Just a suggestion, bad posts get reported or removed, good faith posts get responses.

The paranoria/low effort trolling its creating is having a detrimental effect on discussion, better to just remove the ability for low effort trolls to effect conversation.

    • redtea@lemmygrad.ml
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      8
      ·
      1 year ago

      This is a perfect comment. Literally cannot be beat.

      Anyone who disagrees and down votes implies that they also, in practice if not in theory, like to down vote, meaning they have to change their vote to an up vote. In this way you force your reader to combine their theory and their practice, resulting in praxis; a scheme to turn haters into Marxists. Genius.

      The only problem is that by showing the system can be gamed to such great effect, you’ve also unpicked the voting system. On the one hand that’s great, a clear demonstration that voting won’t change anything and that the system is logically rigged. On the other hand, it means that by arguing for the current voting system you’ve in fact presented a strong argument in favour of it’s abolition.

      The dialectic of the down vote revealed.

    • DamarcusArt@lemmygrad.ml
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      6
      ·
      1 year ago

      Sometimes they brigade and it turns out to be the opposite. You can usually tell when they did it too, because the upvote/downvote ratio will be normal on comments after the brigade and only effect those before it.

    • Alunya𝕏ers [she/her]@lemmygrad.ml
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      5
      ·
      1 year ago

      sometimes people on hexbear reply with just the downbear emoji on a person’s comment and others upvote that reply, essentially acting as a makeshift downvote button for that comment. removing the downvote button but then letting this happen is gonna make the removal a bit redundant.

    • 陆船。@lemmygrad.ml
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      5
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      Hexbear also had 30+ people down voting the mod of the trans community on her “have a great day” post in the trans community everyday with complete redditeur justifications.

      I don’t think the techniques to moderate anarchist children are necessary here.

  • redtea@lemmygrad.ml
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    5
    ·
    1 year ago

    I could be persuaded tbh.

    There may be some vulnerable comrades whose mental health suffers if they are down voted too much.

    Plus, I wonder if down voting is one of the ways those low effort trolls rile us up. Post about China, 20 instant downvotes, you know reactionaries are watching challenge accepted. That kind of thing?

    Of course, they could just comment with something asinine but that takes more effort and it gives us an opportunity to respond. When it’s just numbers, it’s hard to do more than flail.

    I commented the other day against the introduction of Reddit-like coins to the Lemmy software because it would create the wrong incentives and could lead to commodification. I wonder if down-voting is similar in that regard? Up-voting is slightly different because it’s a low effort way to show support; so appears to be inherently positive (I think up votes should stay meaningless in terms of e.g. karma, though).

    I wonder if there’s any public literature on the introduction of features like these and the addictiveness of social media? If down votes were originally designed e.g. to make FaceZine more profitable, there might be an argument in that history for removing that feature from a communist sphere.

  • DamarcusArt@lemmygrad.ml
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    7
    arrow-down
    3
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    The downvotes do nothing but encourage liberalism. They encourage people to give meaningless empty votes to things they don’t like instead of enacting real change. They serve as a means of avoiding engagement and discussion, instead opting for a simple, meaningless and effortless gesture.

    This will not do! This will not do!

    We must oppose liberalism in all its forms, including the seemingly innocuous, like the downvote. We must engage with those who show willingness to talk, and reject those who do not. We should not attempt to adopt the language and methods of liberals in order to reach them, this results in nothing but the liberal assuming they are in like minded company.

  • rostselmasch@lemmygrad.ml
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    3
    ·
    1 year ago

    It can be removed in my opinion. Upvotes are ok, because otherwise someone would write “this” or “I agree”. But I think by removing downvotes, it will maybe force people to comment, why they disagree.

    • Alunya𝕏ers [she/her]@lemmygrad.ml
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      1 year ago

      But I think by removing downvotes, it will maybe force people to comment, why they disagree.

      i partially disagree, we might face a situation similar to hexbear where people reply to comments with just a downvote emoji and others would upvote that reply, essentially acting as a makeshift downvote button for that reply and thereby making the removal of downvotes redundant.

      but then again, the grad is more serious than hexbear, so it’s possible that counterarguments would be more common than makeshift downvote buttons.

      • Ghost of Faso@lemmygrad.mlOP
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        1 year ago

        i partially disagree, we might face a situation similar to hexbear where people reply to comments with just a downvote emoji and others would upvote that reply, essentially acting as a makeshift downvote button for that reply and thereby making the removal of downvotes redundant.

        then we just delete posts doing low effort posting