Up and down votes are not a “agree / disagree” button. They are for dis/encouraging posts. You can upvote a post you disagree with but can see that it is useful for the discussion.
I’m pretty sure that ship has sailed, especially on Lemmy. I feel like votes as agreement instead of acknowledging constructiveness is more prevalent here than on Reddit, especially for anything vaguely political (or AI, Musk, etc). I’ve seen very constructive comments complete with citations and everything get heavily downvoted because they go against whatever the popular position is, while a low-effort comment next to it gets heavily upvoted because it agrees with the popular opinion.
It’s really frustrating, and I wish we had a platform that properly rewarded constructive discussion instead of popular discussion. Yet here we are.
Up and down votes are not a “agree / disagree” button. They are for dis/encouraging posts. You can upvote a post you disagree with but can see that it is useful for the discussion.
I’m pretty sure that ship has sailed, especially on Lemmy. I feel like votes as agreement instead of acknowledging constructiveness is more prevalent here than on Reddit, especially for anything vaguely political (or AI, Musk, etc). I’ve seen very constructive comments complete with citations and everything get heavily downvoted because they go against whatever the popular position is, while a low-effort comment next to it gets heavily upvoted because it agrees with the popular opinion.
It’s really frustrating, and I wish we had a platform that properly rewarded constructive discussion instead of popular discussion. Yet here we are.