Depending on your sorting method, downvoted posts will be featured less favorably. You will immediately know that a heavily downvoted post is not worth your attention. Some clients might let you filter displayed posts based on the votes.
Comment on Flood of vibe-coded/slopware spam?
AMillionMonkeys@lemmy.world 18 hours agoBut what’s the point of downvoting on Lemmy? It doesn’t seem to affect visibility. Or maybe there’s a setting somewhere I need to adjust?
rtxn@lemmy.world 18 hours ago
Telorand@reddthat.com 17 hours ago
My instance has downvotes turned off (which I like). That action only benefits people who care about downvotes.
The better option that helps everyone is to report bad faith posts.
punksnotdead@slrpnk.net 16 hours ago
Looks like your comment is receiving downvotes just fine…
Maybe this thread is a lesson in how downvotes have a purpose and why instances turning them off is silly puritanical nonsense that serves to aid bad content more than anything else it purports to achieve.
Telorand@reddthat.com 15 hours ago
On your instance, yes. Those downvotes get dropped on my side, so I can’t see them, and neither can anyone else on a non-downvote instance. My proposal would address the issue of slop for everyone, whereas downvote proponents are just saying, “Yeah, well my way is better. Lemmy is only for people who do it my way.”
If this thread is a lesson in anything, it’s that the bad habits of Reddit carried over, and people are so fucking lazy, they can’t be bothered to click the report button.
rtxn@lemmy.world 17 hours ago
report bad faith posts
You’re supposed to report posts that break instance or community rules, not whatever you happen to consider to be “bad faith”. Moderators are not the arbiters of intent.
Telorand@reddthat.com 15 hours ago
You’re supposed to report posts that break instance or community rules, not whatever you happen to consider to be “bad faith”.
This isn’t Reddit. Mods aren’t beholden to some set of standards handed down by moneyed interests. They’re real people with (hopefully) common sense and a desire to create something better than Reddit.
Besides, even if your instance has disabled downvotes, other instances can still see them.
That’s my point. If instances like mine can’t see downvotes, it’s excluding people like me, because people can’t be bothered to report. Furthermore, all it is is a popularity contest. “A bunch of people don’t like it” is no guarantee you won’t, nor does it demonstrate that the content is in fact garbage; it just shows a bunch of people don’t like it.
Overspark@piefed.social 18 hours ago
The point is signaling to other people that it’s not worth their time. I sort by new so I often see these slop posts as well, but other readers very quickly down vote it into oblivion so if a post is older than say 15 minutes I generally will know not to read it even if it sounds interesting at first glance. A mod will come by later to actually delete it is that’s warranted, but until then down votes suffice.
grue@lemmy.world 15 hours ago
I typically sort by “top six hours” and I’m barely aware of the problem OP is talking about. So yeah, it seems like downvoting works.