I signed up for Lemmy.world, because not having downvotes is stupid and leads to a shitty community.
Ironic that three people downvoted this. But I agree, a “no downvotes” rule is designed to avoid disagreement and conflict, which is impossible on a public forum without extremely restricted expression. If the point is to be always be nice, why not disable open commenting and make users select their replies from a list of canned positive comments. 100% safety and positivity.
I’m torn on the whole no downvote button thing (I missed that when I signed up), but you can be still nice while having a discussion and disagreeing with people.
I would argue that the downvote button can lead to exactly what you are describing though, no disagreement or conflict.
Someone posts a unpopular opinion, a bunch of users downvote it to hell and poof!, no discussion or exchange of ideas. Just out of mind, out of sight.
That’s only true if there is a downvote threshold that automatically hides downvoted comments, which I don’t think Lemmy has implemented. I agree that downvoting can be used to censor and avoid discussion, but the justification for removing downvotes on Beehaw is something like “keeping a positive environment with no negativity from disliking” rather than making sure users have to voice their disagreements and not just smash the blue red arrow like cowards.
Yes, beehaw one of them.
Maybe when they were a bunch of users it might have been a good idea to prevent brigading, but imho now that there is 1000x user activity it’s needed. I already saw the first spambots posting spam for meds…
I do kinda wonder if beehaw actually has downvotes not do anything for comment ranking and such, or if they just hid the button for it’s users. Because I can still see a downvote button on beehaw communities, being from a different instance, and I often notice comments on that instance that do have a downvote or two, which seems to imply that it does actually record and send data about downvotes from other users
*ChatGPT intensifies*
