Just wish there were more transparency around counts and content engagement.
I firmly believe most influencer these day were propped up with payed views and botted engagement. Not that lemmy is the same but it all feels so dirty.
Just wish there were more transparency around counts and content engagement.
I firmly believe most influencer these day were propped up with payed views and botted engagement. Not that lemmy is the same but it all feels so dirty.
This is precisely my reason for why they should be public.
In my view downvotes should be used sparingly, only to suppress spam and trolling comments that don’t add to the conversation.
By keeping votes private people just downvote anything they disagree with
So what are you going to do with the knowledge that I downvoted your comment?
You have no reason to so I presume you haven’t.
If we were actually in a discussion and you started downvoting all my comments I’d see it as a sign of pettiness and disengage.
I’d probably also tag you as a reminder to myself not to engage with you again.
I’m telling you I downvoted your comment.
You got your answer, I guess.
I guess. I don’t get it. If I refused to talk to anyone if they ever downvoted me, I would run out of people to talk pretty quickly.
To me, a downvote means “what you wrote contributes nothing to the discussion, and should be less visible”. If someone downvotes me, I take it as a sign that no further discussion in that direction is meaningful.
I completely agree, you’ve summed up my view far better than I could.
There’s also a controversial approach that if you’re debating with someone and you believe in the points you’re making then you should upvote even the comments you disagree.
By doing so the full thread of comments is ranked higher so more people see the incredibly clever points you’re articulating.
This isn’t so relevant on Lemmy right now because it’s still small so you might read all comments on ba post. But it made a massive difference on reddit where there were thousands of comments. So the algorithm becomes very selective.
Back when I first started using Reddit well over a decade ago, voting was explained as “upvote things you want to see more of and downvote the things you want to see less of”. That’s how I still treat it for the most part. I downvote loads of things not because they’re inherently bad or I disagree with the content but purely because it’s not what I want to see.
It’s fake internet points, the amount you have doesn’t matter in the slightest. There’s no reason not to downvote what you disagree with.
This is how you end up with echo chambers.
The amount on each individual comment does matter, as it affects how the algorithms order comments when showing them to other people.
You end up with echo chambers by blocking people and communities you don’t like.
Downvoted content is not only still visible, half the sorting options ignore it.