harrasment and brigading unfortunately exist, especially against minorities. for plenty of people mental health/self care is a totally valid reason to not want to see scores in either direction.

[–] PrinceWith999Enemies@lemmy.world 15 points 6 months ago (2 children)

Lemmy is small enough that “brigading” doesn’t feel entirely appropriate. Maybe “platooning?”

In any case, we know from other sites that downvotes increase the probability of getting more downvotes, and nasty comments increase the probability of getting more nasty comments. The same goes for upvotes and positive comments. It’s just social dynamics. Some subs on reddit existed almost exclusively to call out other subs, but I think that Lemmy’s user base is small and spread out enough that it’s not a major contributing factor in voting.

I think it’s mostly just people scrolling along, running across a hot take, and interpreting it according to the voting.

In any case, I would suspect that people would be more impacted by hurtful comments than downvotes.

[–] spujb@lemmy.cafe 14 points 6 months ago

nope. brigading happens on lemmy, and is visible in the modlogs with decent frequency. same goes for vote manipulation. i take no pleasure from this fact; that’s just the way it is.

obviously comments have more weight than votes in general. that doesn’t give you an excuse to be judgmental of how people interact with the site, just be careful.

also it’s not just downvotes that can be demoralizing. in early months of the reddit migration i witnessed blatantly and violently homophobic shit get upvoted sky high before mods stepped in. made me really feel gross and uncomfortable about the platform altogether.

generally, a tip, don’t lay question to other peoples’ expression of lived experience without evidence—especially when it doesn’t affect you at all.

[–] princessnorah@lemmy.blahaj.zone 8 points 6 months ago

Trans people on reddit would often get downvoted to oblivion for seemingly no reason. It happened to me on occasion, with comments that were otherwise benign, non-controversial and at least tangentially on-topic. Like fair enough if they stayed at 1 but these would be at -5 or lower. And always on posts in default/major subreddits too. This stuff was done systematically to silence trans users by having their comments hidden from low vote total. Because actually posting hateful comments would just get reported and removed in those large spaces, and this goes undetected.

Now imagine a trans Instance like Blahaj, dealing with the potential of a new instance showing up just to downvote members, and that happening, over and over. No comments, just downvotes. That's why Blahaj has them disabled.

[–] TotallynotJessica@lemmy.world 7 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

I guess I've just been lucky and sheltered while on Lemmy. I see bigotry here and there, but because I hang out in queer spaces, I don't see overwhelming bigotry get much traction. The worst I usually see are tankie or liberal assholes, probably because of mods not tolerating anything farther right than that for a second.

Another factor might be that I'll throw hands(through language of course) against trolls. I'm not sure if I have thick skin in the sense that I don't feel the offense, but I do have armor inside and out.

It's hard to get under my skin because they'd need to somehow understand how to be bigoted against my relevant identity better than I do. I was obsessed with following hate groups and fascists for years, learning how that think and why they think that way. I understand bigotry better than they do, and enjoy finding the most powerful bigotry so I can beat it in the future.

I know most people can't do that, so I go on the offensive whenever I see it not directed at me. Trolls probably go for people that won't tear their attacks apart like I do, so they either don't start harassing me or give up before it gets out of hand. I was always vulnerable growing up, so I guess I invested into becoming capable of fighting back against harassment and bullies, at least through language.

[–] spujb@lemmy.cafe 4 points 6 months ago

valid! respect for admitting your experience might be different from others’ 👍