I mean, karma does that. The Slashdot system (score range of -1 - +5) and karma having a verbal description (excellent) was much better if you ask me, but karma I'm sure holds some financial value, otherwise they'd replace it with something better.
Any platform that has a "gamifying" system is going to do that. Not saying it's perfect, but it's better than twitter. Honestly, I would love to see all non-profit decentralised apps design themselves around fostering meaningful communication and not money making, addictive gimmicks that manipulate people and drive them into echo chambers.
That's a problem of the individual users and it's not unique to Reddit.
I'm not saying I haven't ever engaged in the nonsense. I do when a topic isn't serious or a person who I'm replying to has shown themselves to not be too serious or too hardheaded for real discussion. However, I have had many meaningful discussions on every topic here with people I agree and disagree with. I've been proven wrong and enlightened many times over the years I've scrolled here. Real discussions do happen here, it just doesn't always garner the same votes that the "circle jerk" comments get.
Despite the abundant nonsense, I've had and seen better discussions here than anywhere else on the internet in years.
And being down voted is fine, even if it hides messages. But many subreddit are very strict and will ban you for respectfully disagreeing and explaining your opinion
Yes that's the worst thing for free speech. I have been banned from default subreddits for even participating in other subreddits. It didn't even matter what I said. Reddit is becoming very totalitarian.
Typically you can point out that what you said was arguing against whatever that sub stands for, and get manually unbanned. But hey, not always. I got banned from /r/trashy for basically saying that racism against white people is a thing.
But why would I have to advocate for myself? What about people with different beliefs? Should I be banned just for leaning one way or another? How can you convince people to the other side that way? It divides.
The only thing I don't like about votes is that they're abused by bots and people that downvote facts (especially those with evidence to back it up) are pretty annoying. Otherwise it's actually kind of refreshing to have a conversation where people can downvote your stupid thoughts. While occasionally brutal, one could really use this unfiltered feedback IRL at times.
That's true. It definitely has flaws, some of which the site could do better to protect against but sadly doesn't.
However, I abhor the current "mainstream" system that facebook/twitter/youtube have of "positive vibes only" where the only way left to call out absurd content is to either comment (with people being super toxic about it usually) or try to "ratio" someone.
I wonder if there's a way to turn votes into a limited resource instead of it being unlimited. Like not only do you have an limited number of upvotes and downvotes, but you also can receive a limited number over a period of time. Which might promote people making higher quality posts.
Realistically, reddit (the company) loves power users, but I think a better system would involve limiting their influence, and the influence of bots.
I'm sure there are plenty of flaws in that, but it's a thought.
That's down to each subreddit settings. Some of them have temporary blocks to prevent people from getting mass downvoted just because. But in this subreddit I can see the number of up/downvotes in real time
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u/[deleted] Feb 17 '25
Same. Reddit's design encourages real conversations.