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?

ThatOneKirbyMain2568, (edited )
ThatOneKirbyMain2568 avatar

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

CoffeeAddict,
CoffeeAddict avatar

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.

livus,
livus avatar

@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.

CoffeeAddict,
CoffeeAddict avatar

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.

Mounticat,
Mounticat avatar

Hmm... I'm no expert, and probably not even competent at these sort of matters, but the thing that popped to my mind was "something something encryption something something trust". I wonder if this has a smart solution.

losttourist,
losttourist avatar

No. The whole point of Federated software is that things happen on one server, and by the very design of the system those things get shared out to other servers. "Things" could be anything from posts to comments to up/down votes.

The only way to have anonymous voting would be to make the up/down votes strictly local to a particular server, which kind of defeats the purpose of a federated system.

JowlesMcGee,
JowlesMcGee avatar

Actually, our downvotes don't federate out, and we don't get incoming downvotes either, so you could totally make them private within an instance since that information doesn't leave the instance anyway.

Not advocating one way or the other, just pointing out that it technically could be an option.

squiblet,
squiblet avatar

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.

FaceDeer,
FaceDeer avatar

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.

magnetosphere,
magnetosphere avatar

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!

FaceDeer, (edited )
FaceDeer avatar

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.

livus,
livus avatar

@FaceDeer interesting, wonder if it was the same person!

The other thing that hasn't bern mentioned yet is vote manipulation is easy to spot on kbin.

When reddit first migrated here I remember someone being called out for having 3 or 4 profiles upvote/downvote all the same things.

FaceDeer,
FaceDeer avatar

Could be, I have no clue what their name was. I feel the worst fate for such people is to be irrelevant so I try to forget about them. :)

Yeah, the ability to spot vote manipulation is a nice one. The current interface for kbin makes it laborious to click through so many comments and posts to check, but once the API is settled it should be possible to write some nice tools for that kind of thing.

magnetosphere,
magnetosphere avatar

Okay. Yeah, I was being sarcastic, but now I see we had different kinds of trolls in mind. Thanks for taking the time to explain.

FaceDeer,
FaceDeer avatar

No problem. And I can imagine that there might be some out there who would indeed be gleeful about being called out for downvoting because they're just that deep into the "raging asshole" state that any negative attention is giving them the dopamine hit they crave. But I suspect that kind of troll is going to be blatant enough that he'll get blocked or banned by most places worth hanging out in anyway.

I probably shouldn't admit it, but one of my favourite ways of dealing with a raging asshole on Reddit was to be impeccably polite to them until they blew their stack badly enough while trying to provoke me that I could report them. :) I'd only do that if they were clearly already unredeemable, though.

livus,
livus avatar

@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.

FaceDeer,
FaceDeer avatar

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.

livus,
livus avatar

@FaceDeer yeah that secret downvoting thing was super passive-aggressive.

What was most annoying about blocks was that bug where you couldn't reply to anyone downthread of a comment by the person who blocked you, so they could effectively end your other conversations with other people.

billothekid2,
billothekid2 avatar

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

Madison_rogue,
Madison_rogue avatar

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.

livus, (edited )
livus avatar

@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.

sik0fewl,

So the cause isn't that people can see your downvotes, it's that some people are just dicks.

Words to remember.

muse,
muse avatar

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

canis_majoris,
@canis_majoris@lemmy.ca avatar

stop caring about votes like they mean anything.

billothekid2,
billothekid2 avatar

I don't. That's why I called them imaginary internet points. Lol. My point was about the fact that you can see who downvotes you.

snooggums,
snooggums avatar

If you didn't care you wouldn't have posted.

muse,
muse avatar

If he didn't care he wouldn't have downvoted you just now either

Kusimulkku,

That’s hilarious. Another upside

livus,
livus avatar

@billothekid2 this exchange raises another point. You and @snooggums downvoting each other here seem to be engaging in "downvote-to-disagree" with each other.

I don't see nearly as much of this on kbin as I do on, say, lemmy.world and I'm sure it's because of our more transparent voting system.

I'm personally not a fan because I think it's vaguely hostile and discourages open discussion.

snooggums,
snooggums avatar

I am downvoting because complaining about downvotes while saying they don't matter is hypocritical and not a discussion made in good faith. Just wanted to see if they voted in response, showing their hypocrisy.

sour,
sour avatar

is difference between getting downvoted and effect of getting downvoted

billothekid2,
billothekid2 avatar

You see? That's literally not what I said. I seem to have struck a nerve with you here and I'm not sure why. But go ahead. Give me my downvote that I apparently care so much about.

snooggums,
snooggums avatar

canis_majoris said to stop caring and you replied with

I don't. That's why I called them imaginary internet points. Lol. My point was about the fact that you can see who downvotes you.

Yet, you noticed someone downvoting a bunch of your posts and took the time to contact them and ask for reason. Then you didn't like their response and made this post. Then when I downvoted it you downvoted my post. The only reason for you to do any of this is because you care about being downvoted. You react to it, yet say you don't care. That is what you said and did, and what I am responding to.

I hate being accused of lying, so I responded to you implying that I'm lying by claiming something other than what you said.

be_excellent_to_each_other,
be_excellent_to_each_other avatar

FWIW, I usually downvote if the person is a dick. Often I also disagree with them, but not always. If you are dragging the conversation down (in some way other than having an unpopular opinion) you get a downvote.

livus,
livus avatar

Fair enough. I think my dick threshold is pretty high, they have to be spamming or griefing or something like that.

billothekid2,
billothekid2 avatar

Agreed. Also, party on dude!

FaceDeer,
FaceDeer avatar

Same, generally speaking when I'm writing a comment in order to disagree with someone I want that other person's comment to be more visible to other readers. That way they can read it, see my response, and realize how wrong the original comment was and how right I am. :) I save my downvotes for comments that are so wrong they're not worth a response.

I'll even sometimes downvote a comment, ponder for a moment, and then remove my downvote and write a response instead.

livus,
livus avatar

The way I see it, downvotes = "I wish this comment didn't exist" and doing it to punish someone for having a discussion with us is weird, since social media is all about discussions, and exchanging disagreeing points of view is interesting.

billothekid2,
billothekid2 avatar

Fair enough. I tend to think downvotes are warranted when it's not adding anything to the conversation and/or are somewhat hostile. Not that it's worth anything at this point, but the downvote was because I literally just explained myself on the very post they were responding to. People are just putting words in my mouth at this point just because they want to disagree, and at some point it's easier to downvote that to repeat myself.

FaceDeer,
FaceDeer avatar

I see that @AmidFuror was not a fan of this comment. :)

AmidFuror,

Damn straight.

ThatOneKirbyMain2568,
ThatOneKirbyMain2568 avatar

I don't think it's as simple as that. Downvotes do have some kind of meaning — when you give a downvote, you're doing it for some reason that you want to convey — and people are going to interpret downvotes accordingly. If downvotes didn't mean anything, then there'd be no point to them existing at all. What exactly a downvote means depends on the person giving it, but it's ideally (imo) used to express that a post is spam, hateful, or otherwise a bad contribution to the discussion. Obviously, people shouldn't take downvotes personally, but a post being downvoted does and should mean something.

Thus, what OP mentions in his post is a legitimate concern. Public votes allow people to more easily downvote spam someone who downvoted them, which is unequivocally a bad thing that we'd prefer not to have. However, whether we should make votes private is a matter of whether the downsides outweigh the upsides, and they don't.

can,

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.

bedrooms,

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

billothekid2,
billothekid2 avatar

?

bedrooms, (edited )

You know, those people who can't read, start their comments with "lmao you're the dumbest person I've ever seen" and end them with "you're a troll".

magnetosphere,
magnetosphere avatar

Or deliberately misinterpret what’s being said, either radically or just subtly enough to make their obnoxious “point”

sour,
sour avatar

do they use fallacy

Kolanaki,
@Kolanaki@yiffit.net avatar

They pretty much only use fallacies. Begging the question, whataboutisms, straw man… It’s practically all they seem to know. They’re either doing that, or are so illiterate they completely misread what was said and try to put words in others’ mouths.

bedrooms,

On Reddit, these people got their comments deleted as soon as they moved on to insults.

Fediverse generally lacks mods for now. So we're largely on our own.

I learned to check for red flags before commenting.

livus,
livus avatar

@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.

Damaskox,
Damaskox avatar

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.

Arelin, (edited )

Slightly off-topic, but I don’t think downvotes should be a thing at all honestly. Silences minority opinions by lowering 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.

Donut,

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

minnieo,
minnieo avatar

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

aroom,
aroom avatar

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?

ADHDefy,
ADHDefy avatar

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

ADHDefy,
ADHDefy avatar

I'm calling you out, @BadWolf 😂

squiblet,
squiblet avatar

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.

livus,
livus avatar

@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.

Bizarroland,
Bizarroland avatar

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.

Kolanaki,
@Kolanaki@yiffit.net avatar

Blocking people blocks their votes, and not just prevents you from seeing their posts?

Bizarroland,
Bizarroland avatar

As far as I am aware, it prevents them from seeing or interacting with your account and prevents you from seeing or interacting with their account.

Kolanaki,
@Kolanaki@yiffit.net avatar

I know it doesn’t stop them from seeing you. They can still reply to you; you just won’t see it. So I’m not so sure it blocks their vote, either.

billothekid2,
billothekid2 avatar

I think this is correct.

kglitch,

It is. Blocking is broken and does not work the way people intuitively expect.

Fixing this is one of my priorities for PieFed https://join.piefed.social

Eggyhead,
Eggyhead avatar

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

KevonLooney,

I thought this was a good point, so I upvoted it. Now you have two upvotes.

I’m rethinking my decision…

Eggyhead,
Eggyhead avatar

You’re more than welcome to, my friend. It’s your vote to do with as you please.

uphillbothways, (edited )
uphillbothways avatar

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.)

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • •
  • kbinMeta
  • tacticalgear
  • thenastyranch
  • ethstaker
  • everett
  • Durango
  • rosin
  • InstantRegret
  • DreamBathrooms
  • magazineikmin
  • Youngstown
  • mdbf
  • slotface
  • GTA5RPClips
  • kavyap
  • JUstTest
  • tester
  • cubers
  • cisconetworking
  • ngwrru68w68
  • khanakhh
  • normalnudes
  • provamag3
  • Leos
  • modclub
  • osvaldo12
  • megavids
  • anitta
  • lostlight
  • All magazines
    •