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billothekid2 @kbin.social

I'm starting to see some serious downsides to being able to see who downvotes you.

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?

95 comments

  • 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

    • @ThatOneKirbyMain2568

      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.

      • 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.

      • 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.

    • 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.

  • 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

  • stop caring about votes like they mean anything.

  • 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.

  • Somewhat off topic, but I'm tired of people who can't argue properly.

  • @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.

    1. 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.
    2. 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.
    3. 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.)

  • 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.

  • 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.

    • @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.

  • 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

    • 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?

    • Agreed. Downvotes were never used in the intended way and just turned into "I disagree with this".

  • Agreed. I can see this being more harmful than helpful.

  • @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.

  • 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.

  • I for one would like to see a minimum ratio of upvotes to downvotes as a measure to mitigate abuse. That is to say you "earn" a down vote for each upvote you cast.

    Additionally I think the ratio of downvotes to upvotes you give should be public on your profile, and an admin tool should be available to Magazine administrators to block voting, posting new threads, etc. Based on a user's vote ratio.

    This is a behavioral problem with clear mechanical fixes.

    • I don't see how that ratio thing could be enforced on a protocol like ActivityPub, it would be an instance-by-instance thing and people from instances that weren't enforcing it would be able to downvote however they liked.

      There are instances that blocked downvoting entirely (beehaw.org, for example) but when I saw threads from there here on kbin.social there was plenty of downvoting on them from non-beehaw users. Only on beehaw.org would the threads be seen downvote-free and would users be prevented from downvoting on them.

      • Still a good idea, kbin doesn't need to use your downvotes as part of any algorithm if you are negative.

  • Name and shame, otherwise your post here is as worthless as the troll who spent the time and effort to troll you.

    • It's... It's public info? Like that's his point lol. You can go to his user profile, find a couple of downvoted posts, and see who he's talking about.

  • I think the significance of votes expires after “generally positive/negative reception”. One or two downvotes seems insignificant.

  • Happens on reddit anyway. Even though people can’t see who downvoted them, they guess. Or someone (or a brigade) mass downvotes not because you downvoted their comment but just because they disagree with or resent your comments. Reddit avoided this by ignoring repeated downvotes from one person and on profile pages.

    Personally, if there’s someone who is really abrasive or I just really disagree with and find their posts agitating or distracting, I just block them and that avoids the problem for both of us.

  • Wait, how do you see who downvoted you? I didn't know that was thing here.

  • I have the downvote button hidden completely using the KES script because of that issue.

    Reddit allowing you to hide your own up/downvotes to others is a really nice privacy feature that I wish the Fediverse in general had, but unfortunately the nature of federation doesn't make that possible unless you prevent them federating to other servers.

95 comments