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”
Downvotes: Misinformation, bad-faith arguments/blatant hate speech, fearmongering (I suppose that’s part of misinformation though), rude/uncivil things that bring nothing (comments that are just straight up insults, for example)
Upvotes: Fact-checking, sources, educational content, productive discussions, political views i believe in (note: i do NOT downvote ones i disagree with, as long as its not a bad-faith argument or blatant misinformation) helpful positivity, solutions
Ignore: Things I don’t understand, things that are neither productive nor unproductive, things im unqualified in, things I’m unsure about, opinions and statements that i just plain disagree with. And anything else that doesnt catch my attention or interest, or doesnt have anything to do with me.