The ability to up- and downvote posts and comments is useful but the score should not be displayed to the users and you shouldn’t be able to enable it even if you wanted to. This means both, posts made by you as well as by others.

Nobody wants to see their messages get downvoted. This is bad for our mental health as individuals but especially as a group. It’s like walking up to a person on the street, saying “I don’t like you” and then moving on. You’re free to not like (downvote) someone but they don’t need to hear it. If you really want them to know then write a message and explain yourself.

Upvotes on the other hand skews the reality and encourages groupthink. People say what is popular even if they don’t fully buy it themselves and conversely refrain from saying things they truly believe because they then dont get the upvotes and get downvoted instead.

Seeing the scores also primes the reader. When something is heavily upvoted for example you assume it to be true/good instead of using your own judgement to decide.

  • rottingleaf
    32·
    9 months ago

    I think that at some point in your life you gotta face the fact that there is a sizeable percentage of population that is going to disagree with you whatever your opinion is

    You don’t have to face it all the time without asking for it though.

    And more than that, sometimes you’re gonna say dumb things and in that moment you need the checks and balances of other individuals to tell you that you’re an asshole.

    Has nothing to do with reactions. Just telling someone they are an asshole is simply noise. And upvotes\downvotes do not allow you to embed arguments.

    The opposite mechanism of that is called echo chambering and in less than two decades of social media already produced flat earthers, incels, anti-vaxxers and a fresh rise of fascism in western society.

    Actually this very mechanism is called echo chambering. When you pressure people thinking differently to be silent, so they leave. And, of course, those groups you’ve mentioned existed long before social media.

    Being wrong is not the end of the world, admitting that and trying to fix it is the first step towards being a better individual.

    Which is why wrong people shouldn’t have the downvote\upvote button, and right people don’t use those anyway.