I’ve posted some controversial stuff, and I understand why I would be getting down voted for that. But I see some of my posts and comments are in the negatives for seemingly no reason at all? I don’t really care about the karma because I can’t see it anyway, but I’m worried that comments and posts here are gonna get downvoted and dismissed without further consideration solely because of the negative score, like what would happen on reddit. I suspect someone, a troll, a bot, or a misclick downvoted my comment or post and people just followed along downvoting in turn. It’s either that, or I genuinely said something bad but I can’t figure for the life of me that it is indeed bad. My prime example is my support post for commenting under certain posts, why did that get the downvotes? And I see this kind of thing sometimes on other people’s comments as well, and I’m baffled, is it me who can’t understand why something is bad, or hive mind came here too?
EDIT: it seems i wasn’t clear enough. a) I’m not worried about getting the actual downvotes. I’m worried about downvotes stopping to be a tool to gauge content. b) I’m not worried about controversial opinions’ downvotes, I already said I’m not surprised I got downvoted there. I was talking about totally mundane posts, like that one support post. c) I’m not talking about people simply disagreeing, I’m talking about people immediately disregarding a post because of the downvote count. it’s not correct to say this doesn’t happen, it totally does and… how am I supposed to prove that? all it takes on reddit is see a comment on 0 for no reason and see it quickly drop to -5
I read through some of your comments with lots of downvotes, I have a theory why you were heavily downvoted.
First, people use the dowvote button as a way to express that they disagree, not that they think the content is low quality or unfitting. I don’t see how we can change this other than not having a downvote button at all, this seems to be like an outcome of the up/downvote system.
Also, you seem to be a person of principles. I know the reactions too well because I also think similarly. For example, I think judging someone by the color of their skin or ethnicity is wrong, and it seems like you do so as well.
You have a heavily downvoted comment under a post where some Russians faced discrimination and it wasn’t clear if it was happening because they were Russians or there were some other reasons as well. You noted this, and got downvoted because people think racism is ok now because Russia (as a country) is an aggressor in a war.
People are too quick to put you in a box if you don’t 100% follow their narratives and say even one thing that remind them of others who genuinely belong in that box.
Honestly it’s a problem with binary ranking systems across the board. Maybe if there were additional axes you could vote on, like “agree/disagree”, “quality/low effort”, “nuanced/trite”, etc. I don’t know how one would go about implementing such a thing, but until someone does, we’re stuck with having a simplistic system that doesn’t adequately reflect the complicated responses real people have to content.
Unpopular opinion but I think the emoji system of Facebook, Github and Slack are much better. We could have something similar with a limited amount of emojis and rank posts and comments accordingly.
Slashdot had something like this back in its day, you could upvote for Funny, Insightful, etc, and it worked quite well. No idea what it’s like these days though.
coming from r/PCM I was used more to downvotes being in fact used for filtering low quality stuff out, that being said I already mentioned that’s not the type of comment I’m talking about, I expected to get downvoted in the controversial comments. I was talking about more mundane stuff
Aaaand there we are. 100% of these posts whining about being down voted and censored come from fascist havens or are bigots. Lol PCM. No fucking wonder.
It’s because if you have that kind of mind, your “normal” comments might not be as tame as you think.
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Here’s another classic post from you
And it’s already lefty infested, too.
Edit: the army of soy guzzlers downvoting me does kinda prove my point, guys.
Fascists and bigots always love questioning the mental wellness of people who call out their obvious bullshit.
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Lol how old are you?
Some people are petty and will go thought your profile to downvote everything. I’ve read about and seen some people even stalking users, commenting on every post they make. There was an AuthRight guy on PCM who was followed around and called a Nazi on unrelated subs the moment he commented something.
I heard that reddit faked these kind of votes. So they looked like they worked to the voter, but noone else could see votes cast from the profile page. Don’t know if it’s true, but it is a cool idea (I don’t think votes on out of contex comments are “valid” I guess, insofar as Internet points can be considered valid)
I’m aware of shadow banning as a concept. But this is different isn’t it? A shadow ban let’s somebody post to a community, while not letting them know that they have been banned. Clever, I guess, but intentionally opaque and it doesn’t sit right with me ideologically. As an admin, I would love this feature though. Interesting that I have a different position on voting vs posting. Maybe I have a deeper belief that an individual’s comments matter more than their votes.
I have a hard time trusting your opinion of community and online discourse if you came from PCM. That was an insular community astroturfed to push the Overton window rightward. It’s about role playing genocide. It’s for laughing about police shootings and marginalizing trans people. If you don’t think PCM was designed to build a hive mind through performative conflict, then so help you God.
A) There is no hive mind. That’s just you perceiving a bunch of people who happen to hold a similar opinion as a monolith, and that’s an illusion. You have no data whatsoever to support the idea that they’re thinking in concert or even have the same reasons for their reactions.
- Don’t take it so personally. They don’t know you, and they’re not attacking you by downvoting you. They’re simply expressing “I want to see less of this.”
d) Instead of having a kneejerk reaction when you get this kind of response and immediately being defensive, step back and use it as a reflective moment. Maybe you misjudged the room, misinterpreted the potential impact of what you posted, or are simply on a different track from those who downvoted. What can you learn from it? Do you need to change your own approach, or do you need to reevaluate your audience?
Buzz McCallister, is that you?
I’m not sure how you can claim there is no hivemind. it’s been a well known fact masses tend to do that. but even ignoring that, I was talking about another phenomenon, where one downvotes brings to another 10 for no reason other than that the downvote was there, which is a pretty common occurrence on reddit. as for d, i thought about that, couldn’t think of anything, except for the political stuff, which I already mentioned. I already said this, because I was hoping to get useful feedback, which completely did not happen.
Somebody targeted me with a mass downvoting of all my comments. It lasted about a day, then they ran out of steam.
I don’t know if Lemmy has mechanisms to stop it. Probably more difficult with the federated instance.
It sucks that someone can effectively block your voice with an across-the-board suppression. I had a reddit account — my first one — ruined by such a thing. Back then, in 2010, every comment I made would drop to -2 or -3 immediately and it basically ruined the account, and it didn’t stop.
So it’s possible. Not sure what you can do to stop it.
Perhaps as long as Lemmy is incapable of detecting and preventing such patterns, you could use a bot to counteract the bot working against you. Something that detects downvote bombing and counteracts it when it’s happening.
I spent over a decade on reddit, and I learned that whenever someone did stuff like that, it was because I had struck a chord. And they usually got bored of their harassment pretty quickly when I ignored them.
Sometimes, hypothetically, you post cringe. It’s ok, I post cringe sometimes too
Consciousness is wild. I’m pretty sure I can feel all of you in my head, for sure.
you should try https://goblin.tools/Judge
how this works? chatGPT?
very cool btw
yeah, I read that it’s running on OpenAIs services for now. It has a lot of neat features
I feel like there’s an equal amount of people being stinkers + people trying to remind others to be chill/happy to not be on reddit and trying promote positivity. At least that’s my perception of what I’ve experienced
I agree that the downvotes on your posts in the Jerboa community are rather strange. My theory is that people who downvote your more controversial stuff subsequently go through your whole profile and just downvote everything regardless of content.
I think the Jerboa ones are for asking questions that have been asked multiple times before
Not quite as bad as Reddit I once said I had A Huawei phone and liked it there and I was forced to delete the comment because of downvoted.
Classic case of daring to speak your own opinion against the hive.
You weren’t forced to delete it, you deleted it due to cowardice and unwillingness to stand by your statement.
I was at about -60 or so 30 min In, it would have ruined my karma completely to let it keep existing.
On Reddit people only see see the downvote and jump on. There’s no chance of people giving it even a read they just join the swarm.
It’s rare to feel like downvoting every post on a user’s profile. But when it happens, the person is always a piece of shit. I saw some people saying that you are a fascist. If true, that’s the reason you’re getting the downvotes, it’s because you’re a piece of shit.
I’m not even sure what I’m doing to be a fascist tbh
He said “if true”
Personally after a quick 10 second scroll of your profile you seem like a curious but chill guy 🤷♂️
It could be that you’re posting stuff to the wrong-but-similar communities/a particular community could be a bit hostile towards some viewpoints/not reading sidebar rules before posting
yeah I know, I was talking about other people calling me that.
You gotta realize that being fascist has nothing to do with 1930s Italy. Its to do with name calling those whose views are to the right of Marx. And thats only slight hyperbole on Lemmy.
If you go on a right wing instance, you will get downvoted for having left wing opinions. Just like you do for having right wing opinions. Downvotes don’t mean anything
There are right wing instances? Do they have goofy names like lemmyright.net
I don’t see the point of voting on online content, and just ignore the feature entirely. My brain automatically edits out the voting buttons and results. I don’t even see them!
Without offense intended… I didn’t come here for your (or anyone’s) approval. Other people’s opinions have universally baffled me as a general rule (yours probably will too).
I came here to document my radical opinions about assembly language programming, post photos of stuff I build, occasionally help other people build stuff, and (of least concern) occasionally participate in conversation. I imagine very few people (other than myself) care about anything I have to say – it’s still a neat exercise to put it into words so I better define what I think.
So maybe people are downvoting you because they don’t like you, or don’t like what you write. Maybe they do it for no reason, or for fun. Maybe I don’t like you, for an arbitrary or a good reason, or both. At some point I guess we just have to be comfortable with these things I guess and coexist here somehow. At least you can’t pay money to a platform, to force me to read your opinions, I guess! That would be torture.
Anyway, no one actually needs to worry about me not liking them or username-stalking them. The depths of my indifference are fathomless, and eternal. To make me care about what you think is like bridging the void between the stars.
You are still affected by this. Upvoted posts and comments tend to show up earlier in your feed (except if you’re sorting strictly by new). Some instances may even decide to auto-hide content below a certain threshold. So a politically motivated group or even just a person with a significant enough bot-army could manipulate post visibility and kinda soft-shadow-ban people they deem unfavorable.
One of the answers to have a ‘controversial’ or ‘bottom’ sort order for posts and comments
OK, I’ll give you that. I don’t really use the whole feed thing often, and that didn’t occur to me. It doesn’t seem to be a problem so far, though.
If that changes, I’ll write a Lemmy reader that strips out the democratic elements and just sorts by newest for me (if someone else doesn’t do it first). Probably less work than managing an army of Lemmy bots. I wrote and manage just one – a fortune teller that lives on my instance and does I-Ching readings.
Do other people use the feed a lot? I haven’t really used social media prior to Lemmy. A lot of what people consider important comes off as a bit alien to me.
You can hide post and comment votes on many Lemmy clients. Try it. I can assure, you will sleep a little bit better
My mind automatically filters them out already. It’s really weird. Sort of like banner-blindness.
Like, I know they’re physically there, and I can see them if I stop and willfully look for them. Otherwise all I see are the words and the buttons though.
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It’s changed in a matter of a week or so. I can’t even believe the drop in quality contribution. It’s actually made me upset. I was so excited, with such sound discourse. But I’m just seeing:
This. What he said. This is the way.
Etc.
Very. Very. Disappointed.
I definitely agree. In just a matter of days Lemmy has fallen to almost Reddit-like quality and I don’t see what could have caused it, there wasn’t a huge spike in users. It’s really weird
There was an increase in users when the Sync app went live (a few days ago). So, absent of any other evidence, I’m blaming them.
I was going to say days, but felt it was just me. Literally in days, the shitposts have started. What a shame.
Shitposts are more appreciated than quality posts.
I was just talking with chatGPT about this. I know I say controversial things and all but I still try to always be respectful and I don’t say things I don’t believe just to get a reaction. I genuinely try to bring some nuance in the discussions I read but sometimes it truly feels like pissing in the wind. Here you get downvoted for saying you use twitter in a thread about what social media platforms you use and sometimes just stating facts that anyone can google still gets you downvoted.
Yes because this isn’t a reddit phenomenon but a human psychology phenomenon
