A few days ago I downvoted someone’s comment, and the next day I happened to notice every single comment I’ve ever made had at least one downvote. All from the person I dared to downvote the ONE time. I straight up asked why they did it, and they seem to think I’m an “obvious” troll account that “apparently just exist to downvote other people”. I assure you I’m no troll account, and ironically don’t really downvote all that often.
I know the topic of public downvotes has been discussed before, but I never used to care either way. Now I’m kinda leaning in the “I don’t like it” side. Honestly, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel a little offended, maybe even attacked. Also, there goes all my imaginary internet points. Lol
Has anyone else had something like this happen to them, or am I just unlucky?
I for one would like to see a minimum ratio of upvotes to downvotes as a measure to mitigate abuse. That is to say you “earn” a down vote for each upvote you cast.
Additionally I think the ratio of downvotes to upvotes you give should be public on your profile, and an admin tool should be available to Magazine administrators to block voting, posting new threads, etc. Based on a user’s vote ratio.
This is a behavioral problem with clear mechanical fixes.
I don’t see how that ratio thing could be enforced on a protocol like ActivityPub, it would be an instance-by-instance thing and people from instances that weren’t enforcing it would be able to downvote however they liked.
There are instances that blocked downvoting entirely (beehaw.org, for example) but when I saw threads from there here on kbin.social there was plenty of downvoting on them from non-beehaw users. Only on beehaw.org would the threads be seen downvote-free and would users be prevented from downvoting on them.
Still a good idea, kbin doesn’t need to use your downvotes as part of any algorithm if you are negative.