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Do you think the Internet and websites with 'voting' systems encourage hivemind thinking and discourage any debate or discourse? Solutions? (discuss.tchncs.de)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I 'upvote' more or less all posts I interact with (sometimes I forget to vote). I feel like we should bring back open dialogues and heavily dissuade people from simply disregarding someone's entire belief system or ideals based on 200 characters of text (an example).

Think about one person in your life who you first thought was a complete asshole and once you got to know them they were pretty cool, maybe you became best friends with them. The point is, judging a person based on a minute snippet in time is a fool's errand, and your own state of mind contributes a lot to your own judgement of people. Your next thought might be, well they have a history of x, y AND z, so they deserve every bit of judgement coming their way! I would ask you, why? Are you not simply fueling further hatred, vitriol and division? So instead of stopping for a moment and thinking about the world from someone else's perspective, you'd rather just spit out some more hatred and move on like that person doesn't exist?

I would love to see some solution to the shitty state of the Internet. I only say Internet because for the most part this doesn't happen in real life in my experience. I think it has to do with consequences and social sigma and so on. I reckon it would be pretty awesome if there was something like the following:

all upvotes are free range, people can give out upvotes like they were candy
downvotes come at a "cost", whereby if you want to downvote someone you have to reply directly to them with some justification, say minimum number of characters, words, etc.

In an ideal world, and setup, this would help raise positivity in the world and have people at the very least have a second thought before being negative.

Yes I understand there would be flaws, I've worked with and used computers for a long time, I know. I chose not to delve deep into those as I feel that would defeat the purpose of the message I'm trying to convey. And, you know, lead by example.

What do ya'll think? Any suggestions to boost positivity in the world, I'm all ears, smash them and any other thoughts in the comments.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Yes.

My main gripe with Reddit was the voting system. I used it for several years but once my accounts got into the thousands of karma, I just started over again. Maybe it doesn't make sense to you, but worked for me. One of these accounts was only allowed to upvote, it was nice. First time I noticed the anxiety that the voting system caused on me, I went to askreddit and ask if there was a way to deactivate it, server side or client side. LOL, of course not.

Came to Lemmy: same problem. I used to browse Lemmy with Liftoff, but it doesn't hide the voting system. Recently tried Voyager, turns out it can hide the voting system. Now I feel immune to karens, white knights, bots, trolls and gatekeepers. It doesn't matter how unpopular my opinion is, I don't care if people doesn't agree, it shouldn't matter as long as my views are thoughtful and honest. I put my thoughts out there expecting other's may change mines, but I don't like being downvoted to hell with no discourse inbetween.

EDIT: TIL, in this thread that you can deactivate the vote system in your instance profile. Thanks.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I think your comment is the best take I've read so far. I agree wholeheartedly. As soon as I read it I thought of when I used to play WoW. Many alts I created similar to this. Having a fresh character, but something new without all the complications that came with being a higher level, more useless "responsibilities" with no real pay off. Because in the end it was still just a game. You may not fully see the connection, just know I understand where you're coming from in my own way. Thanks for sharing.