I think it also fundamentally changes the conversation. Valid but "unpopular" comments can't get buried in downvotes. The voting system on Reddit was based on a sane logic that totally neglected to consider how people actually behave.. the idea of up and down votes to crowd-source relevance and quality of content makes sense, but all anyone did was use it as an agree / disagree button which broke the idea entirely.

The initial intent of reddit was to have downvotes be for off topic stuff, and yet most people use it as a silent "your opinion sucks" button. That stuff just adds to the hivemind feel of reddit. I wish there was a way to have an alternative system of weeding out misinformation or rude stuff without having to deal with something like downvotes. I suppose moderation could serve the purpose of weeding out the bad stuff instead, but then each community would need to be moderated properly.

I’ve already seen (and reported) some anti-trans bigotry on here, but it had more upvotes than the posts calling it out for what it was because the bigotry was of the “polite and pretending to be well-researched” variety

without downvotes as a tool against crap like that, what have we got? is it against our instance’s “be nice” policy to tell nazi punks to fuck off?

It's kind of unrelated but I think the lack of downvotes pairs well with lemmy's lack of vote counting (a.k.a karma score). Counting your internet points always feels so performative to me and kinda ruins the point of upvotes in the first place.

Honestly I like the idea of downvotes, but the way the reddit community has implemented them is just toxic. But that's the great thing about Lemmy and the fediverse: Don't like it? Go to an instance that's disabled it!

I agree wholeheartedly. I didn’t like downvotes, but I didn’t realize how terrible the concept of downvotes really was until I lived without it.

Here’s my comment from another thread:

I wasn’t a fan of Reddit’s downvote system. It was a pointless, vague way to show displeasure without actually providing any useful information. I never knew if a downvote was because I made a comment that was factually wrong, the reader had a differing opinion, or simply because I made a grammatical error. Plus, there’s brigading. By itself, a downvote doesn’t really tell you anything.

I’m sure that in at least some cases, a genuine discussion (rather than a simple downvote) would have been more thought-provoking for everyone.

The lack of voting is why I still prefer forums over reddit-style sites. Voting, both up and down, stifles discussion and encourages repetative meme comments for upvotes.

I remember a reddit thread from years ago where a guy was trying to deal with a spider infestation in his car and almost every reply was a variation of "kill them with fire" or "it belongs to the spiders now". Many comments were made by different people at the same time with the exact same wording. The guy got almost no serious replies. I don't think that would have happened without the culture created by the voting system.

That's my same thought too, on Reddit you're always scared of "saying the wrong thing" because your fake internet points will go down

I unchecked the 'Show Scores' option in settings (desktop site) and I enjoy the experience a lot

feels like old school forums where people just communicated instead of all this useless gamification

I like the hackernews approach where downvotes on comments aren't seen, the comments are just faded out. The more downvotes = the more invisible it is.

Also thought this could be a cool approach with nice side effects - https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2023/jun/social-media-trustdistrust-buttons-could-reduce-spread-misinformation

I guess I'm the only one that misses downvotes. I don't take offense to being downvoted - the points/karma is completely irrelevant and I feel like it helps keep unhelpful or irrelevant comments and content at the bottom and out of my feed.

I do wish there was another way to hide posts. I don't want to upvote everything.

The down vote visibility should be a user settings option for everyone IMO

This is one reason why I like it here. What annoyed me on Reddit sometimes was discussing "unpopular opinions".

For example on my local subreddit people would constantly argue for more housing density, which is great for affordability but any mention of "but what about transportation infrastructure then" got mercilessly downvoted. I really don't mind people disagreeing in replies but having a whole conversation downvoted and subsequently hidden is annoying. It generally made me not want to comment on Reddit, and just let the hivemind be.

You've got a point. I was bothered with no downvotes until your post and it's true, we are free to actually have open conversations here instead of be received with being downvoted. Cool!

Agree entirely. Down voting encourages a hive mind mentality which builds echo chambers and is whats wrong with most social media platforms.

extremely sincere

Yea I totally relate to that. People don't like heartfelt actual thought with emotion ime. A quirky one liner though? Upvote.

I tend to let it all out on these places, like a journal. I enjoy reading others entries too.

Yeah, but what do I do to get that little rush of self-satisfaction from down voting a comment I disagree with? /s

In all seriousness, it may require a little more diligence from community mods to police comments which violate beehaw community standards since they won't fall to the bottom or be hidden as fast.

It doesn't seem to work correctly — yet(?). Beehaw users can't downvote anywhere. Other users can downvote on beehaw.

Intention is probably that downvotes are not available only on beehaw for anyone.

I agree! I'm liking it too. It's almost like that saying people would tell us as kids: "If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say it at all."

I'm in complete agreement. When I joined Beehaw, I didn't think much of the lack of downvotes - "oh, cool, sounds good." It's definitely made it easier to want to interact with the community (as someone partial to lurking) and I've come to appreciate that they're disabled on this instance. Glad to see others are in agreement.