My experience
A few hours ago, I commented on a post about a nuclear power plant in Georgia on lemmy.ml:
Why expensive nuclear reactors instead of cheaper renewables?
What happened? 8 likes, 11 dislikes
I am totally honest with you now: This makes me sad, because it’s the same behavior that I experienced on Reddit and why I deleted my account there. Different oppinion => Downvote!!! Now my comment has a “-3” score and I could think about deleting it. I won’t do it, but others would maybe do it. IMO, that’s how we create echo chambers.
I want to post what I like to (not what the 60-vs-40-majority of the platform likes me to post)…
So let me ask you these question:
- When do you upvote 👍?
- When do you downvote 👎?
- When do you do neither 👍👎?
My answers:
When do you upvote? 👍
- same opinion as mine
- a post that I think should get more attention
When do you downvote? 👎
- discrimination
- trolls
- irrationality, ignoring facts
When do you do neither? 👍👎
- different opinion => I write a comment instead
- posts I classify as “not interesting”
I mean, the problem with upvotes and downvotes is that at one point they were supposed to have specific uses, but they’re unenforceable, so it’s really just a “here, community, you manage yourself with the numbers”.
Of course, “misuse” of the downvote is rampant, and so you should always interpret them with a grain of salt when you see them, on your posts or otherwise. Just because you got downvoted doesn’t necessarily mean you’re in the wrong or that you deserved it.
Likewise, just because you got upvoted doesn’t necessarily mean you contributed much to the discussion or that the info you provided is true. So be critical of yourself and your own conduct, and use your best judgment when voting, but at the end of the day, it’s internet points and you should judge a post or comment on its contents and not immediately by its votes.
It’s not really misuse, it’s a thumbs up and a thumbs down, up to the user to interpret how to use. There’s no rule given in the interface when you use the buttons. Oh you’re voting something down does that mean it should be removed from the community? No the app just leaves it up to the users to interpret.
We could change the symbols, amplify and minimize, something like that to make it clearer that it has less to do with your agreement with the idea in the post