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Why can't I downvote posts? (self.main)
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by outer_spec to c/main
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Sometimes I see a post that could really use a downvote, but I can't downvote it. I really think being able to downvote posts that are not great (rascism, tankieism, dumbass takes, etc) is a really cathartic experience and I miss having it from my old instance.

I understand wanting to remove downvotes to combat negativity, but I don't think it's a good idea. When YouTube removed dislikes, people missed having them.

Edit: A lot of people are replying to this saying that if someone posts hateful content, I should just block and report them. Which I don’t disagree with, but there’s always content that’s annoying enough to want to downvote, but not bad enough to go against the rules of the sub. I’d rather just downvote that sort of thing and go on my way than leave a comment saying “shit’s cringe, yo”.

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[-] ada 23 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Downvotes were often turned against trans folk on reddit simply because they're openly trans. I have no desire to see that repeated here, and so I disabled them when we were setting up the instance.

Given that lemmy still has plenty of transphobes, it's unlikely we'll change it any time soon. Ideally, it would be a per user setting that allows the admins to set the default settings for new users, but that's not functionality that exists at this time.

[-] mindbleach@sh.itjust.works 20 points 1 year ago

Downvotes are the one thing reddit unambiguously got right. It is impossible to sort content well using only support and apathy. That's just feeding engagemagog.

[-] ada 15 points 1 year ago

Unless of course you're a member of a marginalised minority, in which case, downvotes will often be weaponised against you, when people who simply don't like you because of who you are, downvote anything and everything you say.

It's that specific aspect that has lead to them being disabled on an instance focused on trans and gender diverse folk

[-] mindbleach@sh.itjust.works 6 points 1 year ago

Which they can still do from other instances, apparently.

This is a well-meaning mistake that keeps getting made.

[-] ada 10 points 1 year ago

Downvotes are ignored by this instance, wherever the come from. The algorithm that determines display order is calculated independently on each instance, based on the upvotes and the downvotes that particular instance is aware of. Blahaj Lemmy drops all downvotes from all sources, so the feed that our users see, whether the content is originally from our instance or not, is ranked without downvotes being taken in to account.

tl;ldr - People downvoting our content or posts remotely makes no difference to our local users

[-] mindbleach@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 year ago

... then why would it matter if they're allowed? Even if they're like the Close Door button on an elevator. Honestly it could be a per-user option, at least on comment pages.

[-] ada 9 points 1 year ago

You're asking the wrong person. That's a question for the lemmy devs, not for the admins of a specific instance.

[-] mindbleach@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 year ago

But you've modified it enough to ignore downvotes globally.

[-] ada 10 points 1 year ago

That's out of the box functionality. That's how it works on any instance that disables downvotes

[-] mindbleach@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago

Fair enough.

[-] anothercatgirl 2 points 1 year ago

This feels like we're just halving the influence of user votes. On reddit, I would downvote anything I felt was boring or a subject that I didn't wanna see again. Now on lemmy, I simply mark it as read instead. The effects are the same, causing the post to disappear from my feed without a posing mark.

[-] princessnorah 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Would an instance be able to collect downvotes to blahaj posts from other instances? Or do they treat blahaj as the definitive source, and only collect them from their own users?

I prefer not having downvotes. But it worries me if the instances that have them enabled all see a blahaj post with 50 downvotes, that it’s still having the same marginalising effect. While that is then hidden from the blahaj user.

[-] ada 4 points 1 year ago

An instance is aware of downvotes from two sources.

  1. Firstly, instances know about downvotes made by its own users. It doesn't matter what those users are downvoting or what instance it comes from, by definition, the users instance needs to know about the downvote so it can forward it on

  2. Secondly, instances know about downvotes that federate to them. Votes federate in one of two ways. (For these example, A B and C are all separate instances)

    i) Direct downvotes. If user A downvotes another user, user B, that downvote is federated to instance B.

    ii) Indirect downvotes. This is when groups "boost" downvotes to instances that have users that subscribe to the group. So normally, if user A downvotes user B, instance C won't know about that downvote. However, if the downvoted post is made to a group that user C is a member of, then the downvote is boosted to instance C.

Instances with disabled downvotes don't boost downvotes for communities hosted on them, and don't accept downvotes for any content that federates to it.

But it worries me if the instances that have them enabled all see a blahaj post with 50 downvotes, that it’s still having the same marginalising effect. While that is then hidden from the blahaj user.

If the community is hosted on blahaj, then this can happen, but it's not a huge issue, because the only people who will see any particular downvote are other users on the instance of the person that made the downvote. These downvotes don't federate anywhere.

However, if the community is not hosted on blahaj, then what you're describing can happen. Unfortunately, there isn't much that can be done about that. The best we can do is ensure that downvotes driven by bigotry don't hide content from our users.

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[-] glacier 18 points 1 year ago

If you see something like that, it's best to block and report the user.

[-] lurch@sh.itjust.works 15 points 1 year ago

Downvoting is also inportant. Missing downvotes is what make Twitter and Facebook so annoying. People need feedback for what's socially acceptable, unfunny or unpooular. Also, when you make a troll post, how are you gonna know it hit home 😉

[-] FirstMajesticComet 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Their feedback is their comment being removed and/or them being banned for a period of time. In most cases said person is acting in a way that is either flat out harmful or disrespectful, downvoting is like booing, you wouldn't boo a person for vandalizing, assaulting, or raping someone, you call the police. Similar story here.

The minor piece is opinions, which honestly, suck it up. This platform doesn't need to and frankly in my opinion shouldn't cater to people who can't handle other's opinions. Lemmy has a problem with apparent issue legitimacy at this time where issues reported aren't seen as valid and that you should just "downvote or block" people, so by weeding out snowflakes and excluding them it makes communities healthier, removing downvotes is one part of that.

Also, when you make a troll post, how are you gonna know it hit home 😉

People will make funny comments (that's what happens in 196), though if you went to far it might get removed, you might get a message from the admins about unacceptable behavior, or you might just find yourself banned for a period of time.

[-] MangoPenguin 3 points 1 year ago

Isn't having their content removed a lot more effective than downvoting at letting them know it's not acceptable?

[-] trainden 14 points 1 year ago

IIRC the idea is that hateful content should be reported so it can be removed.

[-] outer_spec 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Yeah, but there’s always content that’s annoying enough to want to downvote, but not bad enough to go against the rules of the sub.

[-] JeanLucPicard8817@lemmy.ca 6 points 1 year ago

This is a dronerights alt BTW

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[-] Adramis 5 points 1 year ago

Yeah, Blahaj specifically has downvotes enabled. It feels like most of the queer friendly spaces do. If you find a queer instance with downvotes enabled, could you let me know?

[-] Kolanaki@yiffit.net 2 points 1 year ago

Yiffit.net

[-] kebabslob 5 points 1 year ago

I'veen doing fine w/o downvotes. Reddit had too many spam bots that instantly downvote things anyways. Makes it too hard to get out of New

[-] quindraco@lemm.ee 3 points 1 year ago

Sounds like a client issue. I have a working downvote button on this very post.

[-] germanatlas 11 points 1 year ago

Because you’re on an instance that enables downvotes. Some instances like lemmy.blahaj.zone have them disabled.

Upvotes and Downvotes exist separately from each other and when Downvotes are disabled, just the Upvotes are being counted on our clients.

[-] FirstMajesticComet 5 points 1 year ago

Same with any content that lives on our instance, if a federated user on an instance that supports them downvotes our content their downvotes just don't get federated, at all. The downvoted contend only recieves a downvote on their instance and all other instances won't recieve it, though only applies to content where the original is on an instance without downvotes.

[-] ada 11 points 1 year ago

However, because the post was made to a Blahaj Lemmy community, those downvotes will only be visible to folk on your instance, because Blahaj Lemmy just ignores downvotes that federate to us, and doesn't federate them onwards.

[-] quindraco@lemm.ee 3 points 1 year ago

Interesting.

So if I'm on the instance "Adama" and downvote a post on "Blahaj", does someone on "Cremmy" see the downvote or not - will Adama tell Cremmy?

[-] ada 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

If the community is hosted on Blahaj, Blahaj won't federate it to Cremmy

But if the user is a Blahaj user, posting on a group on instance Django, Django will forward the downvote to Cremmy.

However, in both of those scenarios, Blahaj itself will ignore all downvotes, meaning that the sorting algorithm for Blahaj users looking at content, local or remote, doesn't take downvotes in to account

[-] quindraco@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago

Interesting, thanks for explaining.

[-] murmelade@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 year ago

What's a tankie? Never encountered this word before Lemmy and now every other meme is about tankies

[-] Ranger 16 points 1 year ago

A tankie is an apologist for murderous authoritarian leftist, it's a reference to the Soviet & Chinese government's use of tanks against protesters. Tankies will generally deny, downplay, &/or justify genocide & political mass muder.

[-] urist 6 points 1 year ago

I think Ranger has a really good reply, I just wanted to add:

Other places on the internet/IRL don't really differentiate between groups of leftists (because leftists = evil communists always). A lot of us here are pretty left and don't tolerate apologia for totalitarian, oppressive governments just because they attempted to distribute wealth more fairly than American/Western capitalism.

There are many flavors of left. No need to tolerate mass killings and genocidal behavior. Abolish unjust hierarchy, in all forms.

[-] anothercatgirl 1 points 1 year ago

I am unable to see any of the replies to this post's comments except for one reply. Is that a byproduct of moderation?

[-] ada 2 points 1 year ago

It's likely because you haven't set the languages correctly in your preferences. You need to make sure you have "Undetermined" selected in your preferences, as well as English and any other language you speak.

[-] anothercatgirl 1 points 1 year ago

yeah, adding English to the list of checked checkboxes fixed it for me. Undetermined was already checked.

[-] outer_spec 2 points 1 year ago

I don’t know, but something similar has been happening to me, where I can see a thread of replies to some comment, but I can’t see the original comment. It could be moderation, or it could just be the client that I’m using.

[-] ada 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

It's likely because you haven't set the languages correctly in your preferences. You need to make sure you have "Undetermined" selected in your preferences, as well as English and any other language you speak.

[-] theKalash@feddit.ch 1 points 1 year ago

You can from other instances.

[-] outer_spec 1 points 1 year ago

…I know. That’s the point.

I am talking about a problem with my instance, on a sublemmy specifically for talking about this instance.

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this post was submitted on 17 Nov 2023
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