Sometimes I see a post that could really use a downvote, but I can’t downvote it. I really think being able to downvote posts that are not great (rascism, tankieism, dumbass takes, etc) is a really cathartic experience and I miss having it from my old instance.
I understand wanting to remove downvotes to combat negativity, but I don’t think it’s a good idea. When YouTube removed dislikes, people missed having them.
Edit: A lot of people are replying to this saying that if someone posts hateful content, I should just block and report them. Which I don’t disagree with, but there’s always content that’s annoying enough to want to downvote, but not bad enough to go against the rules of the sub. I’d rather just downvote that sort of thing and go on my way than leave a comment saying “shit’s cringe, yo”.
Downvotes are the one thing reddit unambiguously got right. It is impossible to sort content well using only support and apathy. That’s just feeding engagemagog.
Unless of course you’re a member of a marginalised minority, in which case, downvotes will often be weaponised against you, when people who simply don’t like you because of who you are, downvote anything and everything you say.
It’s that specific aspect that has lead to them being disabled on an instance focused on trans and gender diverse folk
Which they can still do from other instances, apparently.
This is a well-meaning mistake that keeps getting made.
Downvotes are ignored by this instance, wherever the come from. The algorithm that determines display order is calculated independently on each instance, based on the upvotes and the downvotes that particular instance is aware of. Blahaj Lemmy drops all downvotes from all sources, so the feed that our users see, whether the content is originally from our instance or not, is ranked without downvotes being taken in to account.
tl;ldr - People downvoting our content or posts remotely makes no difference to our local users
… then why would it matter if they’re allowed? Even if they’re like the Close Door button on an elevator. Honestly it could be a per-user option, at least on comment pages.
You’re asking the wrong person. That’s a question for the lemmy devs, not for the admins of a specific instance.
But you’ve modified it enough to ignore downvotes globally.
That’s out of the box functionality. That’s how it works on any instance that disables downvotes
