are probably a lot of answers to your question on this thread, but let me ask YOU a question:
99% of Lemmy instances have downvotes. This instance doesn’t, and doesn’t even let you create communities, so you would need to browse federated content anyway (instead of local).
So… why don’t you just create an account literally anywhere else?
