I woke up today, to a public comment in a Lemmy community asking a series of tagged accounts why they had downvoted certain posts

I thought that reactions to posts and comments are anonymous and now I don’t really know what to feel about Lemmy any more.

In this case I had downvoted a poster because of its design, but was confronted publicly for being racist because the person assumed that I downvoted the message on the poster

EDIT: changed the title from “How” to “Why” because it broke rule nr 5 about it being a support question

  • √𝛂𝛋𝛆@piefed.worldEnglish
    1014·
    1 day ago

    On pyfed, I see your overall “attitude” by default. This is the percentage of positive to negative voting interactions you have had recently. You are presently at 68%, which is rather low.

    The activitypub protocol is not at all private. Anyone with a server and admin account is able to see all of these details.

    Anonymous negativity is actually rather mental and should not exist in any democratic or ethical sense. You have a right to all information, a right to error, a right to skepticism, and a right to protest in nonviolent forms aka the right to offend others. Anonymous negativity is a violation of freedom of information and anti-egalitarian. Everyone has a right to confront their accuser with transparency.

    If you have something to say, you should have the decency of stating it. Downvoting is a mental disorder. It is like people that use four letter expletives to express themselves when they lack the intellectual depth to articulate their thoughts. It only really exists as a corrupt means of artificially influencing behaviors for commercial and political means.

    Is it ethical or reasonable to walk up to a stranger and give them negative feedback. Let’s say you see a man exit his car to walk into a store. Should you have a right to leave an anonymous message on his car about the style of his shirt? Doing such nonsense will get you labeled a halfwit or worse. Take any real life circumstances and transpose this behavior. It is completely unethical nonsense.

    “Trust” as a mechanism, is the primary tool of authoritarians and fascists. That is trash. Democracy and community are built with open transparency and accountability. One is a coward. The other will engage the dialectic and has nothing to hide. My “attitude” is 100% now. I rarely downvote because the behavior fails at fundamental game theory and the prisoner’s dilemma. Negative feedback is incapable of creating positive outcomes. It always brings everyone down. So if you are going to be negative, at least do so constructively in a useful way by articulating your thoughts in text.

    • cosmicrookie@lemmy.worldOP
      111·
      24 hours ago

      Downvoting is a mental disorder

      I feel like this is what upvotes and down votes are for though. Expressing that you agree, like, or don’t like what someone is doing, or saying is not a mental disorder. I have been on the internet long enough, to know that starting a discussion about something, is almost never really worth it. I do feel that I should be able to join in on a general sentiment of approve or disapprove on a platform like this.

      Should you have a right to leave an anonymous message on his car about the style of his shirt?

      You compare online behavior with real life, and this is not relevant. But to put it into context, I see upvotes and down votes more like cheering or booing in a sports game. It’s just an expression of what you feel for the content. A reaction. You wouldn’t explain why you are booing at the opposing team when they score a goal

      • anamethatisnt@sopuli.xyz
        4·
        23 hours ago

        I feel like this is what upvotes and down votes are for though. Expressing that you agree, like, or don’t like what someone is doing, or saying is not a mental disorder. I have been on the internet long enough, to know that starting a discussion about something, is almost never really worth it. I do feel that I should be able to join in on a general sentiment of approve or disapprove on a platform like this.

        This is something where everyone has their own personal idea of what the votes are for. I was taught to think of the votes as relevant (on topic)/irrelevant (off topic) when I first encountered the system.

      • √𝛂𝛋𝛆@piefed.worldEnglish
        21·
        13 hours ago

        A disorder is a function that causes disruptive distress or deviation from nominal behavior.

        In abstract, I have posited a claim, and then shown how that claim is backed by associative social norms. I am attacking the normalization of anonymous negative behavior at a foundational level. I’m attacking the ethics of the developers that created this system in the first place. I have exemplified how this same behavior is in opposition to human social norms. I have shown its weaknesses in terms of political impact. I have posited a deeply unethical use case of why such a system would be implemented in the first place despite the malevolence. Finally, I have shown how it is destructive and harmful to everyone through statistical analysis using game theory.

        The abstraction is not targeted in any way at people with mental health disorders. I am showing how the feature itself is a disorder or catalyst for disorderly behaviors.

        I have actually tried really hard to remove any forms of bias or personal attacks from my dialog over the last decade or so. Like in this case, I’m actually arguing for positive constructive interactions in a more socially aware architecture. I want to remove the nominalized negativity. It was a mistake to make a space where people are able to abuse others, to manipulate, and to cause harm without social consequences as a feedback mechanism. It is a particularly sharp prejudice to experience when one is in near total social isolation from stuff like physical disability. Allowing people with no independent ethics to treat a space like this as a sadistic release valve for turgid eristics is simply wrong.