What's going on with the downvote button?
What's going on with the downvote button?
Today after updating Voyager the downvote button was gone. What is the reason for removing it? Is lemmy going the way of YouTube?
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Does it matter? Who cares about imaginary points?
While one could argue for the usefulness of the downvote button, the very nature of a mostly anonymous platform like Reddit and Lemmy will naturally lead to its misuse, completely negating its usefulness.
It matters that if there's an option to upvote, there should be an option to downvote. Why have only one? What is the point of some instances having just one of them while others have both? I don't care about points but I like to see how controversial something is when I read comments.
Upvotes are not abused and doesn't make people feel like shit.
The lack of upvotes is a much nicer way to handle the situation.
It's similar to real life, where you give compliments to people you like but you try to avoid people you don't like. Focus on what you like, not what you don't like.
Today I commented on something and got 12 upvotes. Clearly, people liked my take. I also got 12 downvotes on the same comment and that provided a reality check - my take is agreeable to some, disagreeable to others. Then of course I have to take into account all the users in all instances that don't allow downvotes. How many people disagree with me that can't let me know without replying? Do I need to rethink my stance on that particular position or should I just double down on it because 12 people liked it?
That's an example of when it's useful, but you probably understand the downsides of it also.
A knife can cut onion, that's an upside. A knife can cut my finger, that's a downside. How do we make a knife that can cut onion but not my finger?
In this case, I don't need the knife. Problem solved.
Sometimes you give up things because of bad side effects you don't want to have.
Maybe you want them, which is fine.
The issue is the bandwagon effect. When a post is downvoted other users will do the same without reading the content or forming their own opinion. Some apps hide heavily downvoted comments like reddit which lead to suppressing some unpopular opinions and discourage people from speaking their mind. Hate speech should be reported and misinformation should be debated with strong arguments
Moderators and users don't always agree on what hate speech is. For example, people often use my mental disability as a pejorative for people they don't like. Half of them claim they weren't really talking about my disability and it's just a coincidence they used the same word. The other half will say they 100% intended to accuse the other person of being disabled. To me, both are unacceptable.