EDIT: omfg look at all those downvotes lol, see what I mean? A lot of y'all can't even comprehend somebody having a different experience then you other then seeing it as a personal attack on you somehow, your entire identity is just this and nothing else. No comments man, this is just sad, instead of being better you all go with the easier option of being cultist assholes and then wondering why there's not more content and people here, oh gee, I wonder why? Guess that shall remain a mystery...
(I know this is mindboggling to a lot of the people here but: not everyone in life is like you, thinks like you, acts like you, and has the same experiences as you, not everyone likes the same exact things as you do and aren't going to like it when you force, shame, harass, and pressure them into conforming, shocker, I know, crazy even, different people with different minds and interests exist everywhere, most sane people don't base their entire identities off of 2 topics and a niche little platform on the internet, there's more to life then that, woah, who knew?)
Personally I've had an awful experience here on lemmy, people here are very hostile and unwelcoming, a lot less reading comprehension I've noticed, a lot more downvote happy then reddit, only 2 topics dominate everything, barely anyone's or anything's around outside of those 2 topics, and people make politics/tech their whole identity and are worryingly proud of that, not being comfortable with that or daring to say that there's more to life then 2 things = an attack on them apparently and they get really defensive and hostile.
Post a question on a big community, you get swarmed with exclusively political responses, even if the question literally has nothing to do with politics. Post in a technical community as a casual, and you'll offend someone(s) and have them attack you for not being a technical geek like them or daring to give feedback on anything, it's fucking awful man, I just wanna use this place normally but there's nothing here, it's a toxic echo chamber, how is this place the most recommended reddit alternative?? I legitimately could never recommend this place to anyone for any reason solely because of its userbase, I've never experienced such open hostility so quickly before wtf.
Just trying to get away from reddit and find something nice but, it kinda doesn't look like that's gonna happen. Cool I guess. What do y'all think of this place as "normies"? (If any are even around) Is it treating you well or no?
Wait users can do this now? I thought just instances.
It was in the next update from the one that LW is on and has been on for a very long time
Hmm I tried it out but it's just a visual change. It doesn't actually change the scoring or sorting of content the way disabling downvotes at the instance level does. Not quite what I had in mind.
Ironically when I first joined I argued to reinstate downvotes on my instance. But I've come to wonder if I was wrong. Even though they are useful to punishing misinformation or toxicity, they're very often used outside of that context so I am not sure they are a net benefit overall.
Anonymous negativity towards strangers is neurodivergent at best and pathological at worst in my opinion. Normalizing such behavior is ridiculous nonsense. Everyone has a right to confront their detractors and attackers. Anyone can write a negative comment and therefore give the person a path to block the negative person in reciprocity. Anonymous negativity is more like sadistic terrorism.
This. ☝️
Please normalise discouraging assholes from, well, not being that lol.
Also yeah, definitely, people on lemmy exclusively use downvotes to shove people that they don't like down and that's it, I've never seen it used for anything else. It's basically a dislike button on here if I'm honest.