Hey folks! Just realized something that makes Lemmy different from Reddit. Because of the federation, your votes are not technically anonymous on Lemmy. At least, I think.
Although there’s no UI to look at a user’s voting history yet, one could conceivably be built by an instance. Perhaps coincidentally, I hear there’s instances out there populated by mostly bots?
I didn’t know, that’s awesome! Downvote shouldn’t be the “fuck you I disagree” button, save that garbage for Twitter and Reddit. Downvote is there for democratically killing malevolent bullshit. Expose the names!
It’s sometimes hard to separate those feelings
Maybe a 3 button setup
Default Rankings are based on minimum bad-content/maximum agreed count
And controversial ranking is based on minimum bad-content/maximum good-content count (agree+disagree)
This way even comments that people disagree with can be exposed so long as it’s still good content
Brigadiers who blindly vote everything bad content to maliciously influence rankings can be identified and removed for manipulation, while people who vehemently disgree with an idea can still have that outlet without influencing the community/magazine haphazardly
Yeah I never understood to pearl clutching about downvotes. It just reeks of “everyone who drives faster than me is a lunatic, everyone who drives slower than me is a granny” mentality.
Sometimes reporting technically covers the last one. But usually not. Not all subs have rules against bigotry, trolling, dog whistles, general assholery, etc. I strongly hold it’s important that downvoting is an option to deal with these kinda things. It’s a way to show everyone that the comment isn’t acceptable.
Plus even when reporting is an option, it may not be fast enough. Can’t really automate removals, either, as people will abuse that.
Arguably “disagree but acceptable” should just not upvote. In a certain sense, that’s already a middle option.
Fuck you, I disagree.
Is that better?
In term of privacy this is pretty bad though. From the upvotes/downvotes activity you can very easily build a whole graph of stuff you like/dislike. For advertisers that’s juicy data.
Or upvote/downvote randomly, or, on a lot of stuff so the interest pool is huge. I’m upvote stuff I see just to participate and give the poster a “someone seen this post” feel good high.