What do you think about disabling downvotes?

zephyr@lemmy.world to Ask Lemmy@lemmy.world – -40 points –

Personally I don't care about downvotes. If you don't be yourself on an anonymous platform, how can you be yourself in real life? Plus this makes all posts conform within the general trend rather than creating discussions and meaningful debates.

5

It's not popular as evidenced by people restoring down votes to platforms like YouTube.

Reminder: YouTube hides dislikes. I liked using dislikes to figure out if a video was likely just a troll or fake quickly.

Thankfully the ReturnYoutubeDislikes extension works to fill the gap.

Similar logic for high amount of downvotes vs upvotes.

I think downvotes are important to social media. Without them, trolls have a much easier time rising to the top, as they get lots of upvotes but no downvotes to balance it out. This is why the most-followed content on sites that don't have downvotes like "Twitter" is some political bullshit. So yeah, I think downvotes are crucial.

Downvotes are critical, in my opinion, especially for recommendation posts. It’s a good way to combat astroturfing and let genuine discussion rise to the top.