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
Maybe it’s on a different account but at least on this account I don’t see any posts on your profile that are in the negative.
I find it interesting how posts like these only pop up asking about downvotes, never upvotes. Does this “hivemind” only do things you don’t like? Is it in the room with us right now?
People have no obligation to interact with anything in any way. There are people who downvote just to make the post go away in some apps. Stop worrying yourself with what gets points. If it’s that big of an issue, sign up with beehaw, afaik they don’t do downvotes at all.
Huh, I looked and also didn’t see many posts in the negative. Then I clicked through to the original instance, and the same posts have completely different scores. Like one post was (+22/-10) on Kbin, and -52 on Lemmy.
Let’s all make a test, what does this post look like from your instances:
Coming up as 35 / 0 for me. Strange that none of the downvotes are coming into kbin
I’m on kbin too and I can’t see the downvotes OP is talking about either.
I think we’re way more sparing of downvotes at kbin because we can all see exactly who upvoted or downvoted what.
But that doesn’t explain why we can’t even see the Lemmys downvotes.
+35/-0 for me.
O score. +34, -34.
+35/-37
36+, my home instance doesn’t allow downvotes. https://wayfarershaven.eu/post/115735
+2 (38 up/36 down).
+3 / -34
I’m on Lemmy and I don’t see any points in the negatives, though there is one post on 0 right now
Strange, when I look at OPs history, I see quite a few in the negative. Maybe it’s because I’m from a different instance?
Yeah same. I see a mix of positive and negative.
I find it interesting how posts like these only pop up asking about downvotes, never upvotes
You don’t hear complaints about it as much but it absolutely does happen. I haven’t really seen it here, yet, but I cannot count the number of times on reddit I’ve seen a highly upvoted comment confidently spouting incorrect information, with replies correcting the information at BEST gaining no traction, but more likely they get downvoted hard for going against the upvoted comment.
That’s fair enough, but even in that case I wouldn’t call it a “hivemind”. I can only speak from my own perspective (don’t have stats to support this) but I don’t think people click an arrow just because X amount of people have done the same. At least I don’t. What it seems like to me is, right or wrong, people will generally behave in ways that reflect their knowledge and level of interest in the subject.
That’s not a hivemind or herd behavior or whatever else people like to call it. The masses aren’t an NPC that does stuff on auto pilot.
You see the same phenomenon on Stack Overflow sometimes. A confidently incorrect answer will be marked as correct with a tremendously high score, while the actual correct answer languishes somewhere below.
Op’s question is not a question at all. It’s a scare mongering tactic that invents a hivemind boogeyman, claims victimhood, and seeks weaker minds to join his false crusade. At best, he’s looking for attention.
I think that’s a little disengenuous. You can be concerned about the quality of conversation without wanting to play victim about it.
Even if you take away responses to the obvious alt-right bullshit and dogwhistles, Reddit absolutely had a hivemind problem and was largely unable to hold real discussions on any sub with any significant userbase.
Filtering what’s worthy of discussion from bait by people with no good faith can be hard, and for people who actually want to talk deeper about issues that require addressing controversial details, even if that’s in order to refute the bad-faith interpretation, will be more susceptible to being downvoted by people assuming bad faith.
If a more down-to-earth, small, approachable community that you can have deeper discussions with than most social media is what you came here for, I think it’s entirely justified to be disapointed if you’ve seen an uptick in dogmatic rhetoric that leaves out any room for those conversations.
Well that was an excellent, nuanced, comment - cheers. I have seen examples supporting OPs observation, but I’m too new to know if this is a change.
Yup.
You sound mentally ill.
You said some controversial stuff and are upset that you got downvoted? Grow up, not everyone has to like what you say and if you’re so needy for validation say something you know won’t get pushback.
One of the things I found annoying on reddit was when people would cry about getting downvote instead of making a comment without worrying about whether they got downvoted or not.
Making edits crying about getting downvoted or first saying I’ll probably be downvoted for this but… I really disliked those.
But, I will agree that it is preferable to leave a message explaining why someone disagrees rather than just downvoting. Whining about it is just as annoying though. If my instance let me downvote I’d downvote those comments even if I agreed.
I said that’s not the comments I’m interested in. I already said I can understand why those get downvoted.
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 haven’t run across any content that had down votes that I couldn’t understand a reason for. Either whatever was being said was untenable, controversial, negative, or hostile.
Humans have emotions, and certain interactions with people will get a certain emotional response. People are utilizing the downvote to express this. So being blunt, controversial, negative, inciting an argument is going to get these kind of responses. It’s just human nature.
Try not to think of upvotes and downvotes as anything meaningful beyond hey did I make somebody smile by saying this or frown by saying this. And people frown at things all the time
Downvote bots are here as well, though. Recently I was helping someone see whether they are downvoted by bots.
Here’s the post I’m talking about: https://a.lemmings.world/lemmings.world/post/214059
Who do you think is coming over from reddit. aliens? Cows? It’s humans bro, you’re going to have the same problems as long as it revolves around people and their relationship.
Somehow lemmy is supposed to represent something different while being made up of the same people? This is kind of a silly point to be questioning
Sad to hear the aliens won’t be joining us.
bro
I thought we were done with this shit a decade ago, when the internet became so ubiquitous that even my grandmother started using forums and posting on Reddit.
chill, bro
I’ve only skimmed your comments, but I think a factor is also that a lot of them are really hard to read.
Examples I see are weird sentence structure, the lack of paragraphs for longer messages, the lack of capitalisation, and rather odd/hyperbolic use of words (writing in the same way you’d speak?). This “style” just gets interpreted as “noise” when I’m reading it, which will get downvoted as it doesn’t contribute.
English isn’t my first language either (it’s not even my second or third!) so I understand it’s very hard to get these things right. But without sufficient clarity you will get downvotes, as it just comes off as noise.
Sometimes you say things that go down well, sometimes not. If you only ever experience approval in your life, you are doing something wrong.
The hive mind is whatever the community upvotes. It’s inherent and was always on Lemmy as well as any other place that allows upvotes and/or downvotes.
Seen plenty of people calling for the de-federation ban-hammer whenever they find comment they like. There’s fine line between having an open space and an echo chamber and if it were up to these people we’d federate with no one
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
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.
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.
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
My experience on Lemmy has been greatly improved by turning off downvotes. It’s not worth the mental energy.
Unfortunately, turning off downvotes for yourself does not turn it off for others. You’ll get little to no discussion if no one sees your comment.
Right - but then I don’t spend the mental energy thinking about the score. I leave my comment and then move on.
Yes because this isn’t a reddit phenomenon but a human psychology phenomenon
