Downvotes = “I disagree” or “this is bad and you should feel bad”?
Downvotes = “I disagree” or “this is bad and you should feel bad”?
I think I’ve settled on the latter. Disagreement is maybe best communicated by the absence of an upvote? And downvotes work best when they signal something that is just off base, and while not reportable, is not appreciated at a broad cultural level.
You're taking things way to personally on the internet if you worry about down votes. It's not people's job to explain everything to you. Sometimes it happens and sometimes it doesn't, learn to move on from downvotes.
Yes, up/down votes are inherently subjective and reports are to be used for objectively bad content. It is up to the users to decide whether they feel that opinions they don't agree with are worthy of downvoting or not. In the end the voting system tries to give the community a voice to mirror what content they like to see - within the rules that are enforced by moderators. I think it would be better if people downvote content they don't like instead of using it to "punish" people they argue with. That's why I think it is a slight improvement that lemmy shows up and down votes separately - it gives the downvote a bit more gravitas and in consequence "not voting" receives some, too.