Asklemmy

43885 readers

822 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

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
!lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

-15

Is it true that a social media platform that allows anonymous downvotes has the potential to become a toxic environment? (feddit.nl)

submitted 1 year ago by UnanimousStargazer@feddit.nl to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

12 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Should social media platforms only allow upvotes or favorites?

As I understand it, Kbin doesn't allow downvotes just like Mastodon. Users can only mark a comment or OP favorite (upvote) and the Kbin user can see what account favorited / upvoted their comment or OP. Also if it's from a Lemmy user by the way.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] SamXavia@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Kbin does allow downvotes from what I can see and downvotes doesn't really bring it to a toxic environment as it's just a way to easily disagree with someone without having to go into depth in the comments. It's like YouTube videos, if you dislike it doesn't mean it's bad, it just means you personally don't like it.

[–] tikitaki@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

I think it has the tendency to create a snowball effect. You see a comment with -50 points you are already subconsciously looking at it trying to analyze why everyone hates it. It essentially primes you into disagreeing with it. Sometimes it's obvious in the case of a troll or someone saying hate speech or something but other times it's someone sharing a genuine opinion that's relevant to the discussion but the snowball effect of the first few people downvoting it causes it to spiral downwards.

By itself it isn't a bad thing but when comments are ranked based on votes or downvoted comments past a certain threshold are hidden, it contributes to creating echo chambers.

Personally, I think it's like that Churchill quote. Democracy is trash and has a lot of problems. But still, it's the best thing we've come up with so far. It's got its issues but the transparent nature definitely helps if someone is consciously trying to read things with an open mind.

[–] harmonea@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

it’s just a way to easily disagree with someone without having to go into depth in the comments.

This is literally not what downvotes were ever meant to be for.

Downvotes on a main post = This post doesn't fit this community.

Downvotes in comments = This post is off-topic, spreading misinformation or hate, and/or is actively hindering discussion (insults, assholery, etc).