Ah, the coward setting.
Having people disagree with you is a good thing.
this post was submitted on 03 Mar 2026
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Hiding the score doesn't stop people from disagreeing with you or from vote count affecting sorting. It does help a bit, at least for me, if you've found yourself habitually checking your comment vote scores in a mentally unhealthy search for validation, and wish to train yourself out of that habit by making those checks futile. On a place with no overarching control like lemmy, vote counts are probably too easy to manipulate to provide trustworthy feedback anyway.
But we are all monkeys who see positive number as agreement/good or negative number as disagree/bad.
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I don't find downvotes useful for that. If no one tells me why they disagree, a negative number isn't going to tell me that either. Not to mention that the most popular answer is often not equivalent to the correct answer.
But I also have the display of downvotes disabled, because I want to judge other comments without much bias.
I always hated the snowballing of downvotes. As soon as you're at like -2, people will stop giving you the benefit of the doubt and just hit downvote some more, or even worse: Start harassing you, because you've said a thing that others disagreed with.
Admittedly, this was more of a problem on Reddit, haven't seen that too much on Lemmy yet, but I don't find seeing the downvotes particularly useful to begin with, so I'd rather not have the bias myself.
I’m downvoting you just to use the button. I leave it there cause it’s a good sanity check, make sure I didn’t say something off the rails. But sometimes seeing a comment I made get something like 135/1 really makes me wonder what the 136th dentist thinks.
I also use the vote buttons as a kind of 'I seen this' system as the read post doesn't work the same way on all clients.
I've seen people use downvotes as "hide this". I've seen for myself how easy it is to misvote by gesturing just a bit too far or while scrolling and you put your finger in the wrong spot.
There are a lot of explanations for them besides a dislike. Maybe it's funny but not on topic. Maybe it's well-written but they disagree. Maybe they agree but it's poorly written.
Frankly if I'm getting <5% downvotes I just ignore them.
Downvoting isn't disagreeing. It's just shouting "boo" from the audience and adds zero value to the conversation. If you disagree with something I've said, tell me exactly what you disagree with and why - then we can talk about it. Disabling downvotes doesn't change that at all.
Downvoting isn't disagreeing. It's just shouting "boo" from the audience and adds zero value to the conversation.
I don't agree. A downvote is a signal to others that "this topic/thread does not contribute to the overall discussion."
And on a platform like Lemmy, with limited engagement (compared other social platforms) these signals are critical.
We need a way to signal to others:
- this thread/post improves the discussion (upvote)
- this thread/post doesn't really help (neutral)
- this thread/post derails the conversation (downvote)
I would agree if that is how downvotes were actually used but that is not the case. More often than not when people downvote it's because they don't like what is being said not because it's factually incorrect, offtopic or otherwise unhelpful. Factual information and perfectly reasonable (but unpopular) takes get downvoted here on a daily basis.
"Be the change you want to see in the world... " ;)
Well yes, social behaviour is bounded by rules that are maintained through reinforcement. So more threads like this one, please! We educate each other here. Media literacy is a skill.
I do exactly that, engage with comments I think are wrong, or misunderstood, or even harassing, but reserve downvotes for stuff that is really in the wrong place or very obviously rude or offensive, or just mouthbreathing stupid, like hatred or revenge wanking.
Votes are for quality, not conformity.
No. Most people are morons.
Yet even morons can sort the recycling and walk on the proper side of the path. Keep pushing.
Huge agree from me
You're wrong. Everyone needs to be nice and mirror my opinions.
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I also unchecked "Show Scores" and "Show Upvotes". Thinking about numbers on this kind of site is miserable.
I could see others using it, but I don't mind seeing downvotes. I frequently post very stupid comments that I expect to get downvoted, but the ones that actually do always surprise and amuse me. Like, "Of all the dumb shit I say THIS is the one someone had to take a stand on?"
On Voyager there’s also a setting that combines up and down into a single total
That's interesting. I wonder how it affects how people post and comment.
Weird. I’ve had Voyager since being on Lemmy and I think it always showed the total as default. I didn’t even know one could separate them. 🤣
I feel like it works exactly as it does if they were separated. More positive number is a positive reaction/comment and more negative gets others piling on.
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I thought this was standard, that is what Boost does.
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I refuse
You can also go to https://lemvotes.org/ and find the name of the assholes who are downvoting you
Spoiler, it's me
I'm the problem it's me.
It's me, it's always me.
It’s always the bots or serial account creator/deleters, at least in my case.
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Jank! I think the server, Reddthat, disabled down votes. Voyager doesn't show me shit in settings.
I love down votes I want to suck all of their tiny cocks
Is this about hiding the downvote count, or the downvote button?
On my solo instance I disabled downvoting. Reason for this was not long before setting up the instance, I read an article how downvoting stimulates some negative mental effects. Since then, there may have been one or two posts or comments that I actually wanted to downvote, but it's been a while. If a post or comment rubs me the wrong way, I just move on now.
Still glad I did, couldn't go back to an instance with downvotes.
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I'd probably do it if I were a lemmy user, so long as you can hide upvotes as well.
Yup. You can do both or either.
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