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.
In 2025, I think it’s overly simplistic to think of what people say strictly in terms of “like” and “dislike”, as opposed to different moods. It does make for a good polling system though.
It leads to low quality communities banning people who downvote their posts, artificially inflating their engagement metrics
You know what I’m really against? People asking leading questions in asklemmy.
Just wish there were more transparency around counts and content engagement.
Sure dude, I bet that’s the only reason.
Imagine raging against the dude who downvoted you. That reasoning sounds more believable than “transparency”. It was “that much” you had to ask a way to know WHO is downvoting you.
Imagine caring for who downvotes. How dare they.
I’d like to see named upvotes (if that’s already a thing, sorry I’m just a casual lurker couldn’t be bothered to find out)
I prefer votes being semi-anonymous. The vote counts are technically public, you just have to use software that displays them, but that added barrier is enough for most people to never check and that is how I prefer it. I feel like seeing voter names just encourages getting into pissing contests about “why did you downvote me” which I don’t want to happen because: A, votes don’t matter and B, if someone downvoted without commenting they probably don’t want to spend half an hour arguing in comments.
if someone downvoted without commenting they probably don’t want to spend half an hour arguing in comments.
Bingo.
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
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.
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.
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.
I think the idea is that what we want to see more of is genuine discussions in good faith using sound arguments, even if we don’t personally agree with the viewpoint.
If I’m just tired of seeing certain types of posts I can block them without downvoting their posts.
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.
You have no reason to so I presume you haven’t.
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.
Wouldn’t that give trolls a juicy target to harass, thus leading into people not bothering to downvote to avoid the harassment?
That’s what the report and block tools are for.
If it occurs harassment is an issue for moderators and admins to deal with.
Because the reason for a vote is personal and different to everyone.
If I see a post with a title containing 20 emojis, I downvote it. Doesn’t matter the content of the post.
Now, assume that post was about fighting for lgbt rights or fighting against anti-abortion legislation. Some moral crusader sees my downvote and immediately calls me a bigot. When, from my perspective, all I did was downvote a bunch of emojis.
Take that idea and expand it.
This. One thing I couldn’t stand about Reddit was seeing people who could be doing anything else with their lives, but decided it worthwhile to “background check” other posters.
This was a big thing with Twitter too. “Oh, they follow such-and-such in their list of 10,000 follows, who turned out to be bad in recent news, so this person’s views are worthless and they must also be bad!”
Like, being able to have a quick glance and be like “Ah this is clearly a bot / hate-troll / what-haves”, can be handy for some sense of accountability, but purity-testing and association-mobs are the stuff of cautionary science fiction, and should be avoided.
I’ve seen it too often on Lemmy too.
Most are of what you describe, but not all of them. I have seen valuable background checks before (back on Reddit). I specifically remember an elaborate post about bots/botnet.
I don’t like your dismissive qualification of “have so little going on in their lives”. Some background checks are good and important. Dismissing people who are willing to invest into that in general, but also dismissing people who “have nothing better to do” for their situation, feels like an awful, uncalled-for, inappropriate insult.
/edit: Rewording to better get my point across.
Sorry I didn’t mean to cause any offense but maybe I can clarify too. The people I’m referring to are what’s referred to often as “terminally online.” They could be doing anything with themselves and their lives, but instead they’re choosing to deep-dive on anonymous message board posters they disagree with, so they can tear them apart or call them out for some post made years ago, or an assumed affiliation or belief, that kind of thing.
It’s a choice to be vindictive and petty to people.
Like, yeah you’re right, sometimes looking at post histories and such can be helpful to unmask a bot net or a troll riling up a community, but I’m referring to people doing it just to be obsessively petty and vindictive to strangers.
But okay, in good faith I’ll add “decide they have nothing better to do” to emphasize one’s free will, because the joke is that anybody could be doing better than trying to dig up personal beef on each other over message boards when nothing is at stake lol.
100% agreed.
I wish people would respond to the comment, not the commenter.
I don’t love the idea that Nazis can lookup that I voted against their propaganda when it appears here.
Piefed has supposedly implemented a workaround to allow for private voting.
Oh, neat!
I don’t have a strong opiniion on the matter, but it really seems like it would encourage stalking and revenge-downvotes.
The thing about any stalking and revenge downvotes is that everybody would be able to immediately see exactly what was happening, due to the added transparency. Rules could very easily be made against this. So, when I see this argument it strikes me as a bit of a red herring.
What I think is really going on, is some people want to be able to stalk and downvote bomb without being recognized, which the current system allows.
How would such rules work across federation?
Sure, one instance can make their rules regarding it. But if everything they federate with ignore them, do they have to exclude all federated votes? Would they have to filter all votes according to some technical-representable rules?
Hm. That’s a good question. It’d be up to that specific instance owner to take action, which not all would. Though even without an applicable rule, I think the transparency alone would cut down on the behavior more than people think.
deleted by creator
Now I really wanna go investigate who downvoted this comment
What are you going to get out of knowing I downvoted their comment?
It’d probably lead to lots of small drama and every disagreement getting to a personal level. It’s speculation at this point. I also think a decent chunk of people here aren’t able to behave nicely. I’m not sure if we should grant them additional capabilities.
But it’s not like voting here on Lemmy were the pinnacle of technical advances… It’s an echo chamber for popular opinions and common and often uninspiring interests. I think we could change how it works, as it’s not super great in the first place.
Agreed. What’s your pet solution?
Uh, it’d need to be either a complicated algorithm. I mean I’m often not interested in meme pictures and political news. I’d like the one niche hobby electronics project to float to the top for me. And they’re just not so popular. So I don’t see how voting would work for me in the first place. The other thing that works very well is having separate communities for topics. I can just subscribe to the electronics, disregard the world politics. I think that already helps me half the way. Also multireddits(?) or seperate feeds help. And I don’t really have a good solution for the rest of it, yet. For the comments, i really don’t know. Lots of good answers here don’t even have any votes cast on them.
Well you didn’t ask but I’ll tell my solution anyway! No downvote button. That’s it! In my experience downvoting is almost always about opinion and almost never about the quality of the comment. It’s toxic. It’s the equivalent of shouting “Shut up!” and so obviously discourages more sensitive contributors from expressing themselves. It’s even technically a form of censorship because it makes the comment less visible. It’s useless and pernicious and I don’t get why we need it. End of rant.
I agree with you about meme pictures. Personally I’d love a setting to block all images completely.
Fair enough. There is one big upside with downvotes… And that is people can just click downvote and be done with it and move on with their day. I think that avoids some unhealthy conversations. And people really like to engage when they disagree. And it’s far easier to disagree with someone than to write a nuanced and positive comment. I think a simple downvote allows people to just vent instead of spamming, for some mild cases.
Other than that I also don’t see a good point in downvoting. Sometimes it helps with spam, slop, misinformation and just stupid stuff. But we already have a “report” button for that. And I frequently get singular random downvotes on my comments. And that’s just annoying. I think regarding the voting mechanics, we’d be perfectly fine without downvotes.
people can just click downvote and be done with it and move on with their day. I think that avoids some unhealthy conversations.
I’d heard this argument before but you must put it better because I now understand it. An off-ramp for sterile conflict, basically. Yep that’s fair and I never even thought of it.
Still, fact remains that I personally have never (literally never) downvoted a comment. Which inevitably makes the downvotes I receive feel even more unjust. Can’t win!
Slashdot’s system was a good compromise: no upvoting or downvoting, just labels like “insightful”, “informative”, “funny”, (uh) “troll” etc. At least that forces people to be honest about what they’re really trying to say.
Hmmh, there are some ideas out there. Maybe we’d be better off with these more nuanced slashdot labels, or emoji reactions. I mean they’re not quite the same thing, but we have these emoji reactions on Github where you can give like 6 specific ones like thumbsup/down, a rocket, eyes … And I think some of the Fediverse microblogging platforms have them. It’s a step in that direction. The common argument against them is, we can’t calculate a ranking with nuanced choices and it becomes unclear how to sort the posts.
And i still use some platforms entirely without voting. Like more old-school internet forums. I think they’re fine and fun to use. Sometimes they offer the ability to give stars or medals for outstanding comments. But other than that voting is pretty much absent. I think it immediately makes them loose the social media vibes. But it often changes the atmosphere for the better. But it’s probably really the result of several factors.
I don’t know how to tie this up. Seems we agree, the current mechanics of Lemmy isn’t the pinnacle of evolution. Maybe one day someone implements a better concept. It might take some effort to make fundamental changes, since this is baked into the underlying Fediverse. But there’s lots of room for improvement left, in my opinion 😉
(And it’d probably help lots of users if the ranking and sorting wasn’t just a blunt popularity contest.)They’re usual for non-participants, IMO. When you’re a passive consumer looking for actual information or insight, the sortable comment score is what makes all the difference.
emoji reactions on Github where you can give like 6 specific ones
Forgot about that. Yes exactly, would definitely be progress.
I don’t know how to tie this up
Upvote and move on. :) But still, emojis would be better.
I’m not sure what you’re referring to here.
If you mean like to see who upvoted and who downvoted you, you can actually see that on Mbin. It’s a Lemmy fork that allows you to see exactly who upvoted and downvoted your comments or posts. Lemmy just didn’t add that function itself.
If you mean a Karma total, because it just harbors a competition. If people are posting just to get their number higher then they don’t care about the community or engagement. They just want a bigger number on their account. I don’t post a fuckload because I want Karma, I post a fuckload because I like lemmy and wanna give it some content because I have saved content.
First, I wasn’t talking karma count, I think that is toxic.
To answer the rest, I guess I would like to have the option of seeing who voted native to the main site.
I don’t like downloading apps or installing plugins.
Mbin is not an app or a plugin. It is a fork which means that it took the basecode of Lemmy and repurposed it into something else. Some instances have then used Mbin, like fedia.io. It just happens to be that lemmy.world doesn’t include that function because it uses Lemmy as its base and not Mbin.
Mbin is able to completely interact with Lemmy, mind you, so it’s not seperate in anyway other than how it works.
Mbin is a fork of Kbin, a different independent project, not Lemmy.
My mistake, you’re right.
So, you’re saying I have to change my instance? Which would be fine and I am already debating just that.
If you want to see who specifically upvoted or downvoted, then yes. If you want the general numbers you can stay here.
Personally I’ve never understood the obsession with seeing who votes for you. I post constantly and have people who follow me about downvoting me everywhere. If I was checking who was downvoting me all the time, I’d never get shit done.
I don’t see the interest in who voted what on my stuff, but it could be interesting to do some analysis of system-wide voting behaviors. The bigger Lemmy gets the more of a problem it’s going to have with bots. People will need to create tools to identify these bots, and voting behavior seems like the primary data source.
i need to know who downvoted me so i can ban them
Vote counts are visible by default for like 90% of Lemmy. Only a few instances hide them (or disable voting entirely). 🤨
Reworded. I’m sorry, I’m dumb.
Because they see it as voting. Voting is anonymous IRL, they want it to be online, too. Even though what people are generally voting for online is whether or not they think the poster is an asshole. 🤷🏻♂️
But also, afaik, it is visible, if you’re an instance admin. Thought about making my own instance just to see who the 1 dude that downvotes everything I post (sometimes milliseconds after posting) is and see why they’re so butthurt.
Mbin shows who upvoted, but it does not show who downvoted. Kbin used to show both, but there are no active Kbin servers anymore.
I was just thinking about kbin. It died? I signed up long ago but didn’t really use it.
This may be overthinking things a bit but…
I mod a desert of a sub for my alma mater, and I’m pretty sure the same person downvotes everything I post there. No comments, just a single downvote. As a mod I would love to be able to confirm my suspicions, but as a user, I like my votes to be anonymous.
As a middle ground, perhaps the software itself could auto-mod a bit. If a single user only ever downvotes content from a community, and crosses a certain threshold, they might be soft-banned for some number of days with a note in the mod log to the effect of “negative contribution.” After some amount of time, the ban is automatically lifted. If a community mod notices that the same user keeps getting soft-banned every 30-something days (the soft-ban limit plus some amount of time for it to kick back in), they can decide if they want to ban the user.
If communities were standing alone, that idea would work. But communities are hosted and shared on an instance. I find it questionable in that context; it’s a slippery slope.
Should an instance’s users be able to vote on every community they see in their local feed, or should only community members be able to? Instance admins may decide a community does not violates instance rules, while users may feel like it does not fit the spirit or goals or mentality of an instance.
It could work if only community members can vote in their communities. Then you could make community-specific decisions and consequences, and the border of instance and community would be separated by definition.
There’s certain content that will always get downvoted.
As an instance admin, you can see who voted what. Moderators are also able to view votes in their community. See discussion regarding vote privacy here: https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/4967
This seems like a you thing. I mean, with no big algorithmic promotion engine and no immediate reward for upvotes I just don’t see the point either way.There’s like a dozen of us around here and no prize for being popular. Who gives a crap? It’s a little button thingy that helps you feel like you did a thing to the thing wihtout having to write a post and clutteirng the feed. It does its job.
To be clear - are you asking about a breakdown of who voted which way or just a per comment/post total (i.e.
+6)Sigh
I’m going to have to repost aren’t i?
