this post was submitted on 10 Jun 2023
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Only on certain instances. Lemmy.ml and beehaw.org, for example, require you to answer some questions (I've heard people say beehaw requires you to write an essay, lol) which I think is primarily to avoid being overrun by bot accounts. Not all instances do, though. sh.itjust.works has open registration, for one.
Fwiw my application to BeeHaw I submitted last night was like 4 sentences.
I don't think they're looking for anyone's life story of personal philosophy on life and the universe ya know?
I have not applied to beehaw, myself. I dislike the lack of a down vote personally. I think it's a useful utility to have as long as people don't abuse it... Which people always will, but I don't think that merits taking it away. That's the great thing about decentralized services, though!
Downvotes are used to show disagreement without an explanation which just stifles discussion, and for off-topic comments reporting them works as an alternative.
I do prefer user moderated conversations through downvotes but with the way they are used I don't really trust us users enough for that.
I just don't necessarily think the feature should be removed just because it isn't always used as intended. I know there are folks who use it as a "disagree" button, and that's... fine, I guess lol. I think Lemmy does a decent enough job of preventing abuse of the downvote button by removing the concept of karma. There are no imaginary internet points to be gained or lost. As a bonus, you can always turn vote values off entirely for yourself, as opposed to disabling downvotes on an instance. That way you can upvote/downvote organically, without your perception being skewed by existing votes.
I wouldn't necessarily refuse to use a service based solely on whether it has a downvote feature or not, but I think downvote serves a different purpose than reporting. If I were on a platform that didn't support downvotes, I do think I would feel obliged to be a lot more liberal with my upvotes, lol. Which... maybe that's not a bad thing. 🤔
But again, through the power of federation we can both interact on a platform that can satisfy both our beliefs, and that's a pretty awesome thing.
What might be neat is a user preference that allows one to enable or disable downvoting just for you. If you disable downvoting then you get a different view of the community and comments that only accounts for upvotes.
I guess things like this could also be done just on client side. Kbin and Lemmy definitely need better clients. 😅