this post was submitted on 03 Nov 2024
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[–] The_Blinding_Eyes@lemmy.world 16 points 1 month ago (3 children)

Just ignore up and down votes. They do not matter at all. If someone or a group don't like your comment, well that's a them problem. It should have no bearing on your life what so ever.

[–] bali10050@lemmy.world 12 points 1 month ago (1 children)

The votes still represent something in my opinion, that's why they're there. And I really don't like it when I spend time writing, sometimes researching, formatting and somebody just says „no, this is shit” without even reading the first sentence, because they can just do that.

[–] whydudothatdrcrane@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 month ago

They do not matter at all.

I beg to disagree. If "useless internet points" don't matter, why is there a billion dollar marketing industry surrounding them? I mean all kinds of data mining conducted on all forms of internet reactions. People are paid good money to crunch these types of numbers, including who is casting the votes (man, woman, white, black, American, not-American, liberal, conservative, etc, etc). Then there is the troll/astroturfing angle. There are different types of campaigns that pay drones to upvote or downvote stuff, for marketing purpose or state-actor agendas.

Sure basing your self-esteem on internet points is harmful and useless, but seeing internet reactions as a narcissist fuel only is also naive and misleading. Given the OP wants to get genuine feedback to his opinions to use as a political or moral compass, the question of the feedback quality is not moot at all.

It should have no bearing on your life what so ever.

The feedback quality is also indeterminate. We can't know the proportion of astroturf, spooks/trolls, and genuine users in any upvote/downvote score and/or reaction. This can lead to a situation where the feedback to your opinions is always muddy, and vague. Do my opinions suck or is this their problem? In real life you won't get honest feedback to your opinions anyway, for reasons of politeness. I read once this is why conspiracy theories thrive in Facebook more than Twitter (old study), because a network of acquaintances will not challenge your BS, but a crowd of strangers will.

For all these reasons I think the OP's question is a valid problem we don't yet have good answers to. And it is relevant to any platform, Lemmy included.

[–] drathvedro@lemm.ee -1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Votes decide which comments get shown or not, and in which order. If you don't care whether you are being heard, then you might as well just talk to a wall.