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”.

  • Norah - She/TheyEnglish
    1•7 months ago

    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.

    Yeah that behaviour sounds fine to me then. I was worried that there would be a federated downvote score amongst other instances for blahaj posts.

    Personally I’ve really enjoyed not having to think about downvotes. Yeah I sometimes see terrible opinions that have an upvote or two, but generally the person they’re replying too has far more votes anyway. On reddit I always felt compelled to have to downvote people like that. It meant that I’d end up dwelling on transphobic comments longer, rather than just moving on. I super don’t miss being able to sort by controversial either.