Does the reddit style format inherently make for a toxic environment? Or is it a culture of toxicity from the influx of reditors? For lack of a beter example, on stackoverflow, when someone down votes you, it comes with a comment saying how to improve. On mastodon, people can’t downvote you. These platforms are a joy to use, lemmy is depressing if you post. Its depressing because every post or comment, no mater the quality comes with downvotes, and usually no criticism to accompany it, you are left not knowing if youve made a mistake, or if its just trolls, bots, or idiots. At the end you feel insulted not improved. What do you think?
I don’t think it’s the format. Forums generally get toxic when they’re too big. The negative influence of a toxic user is much greater than the positive influence of a non-toxic user. The bigger the user base the more toxic users. Eventually it gets to a critical mass where you’re seeing enough toxic replies to make the whole platform seem toxic.
Reddit is 18 years old. Lots of time to attract toxic users. I wasn’t on Reddit from the start, but people have said Reddit didn’t suffer toxicity until after it was around 10 years old. Lemmy is four years old now so it will be a while. Though Lemmy may attract a smaller less toxic crowd and avoid toxicity indefinitely.
I don’t have a high opinion of community at Stack Overflow as it started out elitist by nature of its policies and rules. Yeah that’s going to breed toxicity right out of the gate. I have to admit Stack Overflow has been a really good resource for technical information at times, but its community is harsh. As much as I’ve used it to find good technical information, I’ve never made an account there or had any desire to post there.
That’s a good point about toxic users having a bigger influence than non-toxic users.
It’s easy to see a comment that you mostly agree with and just not upvote it. But seeing a comment that’s factually incorrect or toxic will both welcome downvotes.
Instance admins can simply disable downvotes. You don’t need them.
I’m not trying to be negative here with you - but anyone complaining about downvoted will often get another downvote from me. Say what you want to say, stand by your convictions, and don’t worry about what the internet thinks about that.
I don’t see the poster explicitly complaining about getting downvoted. How I read it is that they think that downvoting encourages people to be negative and weaponise their downvote. And, given what you’ve said, they’re spot on and you inadvertently proved their point.
I saw the post more as someone who is too worried about what the group will think of their comment to allow for dissent.
That being said, what I meant about people who complain about downvotes was the old Reddit trope of “edit: really? Downvote me for asking a question?” On a comment less than an hour old.
I upvote anyone who disagrees with me, as long as they’re not a complete brute about it.
Just post what you want to post and ignore the votes. A few downvotes is to be expected. Try not to read into them so much.
Alternative way to think about it: 10% of people are insufferable assholes. Do you want them to be happy with what you say?
That’s a great way to think about it.
I barely posted on Reddit due to the thought of people hating what I said or posted 😊 I think here is more friendly since it’s not huge, I share what I like and if people don’t agree that’s cool! As long as it makes someone happy it’s worth it ✨
NO! YOU SUCK!
More seriously: downvotes can be disabled on Lemmy instances on an instance-by-instance basis. I have them disabled on mine, for example, because I too find them difficult to deal with. If you don’t like downvotes, that could be an easy solution for you.
I think that the current downvote system is far from ideal, and ideally there should have some piece of “forced” feedback when you downvote someone, but keep in mind that a downvote is just “this should be less visible”. For example, people often downvote OK answers because an even better answer popped up, and they want the later to rise to the top. So a lot of times there’s no actual hostility in the downvotes.
And for other Reddit behaviours that people often call toxic (I call them SNOO - stupid, noisy, obnoxious, obtuse), I think that it’s cultural. The Reddit admins bred that behaviour into the users; and users are likely to carry it with them elsewhere, including Lemmy. I think that most of those individuals will get better over time here, and the ones who don’t will end leaving.
Thats pretty much what i was thinking. Also SNOO seems like a useful thing to have in the brain
I feel like the issue with forced feedback when you downvote is you’ll get a lot of comments where its just 1-2 words, doesn’t say much, just a “No” or “Bad”. And if you require a min characters like the bneg forums you’ll just get “No. 10chars”
Requiring comments will cause people to half ass it at best, I think. Which, sure then people can downvote them, but are people going to write a well thought out comment for every “No”?
Is having 40 “I disagree” comments really better for discussion than just 40 downvotes?
By “forced feedback” I was thinking more like having multiple types of downvote (“off-topic”, “rude”, “incorrect”, “I disagree”, “unfunny”…), so users need to pick one when downvoting something. It gives people a better clue on why a certain piece of content is being downvoted than just letting them assume, and it’s way less noise than 40 “I disagree” comments.
I could see that then, kinda like how you can react with different emoji on facebook.
Idk if I’d prefer it, but I think it could work
This sparks a few different thoughts for me:
- I believe there are a few Lemmy instances that don’t have downvotes enabled. (Beehaw might be one of them, but don’t quote me on that.) If downvotes are a stress point for you, you could try joining one of those instances.
- I personally find both upvotes and downvotes to be useful as a way for me to quickly see the community’s reaction to a piece of content. If I’m scrolling through my feed and see a post with many downvotes and few upvotes, for example, I know that post is unlikely to interest me and will move on. Conversely, a highly upvoted post or one with a mix of both upvotes and downvotes is more likely to have a good conversation in the comments in my experience.
- If I make a post that receives a large number of downvotes - or if most of my posts tend to be downvoted - that’s a signal to me that I’m either not communicating my message well (confusing, passive aggressive, etc.) or that my message itself may not be welcome (hate speech, misinformation, etc.). In either case, I use that as a mental trigger for me to reflect on my posts rather than a reason to become unhappy with the community/platform as a whole.
Thank you, this is very helpful and well thought out
I would also add that getting a post mass downvoted can be a sign that a community might not be a good fit for you.
Like, using reddit as an example, if you see someone spreading anti-lgbt hate and getting upvoted, but when you try to be like “Hey that’s not cool” or explain why they’re wrong you get massively downvoted, it can be a really good sign that maybe it’s not a great place.
I agree, and I would extend this thought to also include situations where it’s simply the wrong audience for your post. The content itself may not have anything wrong with it, but if you post a casual joke or comment without much depth in a community that’s built on deep conversations and well thought out replies, for example, you’re likely to be downvoted simply because the context wasn’t appropriate.
Great point.
People on Lemmy try to rationalize that they’ll use the downvote as intended (off topic content) but our ape brains eventually just make downvote = I don’t like said thing.
I wish we could do away with upvotes and downvotes altogether.
I agree. Upvotes and downvotes are rubbish.
How dare you. As a former redditor now lemming I would wilt into a shriveled, frail, incontinent, barely conscious entity without the ego-fueling fire of my all-powerful downvote.
/s
For me it always was about “Do I want to see posts/comments like this?” If yes, upvote, if not, downvote, if I don’t care, then nothing. Off-topic is for reporting to mods, not downvoting IMO.
I think having some form of “I agree with this” or similar helps to make you feel engaged with the content (for better or worse).
I think perhaps the actual person responsible for the post or comment shouldn’t be able to see the results, though, otherwise it just becomes another ego building thing, and you see people strategising explicitly to build karma like on reddit. instead, the author should see a rating, like “slight approval” “mixed feelings” “strong dissent”, etc.
Downvotes are not a reflection on you, they are a representation of how much everyone else agrees or disagrees.
I don’t personally want the downvotes hidden or removed like how it is on Youtube.
they did remove downvotes on youtube tho :(
This is why I’m in favor. I’m not the hugest fan, but if the alternative is YouTube or facebooks like system then I’ll take the downvotes. Otherwise you get the low quality like farms where minions memes are uploaded everywhere and there’s no way to say “we hate these, stop posting them”
I like the way it was here. Points seem to be working correctly or did. I think it’s a bad idea to put point totals on a users profile for everyone to see. I don’t think totals are or should be important. But upvotes and downvotes are indicators of how much value a reader thinks a post/comment has. You can’t tell the temperature in a room without numbers. But I would rather not see a reddit-like karma system.
Yet every app seemingly wants to show me a total :(
Yeah, I wish there was a feature that lets you switch between total-only and lemmy format.
I’d like an option, user side perhaps that just tucks it away, doesn’t remove it just don’t show it
It can be done on an instance basis, there are instances without downvoting enabled.
I just saw that lemmy.world has an option to hide it, shame I don’t see an option for it on memmy, I do see a hide total scores but doesn’t appear to do anything.
IDK, I think most of the toxicity comes from when something gets popular. I never read much into the votes on reddit because it’s usually more influenced by when you post than what you post. If you combined all the karma of my accounts it’d probably be in the millions but mostly I was just trying to either help people or make them laugh, never cared much about the points.
Mastodon was very depressing for me, this follower centric self presentation stuff is super not my style, it don’t want it to be about me, I most likely suck but I say smart things some times, so I want it to be about the stuff I say.
Plus I don’t mind being downvoted into oblivion. I actually think that this can be a good thing. It means that there was something at least controversial about what I posted so I might be wrong or have to argue better.
Lastly, mastodon is too much safe space and filter bubble. I want to read things from people that I disagree with and I want to argue with them in good faith. When I tried this on mastodon, I got misquoted, blocked, harassed… You name it.
Thank you for your insight!
Thankfully the instance I’m on doesn’t have downvotes. I find what leads to toxic communities is when admins don’t remove toxic content or users.
This too. The main reason good mastodon instances are good is that they’re strictly curated
Exactly. No rules leads to the worst of the worst.
The karma/upvote/downvote system encourages engagement and gives users an idea of how others perceive their posts. It also encourages people to think about their posts and it helps keep garbage from clogging up the feed.
The problem is that posts are now “attention-centric” and that might lead to people posting stuff that’s more controversial or even “rage-bait” because it gets a reaction.
But honestly though, the toxicity was always there. It’s just that now people express it with an arrow click instead of a flame post calling out the OP’s mom.
I think anonymity or at least the perception of it on the internet breeds toxicity because it’s easier to hurt someone when neither party has to look each other in the eye.
It’s a distilled version of ‘the wisdom of the crowds’. With all the dog piling that comes with reactions to things that are pointed at the wrong audience. There’s generally some people with baggage in there somewhere who will take issue, and you get downvoted.
However, what’s always interesting about these platforms is where good ideas rise, where they come from, and how controversial they are, all of which you lose with the twitter/mastodon architecture.
It may be easier to find your crowd, but how useful is that to you depends on what you use your online presence for.
Good Take
