I've yet to come across such an instance. Maybe because I only browse Lemmy on Boost. I down vote everything I don't like.

I'd switch to an instance that still has them.

My instance :(

Thinking about switching but all my stuff is set up nicely and I'm lazy.

i wouldn't use that instance.

toxic positivity is not a thing i'm interested in participating in. i've seen it ruin many places and people.

I switched to an instance that has them. I thought that they were a useless "Reddit-ism" that I could leave in the past, but when I scroll past a troll or a racist or a complete fucking idiot, I want to see that their bullshit is being recognized as bullshit, even if I don't interact with it.

You can export your settings and import them to a new instance.

You can't take your post or comments, but block lists and subscriptions are exportable.

removing downvotes is same as giving upvotes to trolls and assholes by default. not even toxic positivity imo, just plain toxicity

If I wanted only likes I'd be on facebook

I don't care about votes myself, but:

1. I think people should be allowed to vote, up or down, freely, if that is what they want to do.
2. People should also be allowed to not have to see votes or be bothered with it (my own choice).
3. In summary: I think it's at the individual level, not at the instance level such decisions should be made. The only task of the instance being to provide the tools for the users to apply said decision as simply as possible, and to protect those users from any abuse of the system.

"I love having my own prejudices confirmed by a bunch of other people who are just as prejudiced as I"

no idea what instances have eliminated it. I don't like voting as a community thing but would love it and an expanded version of it for you personal account and your home feed. Basically I would love an algorithm the way it should be. Not about getting views or engagement but purely by your stated preferences. trust cafe does something like this where everying can be ranked 0-100 and defaults to 50.

My instance hasn't removed them, but I've personally hidden downvotes for myself since the day I joined Lemmy. I even had them hidden on Reddit too. That way I don't have to get mildly annoyed every time what I consider a reasonable take gets downvoted right away, yet nobody bothers to write a counter-argument with any genuine intention of changing my mind.

I don't see any value in someone just shouting "boo" from the audience. If you disagree, then tell me exactly what you disagree with and why, and we'll talk about it. If that's too much to ask, then I don't even need to know about it.

I haven't been in one yet but I'd love to, I was a trip... friend on the chans over a decade ago so it would be the same experience, basically (ideally, with less racism, lol).

Are you sure you want to be siding with racists and trolls? I mean, you do you, but that's not exactly a good look.

There's more nuance than that, I'd reckon.

Especially when you see blatant misinformation and reports take a few days to process (in my experience). My instance disables downvotes, but I have a "lurker" lemmy account on another instance to see things like defederated communities from my home instance and if people are downvoting those completely detached from reality.

Instances removing downvotes is the same as YouTube hiding downvotes on videos and comments: It doesn't help viewers, just protects the poster.

I wouldn't want to be a part of such instance.

Yeah. On the surface it seems like it would be a positive. But in practice, it shields people from criticism of their behavior.

Yeah, yeah, "use your words" and all that, but some comments are just so brain-dead or trollish that they're not worth a response, and even a downvote is expending far more effort than the comment is worth. So the person who made it sees 3 upvotes but not the 50 downvotes, so their takeaway is that "wow, 3 people liked my braindead comment" rather than everyone except 3 people hated it.

I get the appeal of disabling downvotes, but if I say something stupid, I wanna know.

Only one social media protocol is allowed to implement each particular approach to voting at a time?

the majority of comments on here or any platform are braindead nonsense to me. I just try to focus on the one or two intelligent and informative ones. And boy do dumb people like to downvote smart commentary or personally harass the poster.

As I understand it, you can downvote the content posted by instances that don't support downvoting, they just don't see it over there and can't add downvotes of their own when using that instance.

In a similar way I could make my own instance that implemented "sidevoting" alongside up/down, people could vote left and right on those posts and comments, and the rest of the Fediverse would be blissfully unaware of the nonsense going on over on my instance.

a lot of the lemmy all frontpage is sensationalist nonsense posted from hyper partisan sources that is heavily upvoted.

But that's the point he's making, you can't necessarily judge whether something is a "racist" or "troll" simply because lots of people are downvoting them. That just means the mob doesn't like what they said. Mobs aren't always morally correct.

There's probably a bunch of places in the Fediverse you could go and say something that you thought was perfectly fine and reasonable and get a whole bunch of downvotes for it. Would that make you the racist troll, then?

I think based on the second part of your post you know this, but I'll elaborate based on the first part:

I would think it goes slightly further. Let's posit:
server-A: poster / does not support DV
server-B: Bob, Jim, Joe / supports DV
server-C: Sue, Ann, Kat / supports DV

Server-A is the system of record for post P.

Bob, Jim and Sue all downvote the post.
Joe, Ann and Kat all upvote the post.
All servers federate.

Poster sees: 3UP
Anyone on server-B sees: 2DN, 3UP
Anyone on server-C sees: 1DN, 3UP

I believe this is how it works. The upvotes federate across all instances and are seen by everyone. The downvotes do NOT federate to the home instance, and so they do not federate out to other instances. The downvote total you see for a post only includes voters on your own instance.

I have not studied the code or architecture so I could be wrong, but I think this is accurate.

Comments like this one don’t deserve downvotes. Why downvote someone just sharing how they interface with downvotes?

I’m not saying anyone needs to upvote it either.

Upvotes should be shared liberally. And downvotes should have purpose beyond expressing disagreement or annoyance about differing opinion.

That is exactly correct and exactly what I was implying. Thank you. /s

........no?

Being racist or a troll would make me those things.

Yeah, I think that caveat applies, with the same disclaimer for me; I haven't studied the code or architecture in detail, I'm just going off a high-level understanding of how this works. The "server of record" is the server that re-broadcasts everything to those that federate with it so it can act as a filter.

ActivityPub is a nice idea, but I can imagine some manipulative shenanigans an instance could get up to with this kind of setup. I hope there are mechanisms for detecting that sort of thing.

We're talking about downvotes here. Those don't indicate anything other than what a particular mob thinks about a subject, not whether they actually are a troll or racist. Unless you want to expand the term "troll" to be synonymous with "someone who says something that's unpopular with the community he said in in", which is unfortunately a definition I've seen people use that word to mean and makes the word pretty much useless.

Exquisite downvote

There is an option in your settings so you don't see upvotes or downvotes.

None of these imaginary points matter.

(Lemmy is rad)

Hey, thanks. That's a great feature.

They're talking about seeing a post or comment that they recognize as trolling or racism and wanting to see what others think.

They're not saying that they're using the voting to determine if a post is trolling or racist.

Thank you for exercising your reading comprehension.

My instance doesn't have downvotes. Seems fine to me. If a post bothers me that much, I just block whoever made it.

Thank you for demonstrating a stupid fucking sentiment that validates the existence of the downvote button, you absolute buffoon.

Well I got banned from an instance for "troll downvoting", whatever the fuck that means. If you can't handle down votes, go somewhere else? Reddit and its copies are pretty much the only place left that you are allowed a negative response to a post.

That being said, it's an option for instances, and I'm not their dad. If they want to put dumbass rules in place, that's their business.