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.
I’m pretty sure downvotes are also public on Kbin based on https://codeberg.org/Kbin/kbin-core/issues/455
Lemmy also stores the values of who upvoted/downvoted, but it’s not exposed to the UI.
how to find out who upvoted/downvoted a comment
step 1 click more -> activity
step 2 reduces are downvotes, favorites are upvotes, and boosts are like “reshares” or “retweets” from what I understand
I actually really like that these are public. I like seeing who is downvoting me in a discussion. Sometimes you think you’re having a nice cordial discussion but your partner is just mass downvoting everything you say lol.
I subscribe to the old redditiquete philosophy of “only downvote off-topic discussion”
even reddit removed that from their redditquete some years back, but I think that’s the best way to foster healthy discussion in a way that doesn’t end up as an echo chamber. because that is one of the main issues with a vote based system in my opinion
i never downvote people i disagree with as long as they are making a genuine attempt at discussion.
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.