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submitted 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by 911@lemmynsfw.com to c/unpopularopinion@lemmy.world

By default, Lemmy allows downvotes globally. However, when a server disables downvoting, it is similar to using a feature that is usually reserved for enterprises and very small, non-federated communities.

If a user prefer to not see downvotes, they can disable it by his favourite client settings, but the rest of the community should not miss this functionality for the pleasure of few users.

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[-] NaibofTabr@infosec.pub 102 points 2 months ago

Forced positivity is toxic positivity.

Removing an interaction choice from users can only result in lower quality user interaction.

Removing the capacity for downvotes harms the community.

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[-] lvxferre@mander.xyz 67 points 2 months ago

The problem with downvotes in LemmyNSFW was very specific to that instance and its sexual nature. It boils down to the typical user doing the following:

  • people use downvotes to signal "I don't want to see this"
  • most people want to see naked women, not naked men
  • the instance is supposed to be inclusive towards people who want to see either

As a result, content geared towards gay+bi men, hetero+bi women, and plenty non-binary people was consistently downvoted - and it was discouraging genuine OC for those demographics.

It was totally a band-aid measure, mind you. But it kind of worked?

An actual solution for that issue would be to require people to tag their content, and allow posters to pick what they want to see based on those tags. But for that you'd need further improvement of the software.

[-] WolfLink@sh.itjust.works 10 points 2 months ago

Sounds like they should have more LGBT ~~subreddits~~ (communities? Is that the term?)

[-] lvxferre@mander.xyz 17 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

They do, but once you hop into the "local" view you see all of those posts. And the users, instead of blocking those communities as "content that is not relevant for me, but might be for someone else", simply downvote the posts as a knee-jerk reaction.

(Yup, communities. I typically shorten it to comms.)

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[-] Anticorp@lemmy.world 4 points 2 months ago

Porn should definitely be separated into categories, because there is a lot of content that a lot of people don’t want to see.

[-] surewhynotlem@lemmy.world 2 points 2 months ago

Problem with downvotes is people assume they feed the algorithm. They use them to say " I personally don't want to see this". When they're really meant as " this is inappropriate for this community".

I think Lemmy needs to create an algorithm that would help with downloads acting as expected. And then allow people to flag separately if something is not appropriate for a community.

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[-] rustyfish@lemmy.world 29 points 2 months ago

I do not care enough, because here on lemmy.world it isn't a thing. But I see you're from lemmynsfw. I vaguely remember a thread where the disabling of downvotes was discussed and to this day I do not understand why people are afraid of downvotes on their wanking material.

[-] ImplyingImplications@lemmy.ca 37 points 2 months ago

They disabled downvotes because they want to encourage people to post porn of themselves not just to repost stuff. Getting downvoted for posting your own work isn't encouraging and essentially kills communities before they even start.

[-] rustyfish@lemmy.world 11 points 2 months ago

This actually makes sense. Thanks.

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[-] leftzero@lemmynsfw.com 2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

As I understand it, the reasoning is that someone posts a picture of their gaping arsehole and it gets downvoted because of the horrid hairy mole on the left cheek, it might dissuade them from posting pictures of their naked breasts — which might be more in line with the community's aesthetic sensibilities — in the future.

Which, frankly, seems kind of reasonable.

Lemmy does need more user engagement. Even if you discount the 99% of posts by repost bots, reddit's maggoty corpse still has one or two orders of magnitude more user engagement, which means more tits and gaping arseholes, even if some of them have moles. Anything that makes people more comfortable posting original smut (and other kinds of content, I suppose) here is welcome.

That said, I think this only should apply to posts, not comments, and only in specific communities. Downvoting gaping orange arseholes in political news communities, for instance, should not only be allowed but even encouraged.

(Personally I still downvote everything anyway; it might not affect the vote count, but it makes me feel better.)

[-] brygphilomena@lemmy.world 15 points 2 months ago

Downvotes on lemmynsfw were being used to bully people who posted pictures of themselves. They weren't always disabled. But they became a problem and the instance felt that downvotes didn't belong in a porn instance.

There was no reason to downvotes a porn post. Ever.

If it breaks the rules, report it. If you don't like it, keep scrolling.

[-] blockheadjt@sh.itjust.works 3 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

It would make sense if the end result was to prevent downvotes on NSFW posts by any user, but that's not how it works in practice. My lemmynsfw account can't downvote anything, but my other accounts can downvote anything (federated).

[-] fabsecretpowers@lemmynsfw.com 9 points 2 months ago

I like being able to downvote using my main account, but on lemmynsfw it really needed to be removed. People were downvoting literally everything that didn't fit into their fetishes, so anything that wasn't straight and and vanilla would go into the negatives. Like, I'm not into mascs, but I still think they should be able to post to gonewild. Even posts in gay-specific subs were getting downvoted en masse.

[-] MehBlah@lemmy.world 9 points 2 months ago

It makes the upvotes meaningless. Just like on youtube.

[-] rickyrigatoni@lemm.ee 6 points 2 months ago

Downvotes are integral to keeping communities safe and clean. Bad faith posts and people just being assholes are downvoted to the bottom significantly faster than mods can remove them.

[-] Anticorp@lemmy.world 5 points 2 months ago

I agree. I also think that combining votes into a single score is disingenuous. A post with 20 downvotes is perceived very different than a post with 60 upvotes and 80 downvotes. When you only show the combined score it gives the appearance of a singular opinion

[-] Kolanaki@yiffit.net 2 points 2 months ago

If you simply forced the ordering to be by new/newest comment, votes in either direction would become irrelevant. But that also means that only the most active users will ever see a bulk of the content when it is relevant, or at all.

[-] bi_tux@lemmy.world 2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

they're disabled on hexbear.net, take a wild guess why

spoilerit's to protect their circlejerk

[-] CabbageRelish@midwest.social 9 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Originated and enabled well before there were other active Lemmy instances or possibly even federation of any sort. It was put in place to stop anti-trans harassment.

Plus AFAIK it’s only truly applicable within Hexbear itself. The main effect it has is that a Hexbear user can’t downvote anything on any instance with their account.

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this post was submitted on 02 Oct 2024
203 points (88.3% liked)

Unpopular Opinion

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Welcome to the Unpopular Opinion community!


How voting works:

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