When I first found out it was an interesting concept that I was pretty neutral on but the more I engage/lurk with the community the more I enjoy it.
I generally don’t post/comment much on Reddit because I tend to be extremely sincere and that’s not always well received. Usually I don’t get much hate, but what I do get is a lot of non-interaction mixed with downvotes. And it’s just really discouraging when I’m just trying to share my thoughts.
But having no downvotes here is so nice because I’m not afraid that I’m going to get silenced into oblivion. Either people will actually engage with me (and maybe disagree, but in a meaningful way), or they’ll move on and not randomly share their disdain via downvoting.
It’s such a small change but makes a big difference. I bet a lot of people feel the same as me - it’s more comfortable to engage here.
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I’ve already seen (and reported) some anti-trans bigotry on here, but it had more upvotes than the posts calling it out for what it was because the bigotry was of the “polite and pretending to be well-researched” variety
without downvotes as a tool against crap like that, what have we got? is it against our instance’s “be nice” policy to tell nazi punks to fuck off?
I’ve seen a lot of toxic crap upvoted on reddit. Personally i prefer moderation over public vote any day.
The admins have taken a stance where this should be a safe space and those being insulted/harassed/discriminated against are welcome to respond in kind. The most important part is to report it so the mods/admins can review and take action as needed.
While it may not be nice to tell nazi punks to fuck off, it will ultimately make for a nicer community if they do - we don’t mind community members saying “hey, this isn’t cool” in whatever manner they feel necessary.
I’m glad that’s the case! it alleviates a lot of my worries around recommending beehaw to my LGBT+ friends
I’ve had similar worries, but overall I’m coming around to the idea that for cases of bigotry it’s better to just report the bigot and maybe also yell at them (which is allowed) than to put it to a public vote and hope that lands them at -200 downvotes or whatever. Not being able to downvote them stings a bit, but if they get reported and booted reliably, I think it’s worth the tradeoff.
Especially since reddit definitely had the same problem in a lot of cases anyway. Sometimes, in some subreddits, transphobia would be downvoted. But in others, the “”“polite”“” or even blatantly not “polite” transphobia would be upvoted. Sometimes even in places where I didn’t expect it.
(looking at you, gaming subreddits mad about some trans people asking you not to buy a wizard game, jesus. That ~2 weeks was hell on the internet. And meanwhile, posts calling for people not to pre-order games, or to boycott games that have microtransactions - those are acceptable and go right to the top, apparently! Ugh.)
Edit: ditto for the similar problem of “” polite"" biotruths-styles sexism and racism.
I highly recommend reviewing this post from Gaywallet: https://beehaw.org/post/107014. Specifically, the Spirit of Beehaw and What is (and isn’t) Beehaw. These sections go into what I paraphrased above at length, if you want the admin’s full thoughts.
without downvotes as a tool against crap like that, what have we got? is it against our instance’s “be nice” policy to tell nazi punks to fuck off?
nope! we’re not going to ban for telling a TERF or nazi to eat shit or whatever. we as admins do try to be nice where possible, but you as a user really aren’t obligated to be because that’s dumb lol. you can also report it to us and in general we dispatch users who are like that as possible (although sidenote: if it’s a post off-instance and you report it, unless the user is really, really bad we probably won’t do anything immediately because we just can’t keep an eye on every possible bad actor.)
I think it also fundamentally changes the conversation. Valid but “unpopular” comments can’t get buried in downvotes. The voting system on Reddit was based on a sane logic that totally neglected to consider how people actually behave… the idea of up and down votes to crowd-source relevance and quality of content makes sense, but all anyone did was use it as an agree / disagree button which broke the idea entirely.
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The only reason I used the downvote on Reddit was if someone was being anti-social, such as racism or any other ism or just general jerkishness for no good reason. I haven’t seen any of that yet here. When I do I’ll call it out.
Reading the community manifesto it seems like we’re intended to be a “community” and if we disagree or find antisocial behavior we’re meant to talk to them about it, like a pastor pulling aside an angsty teenager to ask why they’re so on edge. Feels a bit like the distinction between prison vs reform-based incarceration, reform sounds nice but also feels so alien in our current system.
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I unchecked the ‘Show Scores’ option in settings (desktop site) and I enjoy the experience a lot
feels like old school forums where people just communicated instead of all this useless gamification
It doesn’t seem to work correctly — yet(?). Beehaw users can’t downvote anywhere. Other users can downvote on beehaw.
Intention is probably that downvotes are not available only on beehaw for anyone.
It doesn’t seem to work correctly — yet(?). Beehaw users can’t downvote anywhere. Other users can downvote on beehaw.
the global downvoting disable is a byproduct of how toggling downvotes off works with federation: since you access other instances through browsing us, the current implementation can’t distinguish where we end and another instance begins. this might eventually get fixed but it’s at worst an inconvenience. downvotes meanwhile don’t register from anywhere–if a downvote looks like it works, it doesn’t actually. nothing happens.
I like the hackernews approach where downvotes on comments aren’t seen, the comments are just faded out. The more downvotes = the more invisible it is.
Also thought this could be a cool approach with nice side effects - https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2023/jun/social-media-trustdistrust-buttons-could-reduce-spread-misinformation
The lack of voting is why I still prefer forums over reddit-style sites. Voting, both up and down, stifles discussion and encourages repetative meme comments for upvotes.
I remember a reddit thread from years ago where a guy was trying to deal with a spider infestation in his car and almost every reply was a variation of “kill them with fire” or “it belongs to the spiders now”. Many comments were made by different people at the same time with the exact same wording. The guy got almost no serious replies. I don’t think that would have happened without the culture created by the voting system.
…
Yeah, but what do I do to get that little rush of self-satisfaction from down voting a comment I disagree with? /s
In all seriousness, it may require a little more diligence from community mods to police comments which violate beehaw community standards since they won’t fall to the bottom or be hidden as fast.
extremely sincere
Yea I totally relate to that. People don’t like heartfelt actual thought with emotion ime. A quirky one liner though? Upvote.
I tend to let it all out on these places, like a journal. I enjoy reading others entries too.
Exactly! I once posted about a particular TV show, and how it really helped me view my personal trauma in a different way and empowered me. A really long and emotional and sincere post. After around an hour I got scared and deleted it because I had 0 comments and like 15 downvotes. I just felt embarrassed for not sharing a meme or something and instead being earnest about it.
Yea I’d usually post something like that and just completely ignore my inbox and that thread…then delete just like you. I’m not ignoring my inbox here, even though I’m all over acting a fool as usual (:
My first inbox message on Reddit came after I made a supportive comment in response to a post on an abuse survivors subreddit and that message was so vile that I spent the whole 12 years not opening my inbox/replies page except maybe 3 or 4 times. I read posts in communities I liked and essentially shouted my comments out into the void, then ducked out to read the next comment/post.
Reddit had some great communities, but it also had lots of horrible communities that attracted all kinds of awful people to the site who goaded each other on. Subreddits were only ever as good as their individual moderation and policies since the site as a whole preferred promoting free speech over civility. I appreciate that my Lemmy server has a serious anti hate stance and a policy to defederate from servers that allow hate to flourish. I’ve been cautiously keeping up with my notifications here and actually reading my replies. I know trolls can still find ways to slip through the cracks sometimes, but it’s nice to know they aren’t actively courted and supported over here.
The initial intent of reddit was to have downvotes be for off topic stuff, and yet most people use it as a silent “your opinion sucks” button. That stuff just adds to the hivemind feel of reddit. I wish there was a way to have an alternative system of weeding out misinformation or rude stuff without having to deal with something like downvotes. I suppose moderation could serve the purpose of weeding out the bad stuff instead, but then each community would need to be moderated properly.
Some subreddits managed to do it when the topic was very specific and the mods were dedicated. I’m thinking of r/AskHistorians and r/Askphilosophy
That’s my same thought too, on Reddit you’re always scared of “saying the wrong thing” because your fake internet points will go down
omg i can troll now no downvotes omg nice!
You can, but that doesn’t make it consequence free. You know that bans exist, especially for a more egregious trolls.
