Edit: obligatory explanation (thanks mods for squaring me away)…
What you see via the UI isn’t “all that exists”. Unlike Reddit, where everything is a black box, there are a lot more eyeballs who can see “under the hood”. Any instance admin, proper or rogue, gets a ton of information that users won’t normally see. The attached example demonstrates that while users will only see upvote/downvote tallies, admins can see who actually performed those actions.
Edit: To clarify, not just YOUR instance admin gets this info. This is ANY instance admin across the Fediverse.
As someone in an instance without downvotes, I can confirm that I don’t miss them. It didn’t take months, either, just a week or so.
The atmosphere and behaviour of people is noticeably different, it really takes no time at all to realise it. Combativeness massively decreases, and if people disagree they actually write a comment explaining why they disagree. It prevents bubbles in the community forming around “allowed” thought too, where downvotes are often used as a tool of keeping out thought that everyone disagrees with even when it might be correct. Moderation can keep out thought that’s actually bad and needs to be kept out, the rest can happen through real community social interaction instead of bizarrely handing over what should be a very human mechanic to a gameified system of carrot or negging.
I’m too new to the fediverse to form an opinion about community differences in general, but I have definitely noticed that my own behavior is different without the downvote option. The biggest difference for me is that I am more likely to do things that decrease my interaction with content that upsets me, rather than reading hateful garbage just to get the dubious satisfaction of pushing the little down arrow button. The stuff I downvoted wasn’t usually something I could have discussed in a civil way, it was trolling, bigotry, or generally hateful comments. (I am part of frequently-targeted groups, and no platform is free of bigots and trolls). Now, when I see that kind of thing, I do what I should have been doing all along, which is some combination of blocking, reporting, and just skipping over things I recognize as not worth my time. I think you’re right that the voting system can replace moderation in unhelpful ways. Trolls should be removed, not just downvoted in situ.
Hexbear is completely free of that rubbish and well established since it’s been on lemmy for 3 years now. It is also the only instance with visible pronouns next to usernames. Really depends on your politics however as it’s a mixed communist + anarchist community.
Thanks for the tip, I’ll check it out! The issue isn’t my local instance, though, it’s that clearly marked safe spaces always attract people who want to make those spaces unsafe. It’s kind of a “Trolls? Must be Wednesday” kind of thing for me, after a lot of years online, but it never stops hurting. The only thing downvoting does to trolls is allow non-trolls to communicate to one another that the space is still supposed to be safe, which offers a little comfort, but it doesn’t actually make the space safe. Banning the trolls is much more effective.
That’s fair. Hexbear actually ended up without downvotes specifically because trans people and admins recognised that trans threads were getting downvoted on the sly, targeted. This was used to purge them and follow up with the establishment of what is probably one of the best cultures around lgbt issues online, in my opinion anyway. There will certainly be some issues a liberal disagrees with the community on, and even certain segments of the left. But in terms of lgbt people it’s honestly tip of the spear for how shit should be handled online. I have a take that places that put pronouns in profile pages instead of next to usernames are cowards trying to hide lgbt features from phobes while performing to lgbt people via them. They should be displayed.
Very cool. I think you can see by my display name that I like showing pronouns, lol. I remember when putting pronouns on a name tag was like waving a trans flag. It wasn’t very long ago. And I also appreciate the heads-up on politics. I’m far left enough that I usually feel comfortable with the level of disagreement I have with communists and anarchists, but the feeling is not always mutual, so it depends on specifics. I will take a look at the communities when I have a little time to go in depth.
Anyway, I think we’re a bit off topic, except that issues with bigotry etc are part of why figuring out how to manage vote history is important.
I think it’s fine going offtopic. We shouldn’t be afraid of having real social interactions with one another. In fact, I think we should promote it across all lemmys. Real conversation instead of vote or tech-driven rules bullshit is far more human. It creates real connections at a more distinct and likeable level, even if those conversations end up in disagreement everyone at least acknowledges the other person is a real person with emotions rather than a username on the internet. With small communities in particular this is important because people have good and bad days. In communities where people become regularly recognisable it’s important people also understand that when someone inevitably pops off out-of-character on one of their particularly bad days.
I agree that social interactions are good! I just learned forum etiquette at a time when the default state of any forum was everyone socializing all the time, and no topical discussion. Even communities with fewer than 20 people had to make rules about staying on-topic in topical threads, and the rules were made by and for the community, not by corporations or algorithms. Coming from that background, I feel like it’s rude to OP if I don’t stay on the topic they chose. I suppose it’s a different internet, now.