Should social media platforms only allow upvotes or favorites?
As I understand it, Kbin doesn’t allow downvotes just like Mastodon. Users can only mark a comment or OP favorite (upvote) and the Kbin user can see what account favorited / upvoted their comment or OP. Also if it’s from a Lemmy user by the way.
That’s my issue with voting being public or having profile “karma” in general. You never know what is the motivation of another person for downvoting or upvoting you. Someone can be like you and only downvote off-topic or someone can downvote what they don’t like or disagree with, etc. It’s a guessing game.
Just having general score for posts and comments allows to see what is the majority position, but you actually have to read the comments to see different positions. It not only motivates discussion, but helps to reduce people stalking each downvote and going on retaliatory campaings to downtove everything the user ever posted.