When you have an upvote/downvote structure, there is an incentive to not go against the grain and just post stuff that’s considered “acceptable” in the local community.

Coward behaviour, post your hot takes, nobody knows who the fuck any of us are it's not like there's any actual consequences here. Get banned and spin up a new account on another instance or 9 ffs, the downvotes can't hurt you

Not everyone treats the votes the same way as well. Some people downvote because they don’t agree with the content, the poster, just because they sound disagreeable or simply because the post is too much to read. You can apply the same myriad of methods to upvotes. Not one motivator is the same.

Great argument to not give them any weight, like by disabling them to protect fragile egos

[–] donuts@lemmy.world 1 points 23 hours ago

I knew I would get a reaction like this. You're attacking the strawman you created that downvotes are hurting people's feelings and this is why people would want them disabled / hidden. This is not what I said.

People will consciously or subconsciously let these numbers influence them. Whether it's positive or negative doesn't matter.

You're right that they hold no real weight as the range of motivators is extremely diverse, but we will still try to infer value from the patterns and act accordingly.

[–] ZombiFrancis@sh.itjust.works -1 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

nobody knows who the fuck any of us are it's not like there's any actual consequences here. Get banned and spin up a new account on another instance or 9 ffs, the downvotes can't hurt you

There's communities dedicated to geolocating and doxxing over political hot takes so don't be so confident with that sentiment.

[–] gamermanh@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

Oh no, a lemming with an even more pathetic life than previously thought might email my boss, who will ignore and delete it!

The internet is full of losers who think they can scare people with basic script kiddie tricks

[–] ZombiFrancis@sh.itjust.works 0 points 22 hours ago

Well, yes, but the point being the solution to self-censorship isn't a call to overcorrect and cast caution into the wind.