I’ve posted some controversial stuff, and I understand why I would be getting down voted for that. But I see some of my posts and comments are in the negatives for seemingly no reason at all? I don’t really care about the karma because I can’t see it anyway, but I’m worried that comments and posts here are gonna get downvoted and dismissed without further consideration solely because of the negative score, like what would happen on reddit. I suspect someone, a troll, a bot, or a misclick downvoted my comment or post and people just followed along downvoting in turn. It’s either that, or I genuinely said something bad but I can’t figure for the life of me that it is indeed bad. My prime example is my support post for commenting under certain posts, why did that get the downvotes? And I see this kind of thing sometimes on other people’s comments as well, and I’m baffled, is it me who can’t understand why something is bad, or hive mind came here too?
EDIT: it seems i wasn’t clear enough. a) I’m not worried about getting the actual downvotes. I’m worried about downvotes stopping to be a tool to gauge content. b) I’m not worried about controversial opinions’ downvotes, I already said I’m not surprised I got downvoted there. I was talking about totally mundane posts, like that one support post. c) I’m not talking about people simply disagreeing, I’m talking about people immediately disregarding a post because of the downvote count. it’s not correct to say this doesn’t happen, it totally does and… how am I supposed to prove that? all it takes on reddit is see a comment on 0 for no reason and see it quickly drop to -5
Maybe it’s on a different account but at least on this account I don’t see any posts on your profile that are in the negative.
I find it interesting how posts like these only pop up asking about downvotes, never upvotes. Does this “hivemind” only do things you don’t like? Is it in the room with us right now?
People have no obligation to interact with anything in any way. There are people who downvote just to make the post go away in some apps. Stop worrying yourself with what gets points. If it’s that big of an issue, sign up with beehaw, afaik they don’t do downvotes at all.
Huh, I looked and also didn’t see many posts in the negative. Then I clicked through to the original instance, and the same posts have completely different scores. Like one post was (+22/-10) on Kbin, and -52 on Lemmy.
Let’s all make a test, what does this post look like from your instances:
Coming up as 35 / 0 for me. Strange that none of the downvotes are coming into kbin
36+, my home instance doesn’t allow downvotes. https://wayfarershaven.eu/post/115735
Strange, when I look at OPs history, I see quite a few in the negative. Maybe it’s because I’m from a different instance?
I find it interesting how posts like these only pop up asking about downvotes, never upvotes
You don’t hear complaints about it as much but it absolutely does happen. I haven’t really seen it here, yet, but I cannot count the number of times on reddit I’ve seen a highly upvoted comment confidently spouting incorrect information, with replies correcting the information at BEST gaining no traction, but more likely they get downvoted hard for going against the upvoted comment.
That’s fair enough, but even in that case I wouldn’t call it a “hivemind”. I can only speak from my own perspective (don’t have stats to support this) but I don’t think people click an arrow just because X amount of people have done the same. At least I don’t. What it seems like to me is, right or wrong, people will generally behave in ways that reflect their knowledge and level of interest in the subject.
That’s not a hivemind or herd behavior or whatever else people like to call it. The masses aren’t an NPC that does stuff on auto pilot.
Op’s question is not a question at all. It’s a scare mongering tactic that invents a hivemind boogeyman, claims victimhood, and seeks weaker minds to join his false crusade. At best, he’s looking for attention.
You said some controversial stuff and are upset that you got downvoted? Grow up, not everyone has to like what you say and if you’re so needy for validation say something you know won’t get pushback.
One of the things I found annoying on reddit was when people would cry about getting downvote instead of making a comment without worrying about whether they got downvoted or not.
Making edits crying about getting downvoted or first saying I’ll probably be downvoted for this but… I really disliked those.
But, I will agree that it is preferable to leave a message explaining why someone disagrees rather than just downvoting. Whining about it is just as annoying though. If my instance let me downvote I’d downvote those comments even if I agreed.
I read through some of your comments with lots of downvotes, I have a theory why you were heavily downvoted.
First, people use the dowvote button as a way to express that they disagree, not that they think the content is low quality or unfitting. I don’t see how we can change this other than not having a downvote button at all, this seems to be like an outcome of the up/downvote system.
Also, you seem to be a person of principles. I know the reactions too well because I also think similarly. For example, I think judging someone by the color of their skin or ethnicity is wrong, and it seems like you do so as well.
You have a heavily downvoted comment under a post where some Russians faced discrimination and it wasn’t clear if it was happening because they were Russians or there were some other reasons as well. You noted this, and got downvoted because people think racism is ok now because Russia (as a country) is an aggressor in a war.
People are too quick to put you in a box if you don’t 100% follow their narratives and say even one thing that remind them of others who genuinely belong in that box.
Honestly it’s a problem with binary ranking systems across the board. Maybe if there were additional axes you could vote on, like “agree/disagree”, “quality/low effort”, “nuanced/trite”, etc. I don’t know how one would go about implementing such a thing, but until someone does, we’re stuck with having a simplistic system that doesn’t adequately reflect the complicated responses real people have to content.
coming from r/PCM I was used more to downvotes being in fact used for filtering low quality stuff out, that being said I already mentioned that’s not the type of comment I’m talking about, I expected to get downvoted in the controversial comments. I was talking about more mundane stuff
I have a hard time trusting your opinion of community and online discourse if you came from PCM. That was an insular community astroturfed to push the Overton window rightward. It’s about role playing genocide. It’s for laughing about police shootings and marginalizing trans people. If you don’t think PCM was designed to build a hive mind through performative conflict, then so help you God.
Aaaand there we are. 100% of these posts whining about being down voted and censored come from fascist havens or are bigots. Lol PCM. No fucking wonder.
It’s because if you have that kind of mind, your “normal” comments might not be as tame as you think.
Some people are petty and will go thought your profile to downvote everything. I’ve read about and seen some people even stalking users, commenting on every post they make. There was an AuthRight guy on PCM who was followed around and called a Nazi on unrelated subs the moment he commented something.
I heard that reddit faked these kind of votes. So they looked like they worked to the voter, but noone else could see votes cast from the profile page. Don’t know if it’s true, but it is a cool idea (I don’t think votes on out of contex comments are “valid” I guess, insofar as Internet points can be considered valid)
I haven’t run across any content that had down votes that I couldn’t understand a reason for. Either whatever was being said was untenable, controversial, negative, or hostile.
Humans have emotions, and certain interactions with people will get a certain emotional response. People are utilizing the downvote to express this. So being blunt, controversial, negative, inciting an argument is going to get these kind of responses. It’s just human nature.
Try not to think of upvotes and downvotes as anything meaningful beyond hey did I make somebody smile by saying this or frown by saying this. And people frown at things all the time
Downvote bots are here as well, though. Recently I was helping someone see whether they are downvoted by bots.
Here’s the post I’m talking about: https://a.lemmings.world/lemmings.world/post/214059
