this post was submitted on 08 Jul 2023
270 points (80.1% liked)
Asklemmy
43911 readers
1029 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
Search asklemmy ๐
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- [email protected]: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
My instance has downvoting disabled and honestly I'm glad it is. Downvoting never seemed to add anything to Reddit. If a comment isn't popular then people just won't upvote it
I disagree, the lack of downvotes on other platforms makes it hard to see if an opinion isn't popular or simply didn't get many views. Yes downvoting was absued to just disagree with an opinion but it also served in separating malicious and harmful content from the good comments in cases where moderation would be excessive (for example: arguing the earth is flat. Nobody should be banned for saying that but people should still be able to tell that nobody thinks that).
While commenting can serve to do that job as well it does so worse imo. You likely don't comment on everything you would upvote either and it's the same thing really.
Exactly, and I think that there's even more downsides as well to strictly comment level disagreement. There's never any point engaging with bigoted posts. Replies just draw more attention and make you more angry. Better to just downvote, report, and move on without spending too much emotional energy trying to bicker and squabble for a while thread.
There's just an emotional inequity when it comes to a debate between, for example, a transphobe and a trans person. A transphobe likely knows everything they say can be bullshit - they don't have to stick to reason. The whole point is just a rhetorical exercise where the cruelty and sadism is the point.
The trans person tho has to stick to researching the dsm v or guidances from credible medical institutions and respond with effort posts and Yada Yada. Everyone's eyes glaze over and the end result is the trans person is exhausted and feels worse about their life.
Downvote and move on is just a means of reduction of digital self harm. I find it bad to not have it for cases like that, especially on communities where mods aren't as caring about bigotry. To leave it unchallenged just shows that some people agree with it, and shows nothing to effect of how many people find it repulsive.