Disabling downvotes by server admins on Lemmy is dumb and does not make any sense.

Forced positivity is toxic positivity.
Removing an interaction choice from users can only result in lower quality user interaction.
Removing the capacity for downvotes harms the community.
- Before there was no voting, just conversations. Scoring interactions is toxic.
  
  So your logic is that since we already have some toxic we should just go ahead and make it more toxic?
  
  Scoring interactions is toxic.
  Hmm, maybe... but if this is what you think, then why use Lemmy at all? This is basically a core function of the platform. If you just want conversation, there are other platforms that are built for that.
  
  Voting is supposed to indicate if a comment contributes to the conversation or not, but it has been an “I don’t like this” button for a long time now.
  
  I disagree with you, but the fact that all your comments are in the negative while constructively contributing to the conversation is very telling. I don't think you're right per se, but holy hell you're not wrong.
  The downvotes on this person's comments are a perfect example of toxic downvotes.

The problem with downvotes in LemmyNSFW was very specific to that instance and its sexual nature. It boils down to the typical user doing the following:
people use downvotes to signal "I don't want to see this"
most people want to see naked women, not naked men
the instance is supposed to be inclusive towards people who want to see either
As a result, content geared towards gay+bi men, hetero+bi women, and plenty non-binary people was consistently downvoted - and it was discouraging genuine OC for those demographics.
It was totally a band-aid measure, mind you. But it kind of worked?
An actual solution for that issue would be to require people to tag their content, and allow posters to pick what they want to see based on those tags. But for that you'd need further improvement of the software.
- Sellers being also part of the problem is a fair point. But it isn't just about Lemmy being Lemmy; it's that unless a community disallows sellers, amateurs eventually leave.
  This would probably need a different approach, like different comms for sellers vs. amateurs. Or, if the tag system were to be implemented, forcing people to tag their content accordingly.
  About sexuality: the reason why I think that tags would've worked is that, once legitimate-but-shortsighted users stop downvoting things based on their sexuality, the trolls stick out like a sore thumb. And then you can simply kick the trolls out.
- Sounds like they should have more LGBT ~~subreddits~~ (communities? Is that the term?)
  
  They do, but once you hop into the "local" view you see all of those posts. And the users, instead of blocking those communities as "content that is not relevant for me, but might be for someone else", simply downvote the posts as a knee-jerk reaction.
  (Yup, communities. I typically shorten it to comms.)
- Porn should definitely be separated into categories, because there is a lot of content that a lot of people don’t want to see.
- Problem with downvotes is people assume they feed the algorithm. They use them to say " I personally don't want to see this". When they're really meant as " this is inappropriate for this community".
  I think Lemmy needs to create an algorithm that would help with downloads acting as expected. And then allow people to flag separately if something is not appropriate for a community.
- An actual solution for that issue would be to require people to tag their content, and allow posters to pick what they want to see based on those tags. But for that you’d need further improvement of the software.
  I would argue the actual solution is to curate your feed by subscribing to communities you enjoy and "unsubscribing" from the ones. You can even create your home (or whatever the subscribed feed is called) feed for your "finer" taste and then block communities you don't want to see in the "All" feed.
  That's how I've set up my Lemmy. I have my home feed for niche communities that generally don't end up in the all feed, and for general news I have the All feed where I've selectively blocked out communities I really don't care about. Ideally I would like to set up multiple feed because there are some communities that are so small they don't end up in my home feed either. I would need a separate feed for the extra niche communities so I could participate in them and help them grow larger.
  While a tag system could achieve something similar I feel like tags would probably be more annoying to use because you'll be at the mercy of whomever sets the tag. If you look at how people use tags on Steam the tags can easily overreach. I had blocked sexual content tag on Steam to get rid of sex games, and it blocked Baldur's Gate 3. Technically Baldur's gate 3 contains sexual content but there's a world of difference between an RPG with sexual content and an actual porn game. I think Valve added some other way to filter out adult games so now I use that and I don't even bother with tags.
  
  Frankly I also browse by "Subscribed". However that is not an actual solution for the problem, unless you have a sensible way to encourage/force other people to do it.
  Multiple feeds (a la multireddits) is a great idea that pops up often. I hope that the devs are at least considering it.
  While a tag system could achieve something similar I feel like tags would probably be more annoying to use because you’ll be at the mercy of whomever sets the tag.
  The solution doesn't need to be perfect to be useful. So even if posts within a grey area get tagged in a way that reaches a wider audience than they're supposed to,, it's fine.
- It's simpler just to say "androphiles"
- This is a load of horse shit. If something gets downvoted cos its xyz and all xyz content gets downvoted but the xyz content is in a community of xyz. Then the net effect is zero.
  Also i swear to god the admins are fucking with me by unblocking the people and communities ive blocked previously.
  If u cant handle a couple downvotes then u probably shouldnt be making porn.
  
  This is a load of horse shit. If something gets downvoted cos its xyz and all xyz content gets downvoted but the xyz content is in a community of xyz. Then the net effect is zero.
  People don't browse only by "subscribed", nor they know magically all communities with their desired content. As such no, the net effect is not zero because the downvotes still affect the visibility of the whole community, reducing its discoverability and of the content within it.
  Also i swear to god the admins are fucking with me by unblocking the people and communities ive blocked previously.
  That's likely a bug, and irrelevant in this discussion.
  If u cant handle a couple downvotes then u probably shouldnt be making porn.
  True but irrelevant. Specially because what I'm saying does not apply just to porn, it applies to every bloody type of original content, SFW or not. And we definitively do not need reasons to discourage OC production here.
- Supply demand is king either ignore the downvotes or find a new target market. I dont recon its worked at all its just means people will block the accounts meaning they are memory holed perminantly.
  
  Supply demand is king
  No, it is not. Smithsonian economics don't even work here, due to the network effect causing a vicious cycle: less visibility due to downvotes → lower perceived supply → users look for that content outside Lemmy → less demand for that content → lower actual supply.
  And in this case it's really bad, because Lemmy is supposed to be welcoming to gay people too, not just heterosexual men like me.
  I dont recon its worked at all its just means people will block the accounts meaning they are memory holed perminantly.
  They block the communities instead, as it's easier than blocking individual posters. And, frankly, it's a better approach than downvoting the content as it discourages it from being shared.

I do not care enough, because here on lemmy.world it isn't a thing. But I see you're from lemmynsfw. I vaguely remember a thread where the disabling of downvotes was discussed and to this day I do not understand why people are afraid of downvotes on their wanking material.
- They disabled downvotes because they want to encourage people to post porn of themselves not just to repost stuff. Getting downvoted for posting your own work isn't encouraging and essentially kills communities before they even start.
  
  This actually makes sense. Thanks.
  
  If ur posting shit u don't want to build a community on that. I recon they did it simply to push an agenda of unpopular crap that most people (on lemmy) dont wanna see ie dudes and fat chicks, they got downvoted for a reason. Now i guess everyone needs to get used to a liberal application of the block button.
  
  Downvotes discourage reposts more than anything.
- Well lemmy has a target market if ur not marketing to that market and feel discouraged thats just supply demand sending u a message. By disabling downvoted u are literally forcing shit people dont wanna see down their throats. I guess the solution is now just the liberal application of the block button.
- As I understand it, the reasoning is that someone posts a picture of their gaping arsehole and it gets downvoted because of the horrid hairy mole on the left cheek, it might dissuade them from posting pictures of their naked breasts — which might be more in line with the community's aesthetic sensibilities — in the future.
  Which, frankly, seems kind of reasonable.
  Lemmy does need more user engagement. Even if you discount the 99% of posts by repost bots, reddit's maggoty corpse still has one or two orders of magnitude more user engagement, which means more tits and gaping arseholes, even if some of them have moles. Anything that makes people more comfortable posting original smut (and other kinds of content, I suppose) here is welcome.
  That said, I think this only should apply to posts, not comments, and only in specific communities. Downvoting gaping orange arseholes in political news communities, for instance, should not only be allowed but even encouraged.
  (Personally I still downvote everything anyway; it might not affect the vote count, but it makes me feel better.)

Downvotes on lemmynsfw were being used to bully people who posted pictures of themselves. They weren't always disabled. But they became a problem and the instance felt that downvotes didn't belong in a porn instance.
There was no reason to downvotes a porn post. Ever.
If it breaks the rules, report it. If you don't like it, keep scrolling.
- It would make sense if the end result was to prevent downvotes on NSFW posts by any user, but that's not how it works in practice. My lemmynsfw account can't downvote anything, but my other accounts can downvote anything (federated).

I like being able to downvote using my main account, but on lemmynsfw it really needed to be removed. People were downvoting literally everything that didn't fit into their fetishes, so anything that wasn't straight and and vanilla would go into the negatives. Like, I'm not into mascs, but I still think they should be able to post to gonewild. Even posts in gay-specific subs were getting downvoted en masse.

- How about this: you can choose whether you want to disable downvotes in your Lemmy client, and everyone can live happily ever after.
  
  That already exists.

It makes the upvotes meaningless. Just like on youtube.

Downvotes are integral to keeping communities safe and clean. Bad faith posts and people just being assholes are downvoted to the bottom significantly faster than mods can remove them.

I agree. I also think that combining votes into a single score is disingenuous. A post with 20 downvotes is perceived very different than a post with 60 upvotes and 80 downvotes. When you only show the combined score it gives the appearance of a singular opinion

they're disabled on hexbear.net, take a wild guess why
- Originated and enabled well before there were other active Lemmy instances or possibly even federation of any sort. It was put in place to stop anti-trans harassment.
  Plus AFAIK it’s only truly applicable within Hexbear itself. The main effect it has is that a Hexbear user can’t downvote anything on any instance with their account.

If you simply forced the ordering to be by new/newest comment, votes in either direction would become irrelevant. But that also means that only the most active users will ever see a bulk of the content when it is relevant, or at all.

Which server? Remote instance or your home instance?
- What do you mean?
  
  [...] However, when a server disables downvoting, [...]
  I'm asking about this sentence.

The combination of up and down votes serve little purpose other than to enforce popular opinions because they ultimately boil down to like and dislike buttons most of the time. Combine that with a dumb karma system (or people paying attention to a summation score) and you get tons of reposts guaranteed to farm upvotes, bot farms using up and down votes to make their opinions look more popular and opposing opinions look less popular, and vapid le ebic meme posts that add nothing to the conversation but make people blow air through their nose and thus "have my upboat".
Like it or not, people often get swayed seeing numbers go in either direction. I'd rather not see people try to conform to popular sentiment just to play it safe in case they care about this silly score. Disabling downvotes at least means that a post receiving few upvotes could've done so for a variety of reasons so people can't assume more upvotes automatically means better and there's no red number that people use to automatically disregard an unpopular opinion. If you wish to point out that a post is bad, you can do so with words, then you actually have to provide a reason instead of "I don't like this post".

I’d downvote this post if I could.
- I would downvote this comment also if I could, but sadly my instance disable downvotes. (◕‿◕)
  
  I did it! Maybe i should start a special downvoting service for the poor downtrodden commenters whos got no DV of their own
- I gotchoo

It's to encourage posting and comment by having a positive environment, especially on hobby community/instance. Lemmy is still small and post isn't as many, and its full of people who is downvote happy and will downvote topic they don't understand or care. Try build a community around that, i'm sure it won't survive.
If a user prefer to not see downvotes, they can disable it by his favourite client settings, but the rest of the community should not miss this functionality for the pleasure of few users.
Let me flip it around:
If a user prefer to see downvotes, they can go to another instance that support that, the admin paying for the hosting shouldn't need to listen to a few user.
It's a setting, it's a tool, let people building the community/instance adjust it how they want instead of dictating how they choose, isn't that your point?
- You can't force people to be positive, they might still leave negative comments.
  Lemmy is still small, so users don't have the option to choose servers as they please. For instance, I'm looking for an instance where you don't need an email to register (for privacy reasons) and where you can quickly create an account (I don't have the patience to wait for days to get my account). Also, it should have a good number of federated servers working with it.
  With these specific requirements, there are only a few servers available.
  
  Why do you think not allowing dislikes is toxic positivity?
  I mean, it's more like "don't be critic" rather than "you're forced to like". You can choose not like if you don't want to.
  Don't mix things up. Don't be allowed to dislike is not the same as being forced to like.
  
  It's pretty ironic that your posts are being downvoted here.

Well i think caring about upvotes and downvotes at all is the sign of someone going through an exceptionally fucking lame part of their lives. Just stop giving a shit about something so... so... extravagantly useless and bam! Life improved.
Upvotes and downvotes are simply engagement markers that prove you made an impact on that many people. If you need to tell someone you don't like them, ya can't downvote them, tell em! Tell em how wrong they are! Get that bag baby! Now get up, get out there and get ta arguin with your words

What is needed is better controls over who can downvote. Communities should get better controls for moderation - up to and including control over whose votes get counted. Simple controls like "only subscribers" or "accounts older than 1 week" or "accounts that have commented on the post/replied to this comment" all the way through to "only users on this list".
But pushing the control into the individual user's hands will simply create echo chambers worse than the existing ones. Let's not turn Lemmy into Facebook.

This might be a real unpopular opinion but I think the down vote is a broken feature. We do need some kind of vote to help the best stuff rise to the top, thus the up vote. Down vote basically says "I disagree with your opinion but I don't have a strong enough rebuttal to engage in the discussion to explain why". A basic agreement doesn't usually add a lot to the conversation unless the comment itself comes with additional context, a disagreement requires some level of dialog as to explain why. It encourages this bubble hivemind instead of open discussion. Really makes me miss how popular forums were in the mid 2000s.
It doesn't really stop spam, we have stronger mechanics for that like reporting, moderation and spambot tools. Plus posts without any engagement usually just fall off pretty quickly without reaching a wider audience.
Then you have your trolls who collect down votes. Having a vote score of 1 is way less compelling for a troll than -15.
Edit
4 down votes without discussion, we've just proved the point.
- Eh, up votes are just as likely to be an "I agree/like" rather than a topicality, importance, or quality indicator. And it's just as likely to be done without any engagement worth seeing.
  This is also a way to form bubbles/echo chambers since sorting by anything but new will surface just the stuff most agreed with.
  If down votes are broken, then all votes are broken. The only way for voting to be not broken is to have them not change what all users see. You'd have to use some other metric for sorting that isn't time based, and specifically exclude any vote based sorting at all.
  Which is entirely possible, and I think that's the way it should be. Keep votes because they work to filter out useless comments to some degree, but don't let them matter.
- Downvote do have a role... It sort of reading the room.
  Sometimes the hot take is too hot, sometimes person literally spouting wrong information with confidence of ChatGPT. You don't always have to engage.
  All of this is true in "natural" social media tho once it becomes big enough too many bad faith actors get involved and no consensus can be built
- I agree that it's a broken feature, but I disagree with the idea of simply removing it and calling it a day. It is useful; the content that surfaces up might not be always the best, but the content near the rock bottom is typically shitty.
  In my opinion the best approach would be to force some feedback from the user while they're downvoting the content. It doesn't need to be fancy, nor to go against the pseudo-anonymous of downvotes; just something like a pop-up asking "why are you downvoting this?", followed by 5~6 options (for example: "disagreeable", "rude", "factually incorrect", "unfunny", "off-topic" etc.). In that situation, even if people downvote you based on opinion, it's damn easy to detect and say "nah, they just disagree with it".
  
  Love this idea. Down vote is severely lacking a why and ultimately doesn't change anything but good reasoning can go a long way.