I’ve been thinking about the impact of downvotes on LemmyNSFW and whether it’s worth having them enabled. Here are some pros and cons I’ve come up with:
Pros:
- Downvotes can be used to lower the visibility of low-quality content that doesn’t break the rules, although this content would have low visibility either way.
Cons:
- Since there are more males than females, male nudes tend to get buried with downvotes, even on communities that accept both male and female content, like gonewild.
- People often use upvotes/downvotes for things they like or don’t like instead of for relevance, as they’re supposed to be used.
- Downvotes make content from one instance less visible in other instances.
- Receiving downvotes may discourage users from posting content, leading to less overall content.
I’m curious to hear your thoughts on this matter. What are the pros and cons of having downvotes in your opinion? Do you think downvotes should be reconsidered for LemmyNSFW?
Going off my previous comment, I have a random thought what might be happening. On youtube (and I presume tiktok) when you downvote you curate your feed on what you like or don’t like. On those platforms thumbs down feeds into an algorithm that adjusts the content. People might think it works the same here, when of course it doesn’t. Just a handful of people that mistakenly think that is enough to be a problem at this point. Just another reason to get rid of downvotes if that’s possible.