this post was submitted on 04 Jul 2023
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Which is fine and better. It encourages moderation by the site instead of by users. The only function of downvotes on reddit is a very poor attempt to offload moderation to users.
The result without downvotes is exactly the same, because downvotes don't actually do anything to the sorting algorithm on this platform. They just function to upset people. Lemmy's algorithms heavily favour activity over votes, meaning that the things that get the most responses end up the most visible.
The up side of it is considerably better. Go ask Hexbear or Beehaw users how much nicer the behaviour and environment is without downvotes. Nobody in spaces that have experienced it without for a couple months will tell you that they want them back.
This is Lemmy, not hexbear, beehaw or similar forums. I've had experience with other platforms removing "downvotes" (or their version of it). Sometimes it works, but oftentimes it doesn't.
We can go a lot further into this discussion, but I'll summarize my opinion as follows:
Neither having nor not having downvotes is "right". They're just different - and lead to different types of forums and discussions. I prefer the former, because in many topics that I want to discuss, they provide important feedback (both to me and others), even if you perceive that this feedback comes at a cost.
If you like, we can elaborate further, but I think it comes down to Beehaw ( & co.) and Lemmy being different platforms, which is a good thing. The world would be a very dreary place if everything was the same - and this is something that corporations are constantly pushing us towards.
All of those are lemmy, it seems like you don't understand what lemmy is? Lemmy is software, all 3 of these sites use Lemmy. Several instances of lemmy have no downvotes at all, the environment in them is better and much more enjoyable for everyone involved. Everyone that experiences this comes around to it.
Read some research on the topic, the issue is that these systems have multiple negative cumulative effects: https://arxiv.org/abs/1405.1429
The fact of the matter is that downvotes DON'T improve a community. They create feedback anxiety in positive posters that reduces their activity, while in negative posters it increases their activity and decreases the quality of their future posts. It creates the literal opposite result of what you want in a community. Positive feedback on the other hand generally has no effect on behaviour. These are objective facts.
That's actually rather interesting. It's good to see a justification of why places like Beehaw disallow downvotes. I can sort of understand how this relates to YouTube removing downvotes as well, though maybe this shouldn't be applied to videos that are a potentially more damaging medium.
Youtube likely has never used downvotes as any sort of metric for algorithm so their removal of them is entirely about user behaviour, based on research like this. Their algorithm work will be pretty much 100% derived from what keeps people watching the most and longest and what keeps the ad clickers clicking ads. They will be completely zoned in on total activity and profit. Not quality. This is unfortunately also why outrage content and debatebro reaction drama is all the boom regardless of its obvious harm socially.