My understanding is that downvotes reflect whether or not someone agrees with a post or comment much more than whether the user is making a constructive comment or not so they can only be used to infer how agreeable the comment is.
I never responded to this part, and I should have. Yes, people definitely vote in exactly that fashion. They do, however, upvote about 10 times more than they downvote. And, the bot takes into account everything you say. It’s not just those controversial topics. You have to be talking about only, or majority, things that people don’t want to hear in order to trigger it. And, Lemmy is all those minority political takes on things. There are a lot of communities where you’ll get straight-up banned for saying things that are mainstream American points of view. The people who tend to be argumentative like to maintain a fiction that people on Lemmy just can’t handle someone who’s anti-genocide, or something like that, when they’re showing up right next to a “fuck Israel” meme or a “fuck Biden for arming Israel” meme that has 1,500 upvotes.
It’s hard for me to make a convincing argument that it’s tolerant of dissenting voices who aren’t jerks about it without listing off accounts. I can do some version, though, if you’re interested, listing examples of banned and not-banned accounts to illustrate where the boundary line is.
auk@slrpnk.net 3 weeks ago
Sure. Here’s you. Red is downvotes, blue is upvotes. The left-right axis is time, with the past on the left.
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The bar right below the red/blue bar code is the key to what comments were in what posts.
One thing that jumps out at me is that almost all of your participation is in political threads, and the majority of it is getting downvoted. It would be different if you were just participating in Lemmy, and then also you had some views that were unpopular. That happens to a lot of people, and I’ve bent over backwards trying to preserve their right to do that when I’ve been making and tuning the bot. This isn’t that. This is almost all just you going in and arguing with people.
One thing I say a lot when talking to people about this is, “It’s not your opinion, it’s your delivery.” I’m going to be honest, when I read your first message here, it annoyed me. You’re coming out of the gate hostile. Most people, when they receive that, are going to be hostile back. It’s just how people work. You’re not going to convince them of your point of view, you’re not going to be able to fine-tune your own point of view to let them poke holes in any mistakes in it. You’re just going to irritate everyone. That’s a choice you’re making in how you approach things, and I think it’s completely fair for people to react to that choice by closing the door on you.
It’s the difference between going to a party when you’re in a fringe political party, and having conversations about it, versus showing up to the party with a bunch of flyers and handing one to every person and making almost every conversation over the course of the night revolve around your chosen fringe political party. The first one is fine, or should be, at a decent party. The second one, people are going to remove you from the party for. I think if you want to make an impact on people’s thinking, you’re going to need to recognize and respect that reality of human nature.
Having an unpopular political opinion is fine. Being a little bit combative with people is fine. Doing both at once is going to collect a tidal wave of downvotes, and also I think is going to make it harder for you to make any progress convincing anyone of anything.
I’m going to stop you right there.
You’re playing a little game where you claim you said one thing and got downvoted for it, when I can guarantee you actually said something different. You probably said that we need to not vote for the Democrats, because they’re facilitating genocide. That’s different. You can say that, sure. Someone might say back to you that not voting for the Democrats is going to make the genocide 20 times worse, and that’s why they’re voting for the Democrats. They can say that, too. That’s progress, that’s people talking to each other. Maybe one or the other of you will learn something from the exchange.
Where it gets difficult is where you go off into this alternate reality where they said, “I love genocide, and I love the Democrats, I’m going to give you downvotes because you don’t support genocide which I love,” and then you start arguing against that thing that they didn’t say. That’s not progress. That’s just people shouting and trying to twist the conversation around so that they can “win.” It only takes a little bit of that before people are going to stop talking to you.
I know you do that, because you did it to me in your first message in this conversation.
I looked over some of your posting history, and I think you’ve got some valuable things to say. I learned some things about how bad Liz Cheney was before she for some reason found her principles and broke with the Republican party over Trump. I saw some debates people were having with you about Russian and Chinese history, where I don’t think you’re right, but it didn’t seem like any kind of badly intentioned thing.
I think if you built up the habit of always responding honestly to what people said, and telling the truth about your own views and the world outside the best way you can, the bot wouldn’t treat you harshly, and you’d also make more progress in convincing people of what you’re trying to say.
Try again: What’s the last thing you said that got dozens of downvotes, and what did you actually say that got dozens of downvotes? What was the opposing side’s core argument, honestly summarized?
BearOfaTime@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
Two things:
You’ve accused them of being hostile here, and of arguing elsewhere.
This very post by you comes across as hostile to me.
Paradigm is everything, and here you are attempting to be the arbiter if what’s acceptable.
Ashtear@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
All I can think about is how this bot is immediately a non-starter because this is the kind of attitude I can expect from the author when asking for support or collaboration. It’s not just in this post, either.
Even if the parent comment here was hostile–it’s borderline, at worst–I can’t possibly understand the mentality of being argumentative in a post trying to encourage the use of a service.
auk@slrpnk.net 3 weeks ago
Your 1-star review is noted. When I open a Yelp page for the bot, I’ll be sure to let you know, and you can speak to my manager about it.
catloaf@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
I had the same reaction. I’d like to see this graph for OP. (And also a sentiment analysis of their comments.)
auk@slrpnk.net 3 weeks ago
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You can give me a sentiment analysis, if you want to, you have my profile.