There's definitely a "downvote if you disagree" ethos here. There's not even a pretense of "this contributes to the conversation, even if I disagree" reason for upvoting.

I know this is how it worked in practice on reddit, but at least the rule was that you were supposed to upvote contributions and downvote things that didn't contribute, and at least a few people followed that rule (or maybe only me).

I wouldn't be surprised if that drives some people away - they see a bunch of downvotes on their comments and think people don't want to hear from them (even if there are more upvotes than downvotes).

[–] livus@kbin.social 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

@limelight79

There’s definitely a “downvote if you disagree” ethos here.

Is there? That's a shame.

I'm on kbin and we don't federate downvotes so I don't see any of the downvotes the lemmings are giving to each other (or to me for that matter). Last time I hit "view on original instance" on lemmy.world I thought they might be developing that culture but I didn't realize it has become rife across the Lemmys.

[–] limelight79@lemm.ee 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Of course it's just my view, I don't know what people are actually doing. But I've seen comments that I thought were good discussions of the topic at hand downvoted for describing the other side of an issue, even if the commenter doesn't agree with it. To me the only reasons to downvote are things like trolls, off topic, personal attacks, racism, homophonic, and the like.

[–] livus@kbin.social 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

@limelight79 that does sound like vote-to-disagree. I'm with you there, I don't like it. Downvotes should be reserved for things that don't contribute, like trolling and racism etc.

I also think it's incredibly rude if two people are having an amicable discussion and one downvotes the other one. It's like trying to punish them.

On kbin, votes are not anonymous, which has had the effect of making people downvote more sparingly. (Also, although we don't federate downvotes from other instances so we can only see downvotes from kbiners, it also means our downvotes on other instances are pointless).