I sometimes post news articles that examine possible problems in society. Some may agree with the author, some may disagree. I often see these posts being downvoted if many disagree with the author.

Why do you downvote the post instead of commenting to express your disagreement?

As far as I understand, the idea is to upvote the post to spur conversation and comment to express your agreement or disagreement. Or did I misunderstand something?

  • qooqie@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Opinion “news” masquerading as real news is one I’ll always downvote. Usually weeded out through who the publisher is

  • deegeese
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    1 year ago

    Downvote disinformation. If someone’s going on about Trans bathrooms or Hunter Biden I know they’re not interested in truth.

    • RotaryKeyboard@lemmy.ninja
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      1 year ago

      Yeah, this is usually the reason I will downvote a news article. Misinformation needs to be marked somehow, and a negative score is a good way to do that.

    • FuglyDuck@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      report it. So far the mods have seemed to take them down reasonably quickly. for example, that incel guy in !politics… (and here,)

      I still recommend down voting in the meantime, but, yeah.

  • Vaggumon@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    I’d ask why you care about fake internet points so much. If you want to share a link for a discussion, fine then do so, but if you are worried about meaningless up/down votes why?

    • zeus ⁧ ⁧ ∽↯∼@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      i care about fake internet points because i want to share things people like. if they don’t like it, i’ll enjoy it myself, but i won’t bother sharing it

    • Treemaster099@pawb.social
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      1 year ago

      Not op, but I’d say it’s easy to guess why people care about numbers so much. Main reason is because it feels like making a statement and that feels good. It’s a tiny amount of effort for a bigger dopamine reward.

      It’s just as easy to guess why people don’t care about them either. They don’t affect anything and can feel meaningless as a result. It just depends on the person

  • Izzy@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Everyone seems to have their own opinions about how you use upvote and downvote. You can either downvote because you don’t think it is a good article or because you don’t agree with it or just because you want less people to see it. There is no way to enforce how peoples choose to use this system. Which means that it doesn’t mean a whole lot and shouldn’t be taken very seriously.

    • FlickOfTheBean@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Funilly enough, it seems if you put those specific meanings behind individual emoji, and also display the amount of those emoji accrued, it seems like that would fix the issue, except for more obvious cases of unintended use, like trolling and polling.

      Aka, I think Facebook may have figured that out via the expanded reaction suite (rather than just having the like button)

      But as Lemmy currently stands, I 100% agree with you

  • Tedesche@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Op-Eds are often “news analysis” pieces that are one of the main ways publishers try to shape the National dialogue around a subject or issue; it’s literally how newspapers sculpt culture. So, if I see one sculpting culture in a way I don’t like, I downvote it. If I feel the issue is important through to me and I have the energy at the time, I may comment, but that usually involves exposing myself to lots of angry, retaliatory comments and downvoting, and I don’t always have the patience for that.

  • Conyak@lemmy.tf
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    1 year ago

    Is the downvote not for disagreeing? I don’t have time to comment on every post I see.

    • Izzgo@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      To me, a downvote on a posted article suggests it doesn’t belong where it was posted, or the article is itself bogus, something along those lines. But (again, in my opinion) comments are fair game for downvotes if you disagree, and I will also do so if I disagree vehemently. But if you don’t want to actually add something to the discussion, no vote is really needed. Maybe you ultimately disagree with a post or comment, but it gave you something to think about? If so, the comment contributed positively to the discussion.

    • brewbellyblueberry
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      1 year ago

      I see the whole system as kind of flawed, like. If I think some topic or post is total bullshit and frankly, wrong, I’m supposed to comment to disagree with it, driving it further up in activity. So let’s imagine a platform where everyone uses the system “how they’re supposed to” and there’s a post about blatant bullshit, supporting nazi ideology or some shit like that (exaggerated, but for a point) and it’s dressed in the clothes of a well-mannered, discussion provoking post, and it gets a billion comments all disagreeing and it gets to the most active posts just because of this. When if it was downvoted, it’d just be more ignored the more people disagree with it.

      I get the intention behind the reasoning for it, but it just doesn’t work like that, because the whole system is flawed. The most active posts would be filled with thinly veiled and not so thinly veiled, even clever, ragebait and bullshit.

      As much as I hate to see “tHe hIvEmInD” and brigaders flood posts and comments with actual, relevant conversation and takes, with this system we’re just gonna have to deal with it I guess.

      • xigoi@lemmy.sdf.org
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        1 year ago

        If a Nazi expresses their opinion in a civil manner and lots of other people express why they disagree with it, then… what exactly is the problem with the post getting attention?

        • brewbellyblueberry
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          1 year ago

          Why give a nazi the stage? Why raise their opinions there? The points are and have been expressed in a civil manner for at least a century.

          “If a holocaust denialist expresses their opinion in a civil manner why not give their point of view more attention”

          “If a pedophile expresses their opinion in a civil manner why not give their point of view more attention”

          “If a rapist expresses their opinion in a civil manner why not give their point of view more attention”

          “If a misogynist/misandrist expresses their opinion in a civil manner why not give their point of view attention”

          If this is seriously an issue you have a dilemma with I have nothing further to say to you.

          These kinds of points of view get enough attention as it is. No one needs to give them any more.

          • xigoi@lemmy.sdf.org
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            1 year ago

            Because if you use force to suppress people’s opinions instead of rationally arguing with them, it gives the impression that they may have a good point.

            • BrokebackHampton@kbin.social
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              1 year ago

              Nope. Popper’s Paradox of Tolerance.

              You’ll have to excuse the lack of elaboration but I’m kinda done of repeating myself when it comes to this topic.

              You should ditch all qualms about losing the moral high ground over nazis. They don’t give a fuck, and neither should you.

              Come on, don’t make me tap the sign post the Sartre quote, you know, the one that goes:

              Never believe that anti‐ Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti‐Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past. It is not that they are afraid of being convinced. They fear only to appear ridiculous or to prejudice by their embarrassment their hope of winning over some third person to their side.

            • brewbellyblueberry
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              1 year ago

              Not giving someone a platform on a stage is hardly using force to suppress people’s opinions. Go parade nazism elsewhere, you have your platforms. I promise, when there’s something worthwhile to read and respond to, people will.

  • Mane25@feddit.uk
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    1 year ago

    I’m not familiar exactly with your posts, but I wouldn’t necessarily assume the downvotes are for the reasons you think they are. Sometimes I’ll downvote a post because I don’t think it’s relevant to the topic or that it’s simply not interesting (and I really do view it merely as a vote, nothing personal). Then the OP will sometimes respond with “I can’t believe I was downvoted because of x, y, z” where x, y, z really had nothing to do with the downvote. If I disagree, I try to upvote because it’s on-topic and reply with my disagreement (which I have just done right now).

  • NightOwl@lemmy.one
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    1 year ago

    Better question is why are you carrying over the obsession with karma over to lemmy? Are you the type to say before a post “I’ll probably be downvoted for this but…”

    Just stop caring about it completely.

    • Wookie@artemis.camp
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      1 year ago

      Also, shouldn’t they be addressing the fediverse instead of just Lemmy? I’m still not 100% on how all this works

      • atocci@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        Technically yes, since it seems you and I are both on Kbin and also reading this post, but nostupidquestions is a Lemmy community, so I guess I don’t really mind.

  • slazer2au@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Why do you downvote the post instead of commenting to express your disagreement?

    Because in order to hide a post you need to vote on it and seeing as votes are meaningless why not hit the down vote?

  • JoBo@feddit.uk
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    1 year ago

    I downvote fash talking points. Because obviously I do.

    That’s not a sly jab at you, I can’t see anything objectionable in your post history. But I would guess a lot of people have different ideas about what talking points are bogus, or what counts as news, or maybe they’re just trying to bury a repost that has already taken off elsewhere. You don’t really have any way of knowing why they’re downvoting.

  • MxM111@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    That’s because on other platforms this is called “like” (and the opposite is thus “dislike”) button. And people often dislike opinions that are opposite to theirs especially in modern political environment.

  • qprimed@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    As far as I understand, the idea is to upvote the post to spur conversation and comment to express your agreement or disagreement.

    thats how I try to do it. obvious hate/trolling gets a downvote/report/block as needed.