My experience
A few hours ago, I commented on a post about a nuclear power plant in Georgia on lemmy.ml:
Why expensive nuclear reactors instead of cheaper renewables?
What happened? 8 likes, 11 dislikes
I am totally honest with you now: This makes me sad, because it’s the same behavior that I experienced on Reddit and why I deleted my account there. Different oppinion => Downvote!!! Now my comment has a “-3” score and I could think about deleting it. I won’t do it, but others would maybe do it. IMO, that’s how we create echo chambers.
I want to post what I like to (not what the 60-vs-40-majority of the platform likes me to post)…
So let me ask you these question:
- When do you upvote 👍?
- When do you downvote 👎?
- When do you do neither 👍👎?
My answers:
When do you upvote? 👍
- same opinion as mine
- a post that I think should get more attention
When do you downvote? 👎
- discrimination
- trolls
- irrationality, ignoring facts
When do you do neither? 👍👎
- different opinion => I write a comment instead
- posts I classify as “not interesting”
To me, it’s more a question of how people interact with each other, independendly from the content / topic:
Upvote: respectful, friendly interaction, regardless of whether or not I share the same opinion. Even disagreements can lead to worthwile discussions and therefore contribute to the site as a whole.
Not doing anything: Comments and posts I do not care for, or do not understand. Yes, it happens, I am no genius and English isn’t my first language either. I also usually do nothing with posts/comments that are off-topic but still friendly.
Downvote: Trolls, racists, bigots, scammers and most bots (unless they’re helpful in some way and not toally obnoxious). I don’t care if someone has the same opinion as me or “proves my point” - when they sound like an ass and throw insults, they’re getting downvoted.