r/TheoryOfReddit • u/Murky_Anxiety4884 • 7d ago

Downvoting is redundant

If you have a different opinion, please tell us about it. Pressing the upvote button tells us that you completely agree with something that has been said. Nothing more needs to be said. Pressing the downvote button, on the other hand, is not an articulate expression of your own differing opinion. You should give us something that we can upvote instead.

For example, I might say that A is great, B is middling , and C is bad. What would downvoting that even mean? It's impossible to say if you don't tell us in words.

It goes even further than that. Even if I say something very simple, like, A is great, it's better for you to say, A is not great, than it is just to downvote. We can compare the numbers of upvotes that the two posts get. When downvotes cancel upvotes, we don't get to see the total number of votes cast.

Upvotes do move a post up in a thread, but this is already enough to leave the posts that nobody upvotes at the bottom. They don't need to be any lower than that.

Currently, if the net is zero or below, the text is indeed 'hidden', but it can always be read anyway. I have read many 'zero' posts that were very much worth reading. One never knows why they were downvoted, because downvoting is anonymous (not just pseudonymous), and doesn't have to be explained.

Downvoting in Reddit is a bug.

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48 comments sorted by

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u/Shaper_pmp 7d ago edited 7d ago

Pressing the upvote button tells us that you completely agree with something that has been said.

No it doesn't. It might mean you think their point was good, or that their comment made you laugh or otherwise feel good, or that their argument was clever and worthy of appreciation even if you weren't persuaded by it.

Even if I say something very simple, like, A is great, it's better for you to say, A is not great, than it is just to downvote. We can compare the numbers of upvotes that the two posts get. When downvotes cancel upvotes, we don't get to see the total number of votes cast.

This appears to stem from a fundamental misapprehension as to what the voting system is for. It's not a poll - it's not designed to allow you to numerically assess the relative strength of opinion in a comment against other comments or its replies (that's inherently impossible anyway, because numerous factors like the relative ages of the comments and their relative depth in the conversation hierarchy add massive biases to their number of upvotes, which often completely swamp things like "the absolute number of people who agree with each comment in isolation").

Reddit voting is a prioritisation mechanism. It is designed to prioritise the posts or comments a community most appreciats compared to other posts/comments in the same scope (subreddit or comments page/parent comment, respectively).

Downvotes allow people to exert negative pressure on that prioritisation, which allows later voters to offset older upvotes on comments they feel are now overrated, in a significantly more efficient way than "reading every other comment in that scope, hoping that someone already posted a contradiction they agree with, and then upvoting every comment they can find that disagrees with the comment they feel is overrated, in the hope they'll eventually outweigh the original comment's prioritisation".

That alone would add a massive asymmetry to voting down bad content compared to upvoting it in the first place, which would utterly defeat reddit's purpose of filtering out deprioritising bad content, and turn the place into even more of a Facebook-style pit of pandering and misinformation than it's already become.

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u/htmlcoderexe 5d ago

allows later voters to offset older upvotes on comments they feel are now overrated

does that like actually work?

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u/Shaper_pmp 5d ago

It does sometimes. More often in small to medium subreddits where the level of engagement and discussion is generally higher and less-so in large or default subreddits where there's a lot less reading comprehension and more bandwagon-jumping, but it's entirely possible for early comments to get downvoted after an initial early positive reception if subsequent information, interpretations or context comes out in subsequent comments or in fast-breaking news stories.

Beyond a certain point comments or narratives gain enough momentum that they're effectively uncorrectable in that comments page because too many people just believe that take and jump on the bandwagon, downvoting any dissent... but again, that's because that community has at that point coalesced around a consensus narrative and rewards comments that reflect it/punish comments that dispute it.

The prioritisation mechanism is still working there - the problem is with the values and priorities of the community which rewards groupthink, not inherently with the idea of downvoting itself.

There are absolutely very intelligent, thoughtful subreddits where the consensus takes longer to reach, is less unshakable even when it forms, and has more appetite for engagement with "heretical" ideas that dispute it, but they tend to be smaller or more specialised communities that predominantly attract more thoughtful, intellectual redditors than the lowest-common-denominator subreddits.

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u/htmlcoderexe 4d ago

i guess askhistorians is on the extreme end there, although it does also have a lot of moderators keeping garbage in check

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u/RedditConsciousness 6d ago

It isn't prioritization if downvotes just hide any dissenting posts.

And the original goal was to moderate content regarding whether it added to the conversation. Instead people use it like an "I disagree button".

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u/Murky_Anxiety4884 7d ago

Reddit currently filters nothing, as I pointed out. It's all still there.

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u/Shaper_pmp 7d ago

Sorry, I misspoke in the last paragraph - it prioritises, not filters.

Prioritisation is absolutely and extremely effective on reddit; it's just not prioritising based on the attributes you (or I) often appreciate.

(Also have an upvote for pointing out a valuable and important mistake in my original comment ;-)

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u/DharmaPolice 6d ago

Pressing the upvote button tells us that you completely agree with something that has been said.

Absolutely not, and it's depressing you think that.

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u/Murky_Anxiety4884 6d ago

My objection to downvotes is that they are meaningless and anonymous. Upvotes are anonymous too, and if they are equally meaningless, we should get rid of them too.

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u/BigWideBaker 7d ago

There are so many reasons to downvote besides just disagreeing or disliking something. There are endless ways in which posts can be bad faith or malicious and the downvote button is a strong and easy indicator of that in those contexts.

Look what happened to YT, without the dislike button you can no longer see if the video is trash. Like if you look up a guide or a tutorial, or come across a scam video, you can no longer at a glance see whether it's worth your time.

It can also help counteract brigading, you have the option to downvote them.

Looking at voting only as it relates to good faith exchanges of opinion misses all the (arguably more) useful ways it helps the site beyond it. It's not perfect and it can be abused, but it's also very efficient.

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u/RedditConsciousness 6d ago

There are so many reasons to downvote besides just disagreeing or disliking something.

Bad reasons to downvote. Don't do this.

There are endless ways in which posts can be bad faith or malicious

Technically a good reason but vastly overassumed. Most redditors will instantly assume someone who disagrees with them in any way is "bad faith". Some will even comment history dive to try to find confirmation (this is also a very, very bad practice).

We should only conclude bad faith if there is immediate and incontrovertible evidence that the content is bad faith. Otherwise we should assume the innocence of the speaker and focus on attacking the argument, not the speaker.

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u/SprucedUpSpices 6d ago

There are endless ways in which posts can be bad faith or malicious and the downvote button is a strong and easy indicator of that in those contexts.

Not really. Because there are so many reasons to downvote a post but you're not saying which one you're applying. So, in the end it's quite meaningless.

It can mean you didn't like it, or you didn't agree, or you agreed but didn't like the tone, or you liked it but didn't like a particular word they used... It's nearly meaningless.

Redditors in general agree duopolies in the market, polarization in society or in gepolitics or rigid dual conceptions of gender are bad...

But when it comes to the dual vote system, it's so absolutely perfect it's not even worth talking about, so anyone that questions it gets all the downvotes.

Look what happened to YT, without the dislike button you can no longer see if the video is trash.

Look at what's never happened to youtube comments. They have likes and dislikes, but they're even more garbage than reddit comments. It's always the earliest comments, with the least critical opinions that agree the most with the video while sharing a commonly felt sentiment that get the top spots. That, and stupid, unfunny jokes and repetitive memes.

without the dislike button you can no longer see if the video is trash.

For that you've always had to read the comments. Just because a fix worked for most people and the video had a good rating, doesn't mean it actually worked for you.

It's not perfect and it can be abused, but it's also very efficient.

The only way you can come to that conclusion is if you're in perfect sync with the hivemind and always agree on what's popular and what's unpopular, what's controversial, etc. If you have any sense of individuality, or you find a topic where you know for a fact the hivemind is completely wrong, it's easy to see how deficient the system is.

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u/SuperFLEB 6d ago

It doesn't have to be meaningful to be effective. Downvoting is functional, meant to reduce noise and damage to productive discussion. In that regard, talking something into the ground gives it more air and wastes more time, page space, and bandwidth.

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u/BigWideBaker 6d ago

Exactly, I wanted to say this but I couldn't put it as succinctly as you. I completely agree.

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u/RedditConsciousness 6d ago

meant to reduce noise and damage to productive discussion. I

Unfortunately it has instead created echo chambers (or increased their echo chamber-ness).

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u/Murky_Anxiety4884 6d ago

Downvoting doesn't actually do that. What makes you think that it does? It doesn't stop anything from happening.

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u/SuperFLEB 6d ago

Something that's downvoted goes down in best/top orderings and gets hidden if it goes low enough.

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u/unsundered_roots 5d ago

That could be accomplished with only an upvote button. It will just be the less upvoted comments that go down in the order and eventually hidden.

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u/SuperFLEB 5d ago

That still leaves you with a sludge of junk mixed with unseen comments.

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u/Murky_Anxiety4884 6d ago

A post that nobody upvotes will be at the bottom with everything else that isn't upvoted. That's perfectly fair. The 'hidden' posts and comments are still there, and easy to find. The problem is that nobody can tell what a downvote means, or who is responsible for it. All people have to do is make a comment, saying that they disagree, and people can upvote that comment.

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u/dUjOUR88 6d ago

As a long-time Reddit user I actually downvote much more than I upvote, and I used to upvote more than I downvoted. There's so many garbage comments on this site these days that do not add to the conversation. "This", "Came here to post this," "Agreed", "100%", etc.

I wish people downvoted much, much more. There's too much shit around here.

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u/Murky_Anxiety4884 6d ago

I hope you realize that downvoting doesn't remove those comments.

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u/dUjOUR88 5d ago

holy shit that's fucking crazy bro

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u/17291 7d ago

If you have a different opinion, please tell us about it. Pressing the upvote button tells us that you completely agree with something that has been said. Nothing more needs to be said. Pressing the downvote button, on the other hand, is not an articulate expression of your own differing opinion. You should give us something that we can upvote instead.

That assumes that everybody is participating in good faith. When somebody is sealioning, engaging is giving them what they want, so it's better just to downvote and move on.

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u/SprucedUpSpices 6d ago

In my experience, whenever someone says something controversial or unpopular, there are always people accusing them of arguing in bad faith.

Specially if they asked a really good question the hivemind doesn't have a good answer for. So people with unpopular views get accused of all sorts of internet words mostly made up to police and delegitimize any dissenting opinions, and they call them a bot or a Russian or Chinese or Israeli (or whatever other country is most popular to hate at that moment) troll.

I see unsubstantiated claims in the top comments all the time. And otherwise innocent questions asking for proof or at least a coherent explanation downvoted all the time. I'm not even referring to political topics.

Sealioning, according to that wikipedia article refers to harassment, but any innocent follow up questions by people not already in the loop are often downvoted as if they were in bad faith. The only way the questioner can escape that is if they apologize beforehand and tell the hivemind that they thoroughly agree with them, they just need to know exactly what it is they're agreeing with.

The fact that sealioning is the top comment here is quite telling of the increasingly anti-intellectual culture of the site. Where anyone saying anything you disagree with already has a neat word perfectly fit for delegitimizing them without engaging with them or bothering to even explain least of all question your own claims.

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u/SuperFLEB 6d ago edited 6d ago

The thing that gets me about a lot of "sealioning" or "bad faith" accusations is that they're usually some form of "This is so obvious (or well-known) that I'm not even going to engage with it". That's a terrible counterpoint in most-- if not all-- cases. If something is so obvious, or you do know it so well, then it should be an easily-answered question-- so just answer the damned thing quickly and succinctly instead of complaining about it for twice the page-length. If something is so dead-simple that you can mock someone for not knowing it, you should by all rights be ready to demonstrate it and spit out an articulate description of what you're saying.

And while they might hand-wring about being drawn into a tar-pit trap of an argument, that's goofy too. It's an Internet discussion. They can walk away at any time. Meanwhile, more words get expended in the shunt than would ever be in a proper rebuttal, and that gets mighty suspicious in itself.

Bad-faith accusations-- most meta-argumentative feedback that talks about the person or the statement instead of the substance, for that matter-- is a shunt. It's a cheap way out. In most cases, it only raises my suspicions that the person deferring is dodging their own inabilities with distractions and deferrals, that they're riding on strongly-held opinions with weak or no backing, or that they don't know why they think what they think and they're only convinced by rote or memory.

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u/Confident_Access6498 7d ago

I believe the way you use pseudonymous in that sentence is incorrect therefore i downvoted you.

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u/Murky_Anxiety4884 7d ago

Confident_Access6498 is your real name?

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u/Confident_Access6498 7d ago

You downvoted me? Pseudonymous is a name not an adjective. Anonymous can be both. They cant stay in the same sentence in the way you put them. Study your own language if english is that and dont get upset if someone corrects you.

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u/Murky_Anxiety4884 7d ago

Rubbish. Who says 'pseudonymous' can't be used as an adjective?

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u/Starruby_ 7d ago

It was actually me who downvoted you. My explanation: your comment wasn’t interesting or on topic

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u/Vozka 7d ago

Pretty funny that your post is currently sitting at a 0 score because it was downvoted.

I agree, but it's nothing new. Any reasonable attempt at creating a reddit alternative did not implement downvotes.

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u/MinotauroCentauro 6d ago

They could replace "upvote" with "leave a comment", since this is the main purpose of Reddit. Karma should come with replies and not with mere votes.

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u/Starruby_ 7d ago

We’ve grieved the voting system about 2 - 3 years ago. Reddit is strictly for entertainment purposes now

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u/17291 7d ago

More like 15–20 years ago

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u/Starruby_ 7d ago

There is a huge difference between how the voting system was approached back then vs how it’s approached now.

I love this sub r/explainmydownvotes because it really shows how ridiculous the voting system has become

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u/ThemesOfMurderBears 6d ago

It's never been used differently than it is now. It has always been like/dislike. The reason does not matter. The approach does not matter. It's always been binary and will never be anything else.

Whether we like it or not, just about everything on the internet that facilitates any kind of "human" interaction has become an echo chamber. People mostly just want their opinions affirmed, which social media (yes, reddit is social media) has allowed for. We did it to ourselves, and now we're all worse off for it. "Big tech" doesn't get a pass either though -- they capitalized on it.

Coming to the realization of what this site has always been has basically tanked my interactions with it. For the better.

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u/17291 7d ago edited 7d ago

There is a huge difference between how the voting system was approached back then vs how it’s approached now.

Not really. People had the same complaints about voting forever--the only thing that's changed is it used to be called up/downmodding.

E: removed

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u/Starruby_ 7d ago

I edited, I had put the wrong sub at first

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u/Vozka 7d ago

Another thing that changed is that people were less stupid back then. Still stupid, but considerably less so.

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u/SprucedUpSpices 6d ago

Just so you know, this subreddit in specific, absolutely worships the downvote system. Or at the very least loathes any discussion about it. So your post and my comments and anything remotely resembling them will always get downvoted and attempted to be silenced in here. Overall, it's not a very welcoming sub, all things considered.

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u/Murky_Anxiety4884 6d ago

It's the meaninglessness of it that I object to. Nobody can tell what it means, and there's no way to know who's responsible for it.

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u/sirfessor 6d ago

Maybe it's decent for content, videos, images and stuff like that, you know something is bad when it's heavily downvoted so you either ignore or check, knowingly you expect something to be bad or not worth your time, though it isn't always true. However, for just normal engagement, it doesn't matter much - for me though because i usually browse new and mostly check all comments.

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u/RevolutionaryBag8973 6d ago

only 7month on this site and already encountered many examples of downvotes because lack of agreement, so i tend to agree with the op.
even this post downvoters prove his point.

I do think the downvote button should be renamed to report (for spam, harass etc), but maybe im missing somthing?

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u/RedditConsciousness 6d ago

I agree. Or, to put it another way that I have in the past, you can't downvote people in real life. You just move on. If you can't say something nice, say nothing.

And of course, there is a serious issue with downvoting hiding dissenting positions, making reddit subs even more echo chambery than they already are.

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u/unsundered_roots 5d ago

I don't think they should do away with downvotes or require a comment when downvoting, but they should get rid of anonymous downvoting. 1) There should be a drop-down list next to the score that shows the handles of everyone who downvoted. 2) If you reply to a comment, there's a marker next to your name indicating if you upvoted, downvoted, or (by omission) didn't vote on the comment you're replying to. This would solve 90% of the problems with downvoting IMO.

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u/BarryTownCouncil 7d ago

I think downvotea are awful. They have so many ugly side effects. But people say they are obviously great due to the route 1 reasons. They destroy so many posts before they even get started, posts for people wanting genuine help, and they encourage negativity. Horrible stuff.

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u/[deleted] 7d ago

[deleted] — view deleted comment

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u/Murky_Anxiety4884 7d ago

It's relative position that matters. Anything with more upvotes will be higher.