Having trouble wrapping my mind around this. The post is on Site A. My comment is on Site B. The evil downvoter sees it on Site C. Um - what happens next?

You don't ever know that evildoer downvoted, because vote totals never drop below 1 (technically 0 but assume OP doesn't undo the default vote or you downvote). Other instances can still see the vote totals. You can still easily tell popular things from unpopular things but without the downvoters affecting the way YOU see the content.

It does a lot of things but one example would be if someone were to downvote something out of spite with all their alt accounts. Depending on sorting and whatnot you or someone else may not see that content on an instance with downvoting enabled because it usually gets pushed down or collapsed. Without downvoting that content will instead show as something with few upvotes and more or less be blended normally with the rest of the comments.

[–] JubilantJaguar@lemmy.world 3 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Without downvoting that content will instead show as something with few upvotes and more or less be blended normally with the rest of the comments.

To confirm: an unpopular comment posted on downvoting-enabled Site A will show higher when viewed on downvoting-disabled Site B? Or only if it was actually posted on Site B?

[–] FrostyTrichs@walledgarden.xyz 4 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

an unpopular comment posted on downvoting-enabled Site A will show higher when viewed on downvoting-disabled Site B

More or less yes, depending on how you have your sorting set and if the comment/post has any positive interactions. At worst it just shows as something with a single upvote and is sorted based on time or however it fits inline with other content with similar vote numbers. Since it's removing the outliers you see a better overall picture of what's being said IMO. It's up to you to decide if that's positive, negative, or even something you care about.

Or only if it was actually posted on Site B?

It affects how people on instances with downvotes disabled see it no matter where it was posted from. Basically the downvotes simply do not exist to instances that have them disabled.

[–] JubilantJaguar@lemmy.world 2 points 3 months ago

Really helpful. Gonna act on this information.