They don't even read it... I'm getting hiveminded more and more everyday, did my opinions get worse, or is this actually a thing now?
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My dude, there are plenty of actual automated bots on Reddit. IIRC when Reddit cracked down hard on bot accounts recently, over half of users and participation in many subreddits also decreased. That alone says that there is artificial engagement on Reddit rather than genuine human interaction (which vindicates the dead Internet theory). It explains a lot as to why a very innocent and neutral comment somehow gets a downvote: they are just bots downvoting.
Even here in Lemmy, there are downvotes on the same benign comments and no explanation as to why someone would disagree. But even if the comment is political in nature, there are downvotes but no feedback as to why one would disagree. There is a post on c/climate on European Greens calling for Jill Stein not to run for US presidential elections because she would just siphon the votes from liberals and progressives even though she will not win. And many comments on that post are getting half or a third of downvotes, but there are no accompanying disagreeing comments to explain the disagreement. It is clear that there are bots in that post who are trying to downplay the repercussions of Stein running to US elections and democracy.
Some of us downvote without leaving a comment, that in and of itself isn’t indicative of bot activity.
A tap of a vote is low effort and easy.
I know some people down vote and don't discuss, but it's very strange in a political discussion when you don't get a pushback but getting so many downvotes.
Id expect more voting and less comments in political posts just because people may want to avoid direct conflict with other users. I'm iffy on the whole up/down thing in general though.
I don't really understand what you're getting at.
People often downvote without posting a comment as explanation.
I've noticed lemmy users do this more than reddit.
The explanation is simply that they don't like the vibe of what you're saying but don't know how to respond.
For example, I definitely see the decrease in frequency, or not at all, on Reddit philosophy getting into frontpage despite having millions of subscribers. Many posts from r/philosophy often would gain thousands of up votes landing them into the front page. However, since Reddit's crack down on bot activities, I see r/philosophy posts getting only a fraction of the number of up votes they used to get, which makes almost none of the posts go into the front page. It is clear evidence that bots manipulate the votes.
I don't know about you, but others also noticed completely innocuous and benign comments just getting a downvote. Before I would chalk it up to people just down voting for no reason or to downvote others to propel their own content at the expense of others; but after what transpired with Reddit's crackdown on bot activities and user participation just so happened to decreased significantly? One would have to admit or acknowledge there is deliberate manipulation on what contents get to be seen or promoted long before and even as we speak.
I think you might be talking about vote fuzzing. This denies bots the ability to check whether they're banned.
Votes shown are inaccurate by a few votes . You can't check whether your vote was recorded by refreshing the page.
