People still downvote in a specific sense all across the fediverse. It is almost always mass downvoters who get banned by community moderators for that conduct, not people who upvote or downvote selectively in good faith based on specific grievances with the content of the post.
Comment on User "threelonmusketeers@sh.itjust.works" is banning users for downvoting his posts.
remon@ani.social 17 hours agoIt’s not just about that. It’s also an important metric to gauge how the bigger “hivemind” is feeling about something, without having to fear that people will self-censor. Especially on lemmy with it’s extremely narrow filter bubbles. Voting is effectively obsolete if every niche community can pretend to be “popular” because they can just ban everyone that downvotes their stuff.
Skavau@piefed.social 17 hours ago
remon@ani.social 16 hours ago
It is almost always mass downvoters who get banned by community moderators for that conduct, not people who upvote or downvote selectively in good faith based on specific grievances with the content of the post.
Right and that’s exactly why I think it should be private. Because it shouldn’t be up to moderators to decide what “good faith” is. If someone wants to just have lurker account and downvote stuff on /all all day … that’s legitimate use of a the feature.
If you are one person with one account, you should be able to vote however you like without repercussions.
Skavau@piefed.social 16 hours ago
Right and that's exactly why I think it should be private. Because it shouldn't be up to moderators to decide what "good faith" is.
I disagree. Mods can make these decisions, the modlogs are public and accountable (I'm for accountability in both ways) and the community - and instance admins can intervene if they think the moderators themselves are responding in bad faith. Private voting across the fediverse, where plenty of users have multiple accounts spread out across the fediverse on different instances would invite a ton of mass-downvoting as it could be done with relative ease.
If someone wants to just have lurker account and downvote stuff on /all all day ... that's legitimate use of a the feature.
And it's my legitimate use as a moderator to determine that someone who does that is not part of any community I am building, and is actively vandalous towards it.
remon@ani.social 16 hours ago
Private voting across the fediverse, where plenty of users have multiple accounts spread out across the fediverse on different instances would invite a ton of mass-downvoting as it could be done with relative ease.
If it is proper coordinated or autmated mass-downvoting campaign that should be a job for the admins.
And it’s my legitimate use as a moderator to determine that someone who does that is not part of any community I am building, and is actively vandalous towards it.
Yes, that’s how it currently works. I’m arguing it shouldn’t work like this for votes.
Skavau@piefed.social 16 hours ago
Niche communities who might be targeted by disproportionate amounts of downvoting are unlikely to surge into /all/ just because they ban people who downvote everything from there. The topic would still be niche.