224
Why can people see who upvotes and who downvoted post on Lemmy? (lemmy.world)
submitted 9 months ago by to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world
178 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

I woke up today, to a public comment in a Lemmy community asking a series of tagged accounts why they had downvoted certain posts

I thought that reactions to posts and comments are anonymous and now I don't really know what to feel about Lemmy any more.

In this case I had downvoted a poster because of its design, but was confronted publicly for being racist because the person assumed that I downvoted the message on the poster

EDIT: changed the title from "How" to "Why" because it broke rule nr 5 about it being a support question

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] 34 points 9 months ago (11 children)

Isn't the Fediverse supposed to be open?

You can show your personal support for something by upvoting it or your opposition to something by downvoting it, but if you don't want to take a stance on something at all, you don't have to.

It's an entirely optional mechanic. You can fully utilize Lemmy to view, post, and comment without ever voting if you don't want to.

As far as I'm aware, the votes don't really matter, anyway. Lemmy doesn't seem to use karma the way that Reddit does. i.e. I've never seen a post removed because the user didn't have enough karma, etc.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • hideshow 11 child comments
    •
  • [–] [S] 7 points 9 months ago (2 children)

    I agree - I was just surprised to be confronted publicly by a user, for down voting a post. Not that I didn't want to be exposed, but that people actually could look it up

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •
  • [–] 15 points 9 months ago (1 child)

    Oh, 100% agree that it's a bit unhinged to actively call out people because they down-dooted something you posted.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
    •
  • [–] 4 points 9 months ago*

    I don't make it a habit to check, but it has been fun to check and call out in precisely two scenarios.

    • One user and I deep into a sub thread on a multiple day old post arguing about ettiquette here. Was weird to get multiple downvotes on those sorts of comments. They were using their "abandoned" alts.

    • Another thread where I had repeatedly asked someone to share the source for their claim despite them insisting that I just wasn't googling right. I offered them to edit literally every comment (multiple thousand) on this account to sing their praises. Downvoted with no response.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 1 point 9 months ago (6 children)

    The real question is why do we even need upvotes or down votes at all?

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 6 child comments
    •
  • [–] 0 points 9 months ago (3 children)

    On other platforms, it's a mechanism to assign a sort of "social worth" to people and ideas, and to tailor an algorithm to drive engagement.

    I think it exists on Lemmy purely to make it feel more like "Reddit but federated." Without the votes, this is just a normal message board. Lol

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 3 child comments
    •
  • [–] 4 points 9 months ago (1 child)

    If you sort everything by Newest Comments, then the votes don't matter to anything and it is just a normal message board. 😌

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
    •
  • [–] 3 points 9 months ago

    Exactly.

    But if Lemmy was just seen as a federated message board, it wouldn't have nearly the users that it does. It's popularity rocketed (compared to the rest of the Fediverse) specifically because it takes so much of it's style from Reddit.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 1 point 9 months ago

    So my instance doesn't have down votes, but it's still kind of like the inverted pyramid of a newspaper article. When I read the comments, I get all the most highly upvoted or new ones first, and by the time I get to the bottom of the comment thread with old comments with just one up-vote per post, I can feel the quality falling off, and I know it's time to go back to scrolling the feed.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
    • load more comments (-1 replies)