I’m very curious about the reasoning different people use when deciding to downvote a post or comment. Often, when something gets “heavily” downvoted, the OP will ask some variation of “why the downvotes?”. This is sometimes answered with sincere criticism, but sometimes is received even more poorly than the original offending post.
Do you downvote people who ask “why the downvotes?”? What informs the decision?
On Lemmy, even more so than Reddit, the hive mind is quick to downvote people who have different opinions.
Try saying that you dislike Linux.
Or that you like cars.
Or try talking about things like SpaceX or Starlink without first having a sentence or two about how much of a POS Musk is.
Try saying ANYTHING about AI that isn’t 100% opposed to it, no matter the use case.
It’s like a good portion of Lemmy’s userbase has a fucking conniption any time they see an opinion they don’t entirely agree with infiltrating their perceived echo chamber.
I don’t think that’s true at all. I’d also argue Lemmy/Piefed is structurally more resistant to it on the grounds of upvotes/downvotes not being private.
The fediverse has an extremely bad case of the GroupThink.
No, you don’t see. They are all very smart geniuses who know better than you. You ignorant fool!
They are just trying to ENLIGHTEN you to the error of your ways!
I got a comment that was kinda sorta in support of ai from a few days ago that got upvoted a few times. But the hive mind is wild here. I will occasionally accidentally sic 'em on someone, and if I notice it I’ll upvote them to try and fight it.
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ID politics infests this place. Under ID politics logic, there is the oppressor, and the oppressed. The oppressed can only do good, and you can only be good if you are on their side. Otherwise, you are evil. It’s an absolutist way of thinking, and most of the users here fall into the trap of thinking this way about everything.
They have simple extended it from politics to lifestyles, to hobbies.
I have been repeatedly harassed and insulted for being a console gamer. God forbid you own a playstation/nintendo and want to play games sitting on your comfy couch. What a ignorant immoral bigoted fool I am! How can I live without the GLORY of Linux gaming at 240fps!!!
I’ve seen in IRL so much now too. It’s not just lemmy. This type of thinking is rampant everywhere now, because it does so well on social media. It’s so pathetic and it’s totally toxic. And even if you are ‘on their side’ they turn it into a pissing contest of your purity or something. Everything is also moralized to the point of absurdity.
stay strong friend. thoughts n prayers
In all fairness though, those are reasons to down vote
You down vote if you disagree or dislike a comment
You’re on a very progressive place where people prefer products and policies that are good for everyone, not good for a few and shit for everyone else
Windows is good for a very few executives and it’s a shit show for the rest of the world. Has been like that for 40 years already, bit yay that people are finally catching on to this
Linux is the antithesis of windows. It’s from everyone for everyone and it’s fucking awesome. I can do miracles with a computer with Linux 30 minutes after I bought a computer and started installing it. I can’t even get windows installed without having to dive into documentation, bios and who knows what other shit
Same for rockets. NASA yay! SpaceX got 3 billion dollars to take us to the moon and they took that tax payer money, gave Elmo a huge bonus and never even managed to arrive into a stable low watch orbit. Musk, being the pathological liar that he is about fuuuuuucking everything, just keeps on lying and loads of people lap it up because … Reasons?
Cars? You mean those things that replaced human beings in cities in the Americas? Especially in the US where without a car you can’t even have a job anymore? Where cars kill hundreds of people per day, needlessly, because of badly designed infrastructure and rules that favor cars over anything else? Those things that spew pollution, CO2, plastic particles everywhere and is mostly used for trips where a bicycle would be 5 times faster?
And you wonder why posts that don’t rile against these things get down voted?
It’s like asking why turds in your bed get down voted so much. One would think “well doh!”
There are very good reasons for these down votes
holds up a mirror
I’ve always known that a lot of people used it this way, but I thought most people were on the same page that that’s a misuse of the feature. I’m sad to see that I was wrong.
The purpose of downvoting (or voting in general) on any platform that offers it is for you to indicate that a post doesn’t contribute to the discussion. It’s a soft knob for you to say others won’t find it worth reading. If you believe that use inherently aligns with indicating what you already believe then that’s what makes people see Lemmy (and Reddit) as elitist and hive-mindy, because that’s elitist and hive-mindy.
I think it’s simpler than that. By default, Lemmy/piefed/etc. orders comments by top using upvotes and downvotes.
So if you want something to move up and be more visible you upvote it. If you want something to move down and be less visible, you downvote it.
The difference between likes/dislikes is that you don’t need to like something or dislike something to up/down vote it. You might like something but think it doesn’t contribute or is in the wrong comm or even just that the other comments should be higher up than it. There doesn’t need to be an assumption of negative judgement (although often there is anyway), they’re tools for arranging comment/post order.