It’s just such an echo chamber on these sites. Whatever is popular gets upvotes and goes to the top, whatever isn’t popular receives downvotes and sinks to the bottom. People feel peer pressured to vote similarly to others on comments, the cycle continues.
Ilandar@aussie.zone 5 months ago
One of the reasons why I didn’t want Lemmy to grow any more than it did. Keeping the community small but active allows people to discuss and debate without massive pile-ons occurring.
unionagainstdhmo@aussie.zone 5 months ago
I wonder if it would be better without votes at all: You have to comment to interact, you can’t be passive. That way mods can deal with spam more effectively. There is no way for me to tell which users are abusing their votes to silence people rather than interact respectfully. I hate it when I comment a legitimate argument (or worse someone else has and I agree with it) and it gets downvoted with no comments at all. It feels like I’ve committed the horrible act of having an opinion.
princessnorah@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 months ago
Downvotes are disabled on my instance and I think it helps a decent amount of what you’re saying. Only seeing how many others agree with someone does still lend a decent amount to the discussion I think. It’s way starker to see someone still on 1 when the person they’re arguing with is on 10 in my opinion.
Ilandar@aussie.zone 5 months ago
I think this is the same problem, though. You are being influenced by how other people interpreted the comments before you’ve even read them properly yourself.
unionagainstdhmo@aussie.zone 5 months ago
I wonder also whether it would be interesting if votes were public like on Facebook for example. Though I don’t think disabling downvotes solves the problem. It makes it easier to agree and harder to disagree. You’ll still be mostly exposed to things that the majority of people agree with, this not challenging the majority opinion. Looking at how most social media work, aiming to keep you on the platform longer to see more ads the votes make sense, see more stuff you agree with, happier you are, longer you stay. I don’t see why we need that here, I’m not currently aware of any for-profit instances (there is threads I guess). It was probably brought over from Reddit without much thought
Ilandar@aussie.zone 5 months ago
I haven’t had votes visible since I joined Lemmy and it has definitely been a more enjoyable experience. Whether that means it would be better without them altogether, I can’t really say.