I used multiple social media platforms and I can say in medium confidence that downvotes are almost useless to see for users.

They are made to influence the algorithm and that’s it, if you are really bothered by them it’s because you saw something you were never intended to see.

Reddit try to communicate this by showing you only one number for the total score and they are trying to not show you if your post score became in negative.

Matter of fact, personally I find downvotes pretty refreshing for me because I expect to hear something I don’t know or a passionate criticism on my opinions or posts.

I think what could discourage me from posting is the lack of comments, not the downvotes.

I personally disable showing upvotes and downvotea in my client.

Note: If you are really bothered about downvotes, you can disable showing down votes on the web client and in the mobile clients by changing that option in the settings.

Downvote if you agree.

  • Boomkop3@reddthat.com
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    12 hours ago

    Are you sure it’s not that people who aren’t bothered by downvotes disagree with you on how to use social media.

    People use these their own way. And good on them, screw what makes some shareholders more money

    And because of that, downvotes remain off for me.

  • Noel_Skum@sh.itjust.works
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    14 hours ago

    One instance explained to me that they disabled downvoting because of massive brigading issues due to what they are and what they stand for. I had assumed that everyone over there was just fragile… but apparently it’s a real issue for them folk and that had never occurred to me before.

    • snooggums@lemmy.world
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      12 hours ago

      It doesn’t take a lot of effort for a few shitty folks to silence people they hate by quickly down voting anything that comes from a small instance. While the instance that I know of disabled the downvotes to improve the experience for users of their instance, I don’t see their stuff in the All feed very often so they are probably still being silenced outside their instance.

    • sunzu2@thebrainbin.org
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      14 hours ago

      I heard something similar a while back. They were able to ID patterns of some accounts just essentially doing downvoting and that’s it.

      I am not sure what the goal is.

  • adhocfungus@midwest.social
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    15 hours ago

    I understand getting upset if you made a good faith argument and it gets a ton of downvotes. I still think it’s valid, but I understand why others would disagree.

    But people here (and on Reddit) are way too sensitive to them. I have seen too many comments here with “Edit: why am I getting downvoted? Explain yourselves” when it’s got 10 upvotes and 2 downvotes.

    Some trolls downvote everything. Some people have bots that downvote everything. Some people have bad reading comprehension and will downvote things they would agree with. Once you assume a baseline level of negativity you’ll stop taking things personally and start enjoying interactions more.

  • FundMECFSResearch@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    16 hours ago

    Or perhaps just let people disabled downvotes if they don’t like them :). I’m not hurting you, in fact, I can only upvote.

    I don’t like the fact niche hobbyist communities on lemmy often have half their posts downvoted because people saw it on c/all and downvoted for no reason.

  • nimble@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    16 hours ago

    I disagree but my instance has downvotes disabled so i can’t downvote you like you’ve requested :p

    • Joker@sh.itjust.worksOP
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      15 hours ago

      I got free Unlimited pure true downvotes on my instance.🫂

      [FreeBSD approved virtual hug, No homo]

  • Free_Opinions@feddit.uk
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    16 hours ago

    I think upvoting and downvoting should remain a feature for sorting posts, but the scores shouldn’t be visible to anyone. Making scores public encourages people to say what’s popular and discourages them from expressing unpopular opinions, even if they believe them to be true. Humans are social creatures, and we care too much about what others think. If you agree or disagree with someone and want them to know, you should tell them directly rather than anonymously ranking them.

    • snooggums@lemmy.world
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      12 hours ago

      No thanks, I enjoy watching tankies and other terrible people get downvoted into oblivion in an exchange with one other poster instead of getting a ton of repetitive replies telling them they are wrong.

  • ExtremeDullard@lemmy.sdf.org
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    18 hours ago

    If you’re bothered by social media votes, you need to go outside more.

    Social media isn’t real. It’s a poor simulacrum of human interaction. Find real human beings to interact with and whatever they think of you, tell you, or how they treat you in your face matters.

    But whatever people become and how they behave once they hide behind a screen and cast simplistic one-bit click-clicks to express complex human feelings and opinions doesn’t.

  • cRazi_man@lemm.ee
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    18 hours ago

    It’s human nature for people to feel upset by their message being undermined…but they should be able to get over it.

    The bigger problem I have is that the downvoters don’t know how to USE downvotes. Instead of downvoting inaccurate content or engaging in any reasoning, people just downvote what they personally don’t like and disagree with. Which is bullshit.

    • Joker@sh.itjust.worksOP
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      18 hours ago
      1. Create a browser extension like return YouTube dislike, but for Lemmy.

      2. Pay someone to downvote my post.

      3. Get outside your house at night and scream “I hate you Joker!”, hopefully the local news will cover it and then I would hear it and I would know that was you.

      4. Fourth option.

    • Joker@sh.itjust.worksOP
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      19 hours ago

      I sort by Top Daily.

      That means that whatever downvotes you will get, I could still see your post.

      I am sure that I am not the only one who does this as I first learned of this option on another social media website called Tildes by a user comment and since then it had become the default for me in all the social media websites I use.

      • Blaze (he/him)@lemmy.cafe
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        16 hours ago

        If I only 1 upvote and 2 downvotes, my post would get buried for everyone and you would probably never see it

  • BonerMan@ani.social
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    19 hours ago

    You can also just stop careing about other peoples opinions in general, 99% of humans suck.

    • Free_Opinions@feddit.uk
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      16 hours ago

      We’re as free to stop caring about what other people think as we are to stop enjoying the taste of sugar. It’s not impossible, but it’s incredibly difficult. For most of human history, being disliked or ostracized by those around you often meant death. You don’t just wake up one day and decide to override such a deeply ingrained instinct.