Is it me, or the hive mind mentality has come over here as well?
I've posted some controversial stuff, and I understand why I would be getting down voted for that. But I see some of my posts and comments are in the negatives for seemingly no reason at all? I don't really care about the karma because I can't see it anyway, but I'm worried that comments and posts here are gonna get downvoted and dismissed without further consideration solely because of the negative score, like what would happen on reddit. I suspect someone, a troll, a bot, or a misclick downvoted my comment or post and people just followed along downvoting in turn. It's either that, or I genuinely said something bad but I can't figure for the life of me that it is indeed bad. My prime example is my support post for commenting under certain posts, why did that get the downvotes? And I see this kind of thing sometimes on other people's comments as well, and I'm baffled, is it me who can't understand why something is bad, or hive mind came here too?
EDIT: it seems i wasn't clear enough.
a) I'm not worried about getting the actual downvotes. I'm worried about downvotes stopping to be a tool to gauge content.
b) I'm not worried about controversial opinions' downvotes, I already said I'm not surprised I got downvoted there. I was talking about totally mundane posts, like that one support post.
c) I'm not talking about people simply disagreeing, I'm talking about people immediately disregarding a post because of the downvote count. it's not correct to say this doesn't happen, it totally does and... how am I supposed to prove that? all it takes on reddit is see a comment on 0 for no reason and see it quickly drop to -5
Maybe it's on a different account but at least on this account I don't see any posts on your profile that are in the negative.
I find it interesting how posts like these only pop up asking about downvotes, never upvotes. Does this "hivemind" only do things you don't like? Is it in the room with us right now?
People have no obligation to interact with anything in any way. There are people who downvote just to make the post go away in some apps. Stop worrying yourself with what gets points. If it's that big of an issue, sign up with beehaw, afaik they don't do downvotes at all.
Op’s question is not a question at all. It’s a scare mongering tactic that invents a hivemind boogeyman, claims victimhood, and seeks weaker minds to join his false crusade. At best, he’s looking for attention.
You said some controversial stuff and are upset that you got downvoted? Grow up, not everyone has to like what you say and if you're so needy for validation say something you know won't get pushback.
I read through some of your comments with lots of downvotes, I have a theory why you were heavily downvoted.
First, people use the dowvote button as a way to express that they disagree, not that they think the content is low quality or unfitting. I don't see how we can change this other than not having a downvote button at all, this seems to be like an outcome of the up/downvote system.
Also, you seem to be a person of principles. I know the reactions too well because I also think similarly. For example, I think judging someone by the color of their skin or ethnicity is wrong, and it seems like you do so as well.
You have a heavily downvoted comment under a post where some Russians faced discrimination and it wasn't clear if it was happening because they were Russians or there were some other reasons as well. You noted this, and got downvoted because people think racism is ok now because Russia (as a country) is an aggressor in a war.
People are too quick to put you in a box if you don't 100% follow their narratives and say even one thing that remind them of others who genuinely belong in that box.
I haven't run across any content that had down votes that I couldn't understand a reason for. Either whatever was being said was untenable, controversial, negative, or hostile.
Humans have emotions, and certain interactions with people will get a certain emotional response. People are utilizing the downvote to express this. So being blunt, controversial, negative, inciting an argument is going to get these kind of responses. It's just human nature.
Try not to think of upvotes and downvotes as anything meaningful beyond hey did I make somebody smile by saying this or frown by saying this. And people frown at things all the time
The hive mind is whatever the community upvotes. It’s inherent and was always on Lemmy as well as any other place that allows upvotes and/or downvotes.
A) There is no hive mind. That's just you perceiving a bunch of people who happen to hold a similar opinion as a monolith, and that's an illusion. You have no data whatsoever to support the idea that they're thinking in concert or even have the same reasons for their reactions.
Don't take it so personally. They don't know you, and they're not attacking you by downvoting you. They're simply expressing "I want to see less of this."
d) Instead of having a kneejerk reaction when you get this kind of response and immediately being defensive, step back and use it as a reflective moment. Maybe you misjudged the room, misinterpreted the potential impact of what you posted, or are simply on a different track from those who downvoted. What can you learn from it? Do you need to change your own approach, or do you need to reevaluate your audience?
Seen plenty of people calling for the de-federation ban-hammer whenever they find comment they like. There's fine line between having an open space and an echo chamber and if it were up to these people we'd federate with no one
I’ve only skimmed your comments, but I think a factor is also that a lot of them are really hard to read.
Examples I see are weird sentence structure, the lack of paragraphs for longer messages, the lack of capitalisation, and rather odd/hyperbolic use of words (writing in the same way you’d speak?). This “style” just gets interpreted as “noise” when I’m reading it, which will get downvoted as it doesn’t contribute.
English isn’t my first language either (it’s not even my second or third!) so I understand it’s very hard to get these things right. But without sufficient clarity you will get downvotes, as it just comes off as noise.
Who do you think is coming over from reddit. aliens? Cows? It's humans bro, you're going to have the same problems as long as it revolves around people and their relationship.
Somehow lemmy is supposed to represent something different while being made up of the same people? This is kind of a silly point to be questioning
I went through some of your comments to see. The most recent ones where you said that the who categorized meet as bad as plutonium is not exactly right… it put it in the same category as plutonium, but didn’t say it was “as bad” when it comes to causing cancer. Some of your comments are awkwardly phrased and wordy with odd punctuation, sometimes people just get weird about that sort of thing. Obviously your most downvoted comment in recent is about Ukraine and any time you speak a strong opinion on Ukraine and Russia and what not who knows…could be a whole bunch of people from other places coming in to down vote because of political ideology. There are a lot of people on Lemmy with pro-Russia leanings.
Some of your comments that are downvoted to negative 2 or 3 do seem to be for no reason that I can see. 🤷🏻♂️
I agree that the downvotes on your posts in the Jerboa community are rather strange. My theory is that people who downvote your more controversial stuff subsequently go through your whole profile and just downvote everything regardless of content.
I suppose somebody, who didn't like what you posted at one point, went through the trouble of down voting all your comments/posts regardless if their content.
It's rare to feel like downvoting every post on a user's profile. But when it happens, the person is always a piece of shit. I saw some people saying that you are a fascist. If true, that's the reason you're getting the downvotes, it's because you're a piece of shit.
It would help if everyone tried to interpret other people's comments in the best possible way, rather than in the worst possible way. It leads to much more interesting discussions.
Welcome to the internet!
We have bots and people who act like bots.
In all seriousness though, I think that this is just a flaw in the voting system and human behaviour. People like to go with the general concensus instead of thinking for themselves. It feels like people genuinely have difficulty in thinking about things and act as automatons a lot of the time.
I also have a suspicion that bots are involved but I don't have any evidence though it does seem to be a theory that has circulated on the internet for some time.
It's changed in a matter of a week or so. I can't even believe the drop in quality contribution. It's actually made me upset. I was so excited, with such sound discourse. But I'm just seeing:
I feel like there's an equal amount of people being stinkers + people trying to remind others to be chill/happy to not be on reddit and trying promote positivity. At least that's my perception of what I've experienced
Somebody targeted me with a mass downvoting of all my comments. It lasted about a day, then they ran out of steam.
I don’t know if Lemmy has mechanisms to stop it. Probably more difficult with the federated instance.
It sucks that someone can effectively block your voice with an across-the-board suppression. I had a reddit account — my first one — ruined by such a thing. Back then, in 2010, every comment I made would drop to -2 or -3 immediately and it basically ruined the account, and it didn’t stop.
So it’s possible. Not sure what you can do to stop it.
Perhaps as long as Lemmy is incapable of detecting and preventing such patterns, you could use a bot to counteract the bot working against you. Something that detects downvote bombing and counteracts it when it’s happening.
Which posts are you thinking of? I looked at your history, only one post appears to be in the negative, and that's in c/support which to me suggests you might be posting an already discussed problem.
I don't see the point of voting on online content, and just ignore the feature entirely. My brain automatically edits out the voting buttons and results. I don't even see them!
Without offense intended... I didn't come here for your (or anyone's) approval. Other people's opinions have universally baffled me as a general rule (yours probably will too).
I came here to document my radical opinions about assembly language programming, post photos of stuff I build, occasionally help other people build stuff, and (of least concern) occasionally participate in conversation. I imagine very few people (other than myself) care about anything I have to say -- it's still a neat exercise to put it into words so I better define what I think.
So maybe people are downvoting you because they don't like you, or don't like what you write. Maybe they do it for no reason, or for fun. Maybe I don't like you, for an arbitrary or a good reason, or both. At some point I guess we just have to be comfortable with these things I guess and coexist here somehow. At least you can't pay money to a platform, to force me to read your opinions, I guess! That would be torture.
Anyway, no one actually needs to worry about me not liking them or username-stalking them. The depths of my indifference are fathomless, and eternal. To make me care about what you think is like bridging the void between the stars.
100% there's a hivemind. That's why I joined lemmy.one, downvotes are disabled to try and stop hivemind downvotings and encourage discussion. On local communities it works well, if only more of the bigger federations disabled them too.
I was just talking with chatGPT about this. I know I say controversial things and all but I still try to always be respectful and I don't say things I don't believe just to get a reaction. I genuinely try to bring some nuance in the discussions I read but sometimes it truly feels like pissing in the wind. Here you get downvoted for saying you use twitter in a thread about what social media platforms you use and sometimes just stating facts that anyone can google still gets you downvoted.
Voting is garbage. It's a cancer on all these type sites. Deciding the value of a post only requires basic literacy, and someone else's opinion is irrelevant. I only upvote posts as a reward to the author. It isn't for anyone else. Others should read the post and decide for themselves what value it has.