this post was submitted on 10 Jun 2023
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From what I've found thus far:
Most of these things will likely and hopefully come with time as the platform is developed. Other than that I feel this will most likely be my safe haven from the bs Reddit (fuck spez) has pulled.
Only on certain instances. Lemmy.ml and beehaw.org, for example, require you to answer some questions (I've heard people say beehaw requires you to write an essay, lol) which I think is primarily to avoid being overrun by bot accounts. Not all instances do, though. sh.itjust.works has open registration, for one.
Fwiw my application to BeeHaw I submitted last night was like 4 sentences and approved in < 10 minutes.
I don't think they're looking for anyone's life story of personal philosophy on life and the universe ya know?
I have not applied to beehaw, myself. I dislike the lack of a down vote personally. I think it's a useful utility to have as long as people don't abuse it... Which people always will, but I don't think that merits taking it away. That's the great thing about decentralized services, though!
Downvotes are used to show disagreement without an explanation which just stifles discussion, and for off-topic comments reporting them works as an alternative.
I do prefer user moderated conversations through downvotes but with the way they are used I don't really trust us users enough for that.
I just don't necessarily think the feature should be removed just because it isn't always used as intended. I know there are folks who use it as a "disagree" button, and that's... fine, I guess lol. I think Lemmy does a decent enough job of preventing abuse of the downvote button by removing the concept of karma. There are no imaginary internet points to be gained or lost. As a bonus, you can always turn vote values off entirely for yourself, as opposed to disabling downvotes on an instance. That way you can upvote/downvote organically, without your perception being skewed by existing votes.
I wouldn't necessarily refuse to use a service based solely on whether it has a downvote feature or not, but I think downvote serves a different purpose than reporting. If I were on a platform that didn't support downvotes, I do think I would feel obliged to be a lot more liberal with my upvotes, lol. Which... maybe that's not a bad thing. 🤔
But again, through the power of federation we can both interact on a platform that can satisfy both our beliefs, and that's a pretty awesome thing.
What might be neat is a user preference that allows one to enable or disable downvoting just for you. If you disable downvoting then you get a different view of the community and comments that only accounts for upvotes.