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X weighs adding a downvote button to replies — but it doesn't want to emulate Reddit
(techcrunch.com)
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Half the content is screenshots from Reddit which in turn are half the time just screenshots from Twitter. May as well just keep the train going at this point.
On a more serious note, downvotes seem to be never any good for any forum or discussion platform of any kind. I’ve yet to see them used as a “not contributing“ button or whatever other idealistic definition sites come up with. It is almost universally a disagree button and every community I’ve seen that gets rid of it is better for it. I mean think about it: how many conversations have we all seen where people start bickering about votes? Passive aggressive edits because one person got one downvote, somebody acting as if their opinion is correct because they have 3 upvotes and the other person has -2. It’s honestly just not healthy and is primarily used as a cudgel rather than any meaningful sorting of comments and posts.
Twitter is already a shit hole of negativity and toxicity. Do they really need to add the ability downvote people?
Edit: I guess I was not direct enough about this point, but I am not against people controlling the content in front of them or deciding what is good/bad. I am saying specifically that the downvote mechanism specifically is not a good tool. Especially showing downvotes.
Blåhaj doesnt have downvotes and I occasionally miss being able to down vote people replying to requests with something that someone specifically said they don't want in the full-text. For other stuff, report tends to be applicable, particularly spam and racist trolls who just come to advertise or attempt to change the culture of Lemmy.