Not every platform on the fediverse has a downvote system, but those that do (Lemmy, piefed) are heading down a bad path, imo. Downvoting is one of the worst features of reddit, leading to dogpiling, group think, and silencing of minority viewpoints. I do see the value of it, on the surface, and if you want to enable it for yourself to allow certain posts to be downvoted for your own information, I think you should be allowed to do so, but having it set as default for all posts just leads to a toxic and conformist environment, which is what I thought the fediverse was trying to get away from.

  • wasu@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    2 months ago

    The only scenario where I see disabling downvotes as a good idea is when upvotes are disabled as well.

    So you either:

    • have only number of views (no up/down votes) so people don’t chase virtual points
    • or there are both of them so that when combined they result in a fair rating.

    Upvoting without downvoting doesn’t show if people like it, nor whether it is good or bad. It only shows that it reached a lot of people and is popular. And that can be achieved with views alone.