this post was submitted on 16 Nov 2024
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Unpopular Opinion

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Welcome to the Unpopular Opinion community!


How voting works:

Vote the opposite of the norm.


If you agree that the opinion is unpopular give it an arrow up. If it's something that's widely accepted, give it an arrow down.



Guidelines:

Tag your post, if possible (not required)


  • If your post is a "General" unpopular opinion, start the subject with [GENERAL].
  • If it is a Lemmy-specific unpopular opinion, start it with [LEMMY].


Rules:

1. NO POLITICS


Politics is everywhere. Let's make this about [general] and [lemmy] - specific topics, and keep politics out of it.


2. Be civil.


Disagreements happen, but that doesn’t provide the right to personally attack others. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Please also refrain from gatekeeping others' opinions.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Shitposts and memes are allowed but...


Only until they prove to be a problem. They can and will be removed at moderator discretion.


5. No trolling.


This shouldn't need an explanation. If your post or comment is made just to get a rise with no real value, it will be removed. You do this too often, you will get a vacation to touch grass, away from this community for 1 or more days. Repeat offenses will result in a perma-ban.


6. Defend your opinion


This is a bit of a mix of rules 4 and 5 to help foster higher quality posts. You are expected to defend your unpopular opinion in the post body. We don't expect a whole manifesto (please, no manifestos), but you should at least provide some details as to why you hold the position you do.



Instance-wide rules always apply. https://legal.lemmy.world/tos/

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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, I personally 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.

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.

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[–] adhocfungus@midwest.social 20 points 11 months ago (2 children)

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.

[–] i_dont_want_to@lemmy.blahaj.zone 11 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Some people just fat finger it too without intending to down vote.

[–] adhocfungus@midwest.social 2 points 11 months ago

That's true. I accidentally downvote things constantly, but immediately upvote if I notice. How many have I missed? How many upvotes were lost to network traffic even though the downvote made it through? How many people have wasted a portion of their only finite life being upset because my finger was one pixel too far right?

[–] BonerMan@ani.social 14 points 11 months ago (2 children)

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

[–] Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world 8 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Bonerman is out here asking for 99% of humans to suck him! What a day!

[–] Free_Opinions@feddit.uk 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] BonerMan@ani.social 2 points 11 months ago (2 children)

You are less free to not consume sugar as its pushed into everything, you can ignore other peoples opinions.

[–] Free_Opinions@feddit.uk 4 points 11 months ago (1 children)

You just entirely ignored my argument.

[–] BonerMan@ani.social 2 points 11 months ago
[–] Blaze@lemmy.cafe 10 points 11 months ago (8 children)

Downvotes bother me because they impact the visibility of my content, especially on small communities

load more comments (8 replies)
[–] Noel_Skum@sh.itjust.works 6 points 11 months ago (2 children)

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.

[–] spankmonkey@lemmy.world 7 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] Noel_Skum@sh.itjust.works 2 points 11 months ago

Imagine being so fragile that you can’t even accept that some people live a different way to you and wanting them shut down as a result.

[–] Boomkop3@reddthat.com 5 points 11 months 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.

[–] ExtremeDullard@lemmy.sdf.org 5 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months 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 4 points 11 months 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.

[–] Free_Opinions@feddit.uk 4 points 11 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] spankmonkey@lemmy.world 3 points 11 months 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.

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.

[–] jeena@piefed.jeena.net 2 points 11 months ago

PieFed also just shows one number.

[–] oo1@lemmings.world 1 points 11 months ago

I am a 5-star man

[–] Sat@lemmynsfw.com -1 points 11 months ago (1 children)