I used to downvote fairly often on Reddit as a sign to disagree or to push down really disgusting bigoted comments. And to be honest, it became a habit to just downvote without replying. However, now that I’m on lemmy and not Reddit I’ve been actively trying to not instantly downvote things and instead move on or take the time to reply. Has anyone else been trying to do this?
i think ive only downvoted 1 offtopic lame comment so far, on lemmy
its not something i do often
in general the process of downvoting should be reserved to offtopic content, poor quality content etc
on reddit the “norm” was to downvote things you disagree with, which is dumb. then you end up with the echochamber problem and such. I once asked a critical question on /r/conservative and i got banned. Asking questions where the answer make them seem … dumb, was apparently not acceptable. i got downvoted to hell, and eventually banned. for ONE comment :P
I don’t think downvotes, as they are now, are for any particular purpose other than showing the poster you don’t like the post. What I mean to say is that limiting downvotes for off topic stuff isn’t enforceable and poor quality content is pretty subjective. Not sure if you are aware of the bean posts recently, but I didn’t like them and would consider them poor quality memes. Almost everyone else loved them though, which is totally fine, but I still downvoted those.
Anyone armed with critical thinking skills will eventually reason themselves out of echo chambers, just like your story proves! Although I feel like the ban was more due to the admins of the sub than the downvotes. There are communities where downvoted content isn’t removed if it doesn’t break any rules, those are the ones people should look for.