A few days ago I downvoted someone’s comment, and the next day I happened to notice every single comment I’ve ever made had at least one downvote. All from the person I dared to downvote the ONE time. I straight up asked why they did it, and they seem to think I’m an “obvious” troll account that “apparently just exist to downvote other people”. I assure you I’m no troll account, and ironically don’t really downvote all that often.
I know the topic of public downvotes has been discussed before, but I never used to care either way. Now I’m kinda leaning in the “I don’t like it” side. Honestly, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel a little offended, maybe even attacked. Also, there goes all my imaginary internet points. Lol
Has anyone else had something like this happen to them, or am I just unlucky?
While that’s definitely a notable downside, I think the upsides outweigh it.
For one, being able to see upvotes & downvotes seems to have made a lot of people a bit more thoughtful with handing them out. This obviously isn’t the case for everyone — there’s still a good bit of downvoting people for disagreeing with the hivemind — but I and others have observed that downvote quality is a lot better here on kbin.social, and I think that vote visibility is a big part of that.
It’s also just transparency on kbin.social’s part. If votes federate, anyone can set up an instance to view your votes or just go to one that shows them. Someone could literally make a website listing downvotes throughout the fediverse, and there’s nothing stopping them. Kbin.social is being transparent about the fact that votes on the fediverse can be accessed by the public, and I have no issue with that.
EDITː Removed a stray asterisk
Kbin.social is being transparent about the fact that votes* on the fediverse can be accessed by the public
This is important. The kind of petty, persevering trolls that @billothekid2 is worried about are exactly the kind of people who’d be likely to look up who downvoted them.
Kbin just makes it clear to us that this info is out there. Anonymous voting isn’t possible in federated social media.
Also, even if they wanted to I don’t think voting could be made anonymous at this point, either. I’m not a programmer in any sense, but I imagine it would totally break federation. Total anonymity would probably need to be a feature from the start.
Kbin at least puts it out there so you know it’s not totally anonymous. Sometimes I wonder how many lemmy users are unaware of this because the software doesn’t make it apparent.
Actually, our downvotes don’t federate out, and we don’t get incoming downvotes either, so you could totally make them private within an instance since that information doesn’t leave the instance anyway.
Not advocating one way or the other, just pointing out that it technically could be an option.
Hmm… I’m no expert, and probably not even competent at these sort of matters, but the thing that popped to my mind was “something something encryption something something trust”. I wonder if this has a smart solution.
No. The whole point of Federated software is that things happen on one server, and by the very design of the system those things get shared out to other servers. “Things” could be anything from posts to comments to up/down votes.
The only way to have anonymous voting would be to make the up/down votes strictly local to a particular server, which kind of defeats the purpose of a federated system.
I think it would be possible. The software would just have to record a downvote, saying “we checked out this account and registered one downvote, and everything was valid”. The downvote is only reversible on the original instance the logged in user is on, anyway, and that’s between the user and server. The identity doesn’t have to be displayed to others on the original instance or federated.
Someone could literally make a website listing downvotes throughout the fediverse, and there’s nothing stopping them.
This is why I agree that it should be shown upfront. A lot of people won’t like it, but I think users should be somewhat aware that it’s all technically visible.
Someone is gonna make an instance that does exactly this at some point. It will be inevitable as the fediverse matures.
Didn’t you just see the upside too, though? You can see who’s downvoting all your comments and call them out on it. Someone could downvote stalk you on Reddit (quite sure that has happened to me before) and it would be invisible and unprovable.
True, but if they hadn’t seen it was me that downvoted them in the first place, they wouldn’t know who to stalk, and I wouldn’t have to call anyone out at all. Really though, I can still see both sides here. I’m just bitter it happened to me. Lol
@billothekid2 I’m with @FaceDeer on this, it’s way better to know you have a Downvote Fairy than to just think no one appreciates your comments.
Back on reddit it happens a lot, but the targets are more likely to feel discouraged or think the person they are replying to is the one downvoting them.
Besides, I had someone doing this to me here on kbin for a couple of days and they are not someone I ever downvoted or had even argued with.
I asked them to stop and they downvoted me one last time and then stopped. I don’t think they’d realized I can see them.
So the cause isn’t that people can see your downvotes, it’s that some people are just dicks.
So the cause isn’t that people can see your downvotes, it’s that some people are just dicks.
Words to remember.
They went through all the trouble to downvote every post. You lived in that user’s head rent free all that time. Wear that shit like a badge of honor. They’re internet points; they’re not important.
@FaceDeer the super annoying thing on reddit would be when I was having a polite discussion with someone and a third party came along and silently downvoted everything they said to me.
Then they’d get all annoyed assuming it was me who did it.
A “fun” experience from Reddit that I’m glad is impossible here on kbin is when I’m in an argument with someone and they would insta-downvote every response I made to them, then vociferously deny that they were doing it even when it was basically impossible for it to be otherwise (for example if we were in a days-old thread nobody else was paying attention to and the downvote was happening within a minute or two of me posting - too fast to even have read the comment).
On a related note, I’m pleased that blocking someone doesn’t prevent them from responding to your comments here. The “get the ‘last word’ in and then block me so I couldn’t answer” pattern was even more annoying, since karma was meaningless anyway but the block disrupted the flow of informative debate if other people were following it too. In such situations I’d edit the last comment I’d made to mention what had happened, at least. Hope that shamed a few folks at least a little bit.
@FaceDeer yeah that secret downvoting thing was super passive-aggressive.
What was most annoying about blocks was that bug where you couldn’t reply to anyone downthread of a comment by the person who blocked you, so they could effectively end your other conversations with other people.
Yeah, trolls really care about being “called out”. Trolls can’t stand negative attention, so be sure to tell lots of people who they are and what they did!
Assuming you’re being sarcastic and mean the opposite, this hasn’t been my experience, actually. Just like with @livus, above, I called out a downvote-stalker once who’d been following me around and when I described how I was seeing his downvote pattern he instantly vanished. In my experience the “downvote warriors” are a cowardly bunch, they love being able to throw punches without being seen to throw punches. Once you make it clear to them that everyone can see what they’re doing they crumple under scrutiny.
The trolls you’re talking about are the kind that love to get into an argument with you. That’s quite different.
Okay. Yeah, I was being sarcastic, but now I see we had different kinds of trolls in mind. Thanks for taking the time to explain.
No problem. And I can imagine that there might be some out there who would indeed be gleeful about being called out for downvoting because they’re just that deep into the “raging asshole” state that any negative attention is giving them the dopamine hit they crave. But I suspect that kind of troll is going to be blatant enough that he’ll get blocked or banned by most places worth hanging out in anyway.
I probably shouldn’t admit it, but one of my favourite ways of dealing with a raging asshole on Reddit was to be impeccably polite to them until they blew their stack badly enough while trying to provoke me that I could report them. :) I’d only do that if they were clearly already unredeemable, though.
@FaceDeer interesting, wonder if it was the same person!
The other thing that hasn’t bern mentioned yet is vote manipulation is easy to spot on kbin.
When reddit first migrated here I remember someone being called out for having 3 or 4 profiles upvote/downvote all the same things.
Could be, I have no clue what their name was. I feel the worst fate for such people is to be irrelevant so I try to forget about them. :)
Yeah, the ability to spot vote manipulation is a nice one. The current interface for kbin makes it laborious to click through so many comments and posts to check, but once the API is settled it should be possible to write some nice tools for that kind of thing.
Counterpoint: it makes it even more apparent when bigoted alt right trolls like AnotherAttorney post and we can see they’re the ones upvoting and boosting their own terrible posts, and ridicule them til they quit or switch sock puppets
This is an obvious downside. I’ve experienced a similar thing but being a lemmy user I don’t know who I pissed off. Which is for the best. It was a one off. Ignore it and chances are this one will be too.
stop caring about votes like they mean anything.
I don’t. That’s why I called them imaginary internet points. Lol. My point was about the fact that you can see who downvotes you.
If you didn’t care you wouldn’t have posted.
If he didn’t care he wouldn’t have downvoted you just now either
That’s hilarious. Another upside
@billothekid2 this exchange raises another point. You and @snooggums downvoting each other here seem to be engaging in “downvote-to-disagree” with each other.
I don’t see nearly as much of this on kbin as I do on, say, lemmy.world and I’m sure it’s because of our more transparent voting system.
I’m personally not a fan because I think it’s vaguely hostile and discourages open discussion.
FWIW, I usually downvote if the person is a dick. Often I also disagree with them, but not always. If you are dragging the conversation down (in some way other than having an unpopular opinion) you get a downvote.
Agreed. Also, party on dude!
Fair enough. I think my dick threshold is pretty high, they have to be spamming or griefing or something like that.
Same, generally speaking when I’m writing a comment in order to disagree with someone I want that other person’s comment to be more visible to other readers. That way they can read it, see my response, and realize how wrong the original comment was and how right I am. :) I save my downvotes for comments that are so wrong they’re not worth a response.
I’ll even sometimes downvote a comment, ponder for a moment, and then remove my downvote and write a response instead.
The way I see it, downvotes = “I wish this comment didn’t exist” and doing it to punish someone for having a discussion with us is weird, since social media is all about discussions, and exchanging disagreeing points of view is interesting.
I am downvoting because complaining about downvotes while saying they don’t matter is hypocritical and not a discussion made in good faith. Just wanted to see if they voted in response, showing their hypocrisy.
is difference between getting downvoted and effect of getting downvoted
You see? That’s literally not what I said. I seem to have struck a nerve with you here and I’m not sure why. But go ahead. Give me my downvote that I apparently care so much about.
canis_majoris said to stop caring and you replied with
I don’t. That’s why I called them imaginary internet points. Lol. My point was about the fact that you can see who downvotes you.
Yet, you noticed someone downvoting a bunch of your posts and took the time to contact them and ask for reason. Then you didn’t like their response and made this post. Then when I downvoted it you downvoted my post. The only reason for you to do any of this is because you care about being downvoted. You react to it, yet say you don’t care. That is what you said and did, and what I am responding to.
I hate being accused of lying, so I responded to you implying that I’m lying by claiming something other than what you said.
Fair enough. I tend to think downvotes are warranted when it’s not adding anything to the conversation and/or are somewhat hostile. Not that it’s worth anything at this point, but the downvote was because I literally just explained myself on the very post they were responding to. People are just putting words in my mouth at this point just because they want to disagree, and at some point it’s easier to downvote that to repeat myself.
I see that @AmidFuror was not a fan of this comment. :)
Damn straight.
I don’t think it’s as simple as that. Downvotes do have some kind of meaning — when you give a downvote, you’re doing it for some reason that you want to convey — and people are going to interpret downvotes accordingly. If downvotes didn’t mean anything, then there’d be no point to them existing at all. What exactly a downvote means depends on the person giving it, but it’s ideally (imo) used to express that a post is spam, hateful, or otherwise a bad contribution to the discussion. Obviously, people shouldn’t take downvotes personally, but a post being downvoted does and should mean something.
Thus, what OP mentions in his post is a legitimate concern. Public votes allow people to more easily downvote spam someone who downvoted them, which is unequivocally a bad thing that we’d prefer not to have. However, whether we should make votes private is a matter of whether the downsides outweigh the upsides, and they don’t.
Somewhat off topic, but I’m tired of people who can’t argue properly.
?
You know, those people who can’t read, start their comments with “lmao you’re the dumbest person I’ve ever seen” and end them with “you’re a troll”.
Or deliberately misinterpret what’s being said, either radically or just subtly enough to make their obnoxious “point”
do they use fallacy
They pretty much only use fallacies. Begging the question, whataboutisms, straw man… It’s practically all they seem to know.
On Reddit, these people got their comments deleted as soon as they moved on to insults.
Fediverse generally lacks mods for now. So we’re largely on our own.
I learned to check for red flags before commenting.
@billothekid2 honestly, it’s not an uncommon phenomenon, it has nothing to do with seeing your downvotes.
Over the years on reddit, where votes are anonymous, I would sometimes notice all my comments being downvoted (usually after some kind of altercation, my favourite was the guy who singled me out for criticizing Margaret Thatcher… hardly a hot take).
In fact iirc reddit had to change its interface so that voting on comments from a person’s profile page doesn’t change their comment count.
Some people are just petty. I think it’s better to at least know when it’s happening so I can avoid that person.
I’m okay with someone not agreeing with me. I’m okay with someone downvoting me.
Someone downvoting everything I have and will ever make? Well, there’s a magazine I’d love to get more folks in and this behavior could cripple it badly, since I get next-to-no votes in there from others so it’s already difficult to get more eyes on it. But other than that I think I get more agreements so I wouldn’t care that much.Therefore I’m happy that there’s an upvote and downvote (and a reputation) system.
I don’t see an issue here.
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try to explain your downvotes, or, better yet, voice your disagreement and have a discussion without relying on downvotes to express yourself. Use your words.
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when you feel it necessary and that using your words isn’t working, upvote/boost everyone but the person in question. Realize downvotes don’t really do what you’d hoped and are a poor crutch and means of expression. Elevate what you do agree with. Worry less about what you don’t.
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just don’t care about internet points. As others have said and covered extensively.
Hopefully, what remains is that conversations are important. Having an outlet for undescribed/unformed/ambiguous disagreement/dissent really doesn’t add anything to anything for anyone. Making a point or saying something correct is more valuable than shooting down those you find to be incorrect. And, ultimately, it’s not just what you think that matters. The consensus of the group and the conversation that gets them there, the experience and the interchange and the community itself are all much more valuable than the destination of a single conversation.
Edit: (And, for the record, while I disagree with your assessment, I’ve boosted and upvoted your thread, because I think the conversations being had here are valuable and worth seeing by more people.)
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Is this really an issue for people. Lol.
You’re asking this in a thread where someone describes exactly how it’s an issue for them.
Yeah but it’s a non-issue, because they’re describing a behavior that cannot be prohibited regardless of if you can see who did it or not. It’s not like there’s a hard archive timer on votes disallowing comments to be interacted with; people can go down the whole history of any of our accounts and downvote all of it.
It’s literally a non-issue, this guy is freaking out because he can just see who did it, like it makes a difference. It’s the ostrich syndrome, if you bury your head in the sand (can’t verify) then it matters less.
Who’s freaking out my dude? My point was this wouldn’t have happened if THEY didn’t know who I was. You and others make some good points about some how this happens regardless, and how there are upsides to seeing who downvotes you. I honestly wasn’t aware this was a common thing until now. It’s why I asked if this has happened to anyone else. Chalk it up to me being a bit naive.
I just don’t get how anybody doesn’t understand how user voting works, regardless of the ability to identify who did which votes.
Are you just now learning that on the internet people are just randomly dicks? Like it hasn’t been that way for the last 20 years?
Oh, I’m aware. I’ve just never heard of “Downvote Fairies”. In any case that was never my point, as I’ve explained.
its completely contradictory
’ i dont care about imaginary internet points, but heres why its not fair’ is an oxymoron
The same thing happened to me. The downvotes don’t bother me nearly as much as knowing that trolls can stalk us like that. It’s creepy. That’s the real issue.
Everyone telling you not to care about downvotes is missing the point.
It doesn’t change the behavior if you can verify who did it or not. It literally doesn’t matter that you can see who downvoted you when it’s always been the case that anybody can go into your history and downvote all of it.
How are you going to call viewing a post history on the public facing internet “stalking”?
Jesus you guys play some gymnastics up in your domes.
Looking at post histories isn’t stalking. That take would be a bit paranoid. Please don’t put words in my mouth.
Abusing someone’s post history to harass them is stalking, though.
You make downvoting over and over sound like a cybercrime lol
In your interpretation, maybe. I just think it’s obnoxious and rude to do it to all of someone’s comments. If someone genuinely disagrees with what I’ve posted, that’s not a problem.
@magnetosphere but trolls stalk people anyway, I’ve had Downvote Fairies on reddit and kbin.
The kbin one wasn’t even someone I’d downvoted.
That’s even weirder. I’m sorry to hear that.
@magnetosphere just the nature of the internet.
Sometimes people get weird bees in their bonnet. Personally I’d much rather know who it’s coming from.
If I put a lot of effort into a comment or post and it gets downvoted by someone out of spite, I’d much rather know that’s what happened than sit there wondering what’s wrong with my post.
Right? Leave me a comment telling me why you disagree! Maybe you have a point of view that I hadn’t considered. Maybe I got a fact wrong - I’d rather be corrected than keep on being wrong! I’m a big boy; I can take it.
Or, maybe I’m just being a jerk and all someone needs to do is talk some sense into me. By itself, a downvote doesn’t tell anyone anything. Reply! Talk to me!
@magnetosphere this! I love it when someone points out stuff I haven’t considered, especially if it turns out I’m wrong. Acknowleding that is the fastest way to actually turn it around and become right again.
Man, I miss Reddit!
Said nobody here ever.:-) The average discussion experience here is just better, with people who care about facts rather than purely trolling.
@OpenStars totally!
I originally only came here for something to do during the blackout, but it’s just so much better here that I ended up never going back.
Slightly off-topic, but I don’t think downvotes should be a thing at all. Silences minority opinions by lessening their visibility and discouraging further discussion even when they’re correct. People also tend to not respond to those comments/posts in good faith, as if the downvotes prove them wrong. Turns the place into an echo chamber.
Taking out downvotes would allow for less popular opinions to have higher visibility and discussion since the majority can’t just downvote it, just because they slightly disagree with it or are biased against it, and silence discussion.
People who do agree would also be able to show it through upvotes, and it wouldn’t be eaten up by the downvotes.
Spam, hateful and rule-breaking comments/posts would just be reported instead. As is the case for some Lemmy instances already.
if you take out the downvotes, the upvotes must go with it. but also, kbins algorithm isnt over-programmed and calculating, i see varying levels of upvoted and downvoted comments mixed together and i like it that way so everyone is included. on kbin, if youre downvoted, its usually been for good reason as far as ive seen, and ive also never had to go LOOKING for downvoted comments that are buried like on reddit. they are right there on kbin. the ‘algorithm’ is no algorithm. its honest
Agreed. Downvotes were never used in the intended way and just turned into “I disagree with this”.
I don’t think that it’s off topic at all, in the contrary. If you analyse the situation described by the OP, the issue is not the fact that our actions are transparents, the issue is due to the consequence of downvoting a post and how this action made another person feel and how they acted on this feeling.
Downvoting is not a constructive tool and should be abolished. It’s not a matter of the users not using it the right way, it’s a matter of psychological behaviour.
We should design tools that help us to bring the best in us, not the worst. We are not here on a commercial platform who need to hook us with dopamine shot, and trigger us on engaging by frustrating us. We need to build things differently. Federating servers is great but not enough.
I think that an option to be able to remove the display of the downvote tool and downvote count should be available in the settings. I would like to abolish it all together but I’m not interested to impose this on other users, so bring me an opt out please.
what do you think @ernest? let’s change this paradigm and build another better tool?
You should be able to block that user from interacting with you by simply clicking on their name and pressing the block button.
That will prevent them from downvoting future posts and if you have a negative interaction with somebody you can do that as many times as is needed to create the environment that you will enjoy participating in here.
Blocking people blocks their votes, and not just prevents you from seeing their posts?
As far as I am aware, it prevents them from seeing or interacting with your account and prevents you from seeing or interacting with their account.
I know it doesn’t stop them from seeing you. They can still reply to you; you just won’t see it. So I’m not so sure it blocks their vote, either.
I think this is correct.
@billothekid2 I just thought of another aspect.
On reddit about 8 years ago there was a bunch of discussion of how people were running automated scripts to downvote everything by people they didn’t like or whatever.
And reddit had to build in a safeguard so those automated script downvotes no longer counted. Those kinds of shenannigans would be much easier to spot in kbin’s current system.
Agreed. I can see this being more harmful than helpful.
I’m calling you out, @BadWolf 😂
