Downvotes do more to destroy the user experience of reddit than anything short of the censorship-through-banning. It's a terrible system that I hated from day one. I also love that we don't have karma or any other kind of gamification. Apart from a creation date, my account is identical to a new one and there's nothing to gain from posting more. No stupid badges or special flairs or leaderboards, just people choosing to talk to and share with other people for its own sake.
this post was submitted on 23 Mar 2024
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The only thing we have, that can't be done away with without an anonymous style format (ala the chans), is user notoriety, but its not that big a deal here imo. Might be worse if the userbase was smaller. Definitely remember being annoyed at that in the web 1.0 days
That's more of a mixed bag for me. I grew up with Web 1.0 forums and liked that digital village atmosphere where you had a consistent idea of who you were talking to. Reddit in 2009 was like that, but a few years later it was so large that everyone became faceless. It flattened the experience when outside of small subreddits I couldn't pick out a familiar name. Power users can be toxic if they're given power or influence but here the most prolific users aren't trying to become powermods or forming cliques. We're still at that population level where it's just people posting for the sake of posting.
I miss it sometimes too. I made friends on old forums and mirc groups, although the lack of size and new faces tended to lead to their closures. I often think about the way centralization impacted online gaming as well. There was a very odd period where people didn't realize they could be anonymous dickheads, and segmented playerbases (on seperate servers, essentially) had a social imperative to not be dickish because you would have repercussions from the community. There were some really magical days playing everquest/ffxi/WoW and encountering the same people, fostering a sense of community. Everything is so faceless now, I really wish there was some way to get that back but it seems like you can't really get people onboard with that anyways.
In terms of forums its probably for the best, remaining an outcast in a forum where everyone else has built up a reputation/cliques is not ideal
When I played WoW vanilla-burning crusade, I was on this ultra-low population server called Zuluhed. There were less than 50 max level characters, to the point that we as a server struggled to clear Karazhan as other servers were starting to farm Black Temple. It was beautiful. I knew every other person who regularly played there by name. Without the numbers to do the endgame content we fucked around and raided capital cities. I've chased a second Zuluhed across subsequent games and forums without any success, but that's exactly what I want from an online community. A bunch of people seeing that there's nothing to win and still playing anyway.
I played on a very large server, but I specifically remember a gnome mage becoming my arch nemesis. He went as far as to wear shadow reflectors when we would end up in the same battlegrounds, and would spam emotes whenever he killed me. I hope he found that as enjoyable as I did, I thought our little tiff was hilarious.
Reminds me of my WoW days too. Used to play on a RP-PVP server as horde, there was this high-end raiding guild on the alliance side who basically acted as some fucking contras or something, they always tried to murder all horde no matter where we were, and usually with like 3-1 advantage, and then they corpse-camped you. These people were fucking good at the PVP too, combined with their gear I've been on a losing fight of 4-2 with them even if we were all the same level 
Looking back it was pretty fun to go into Stranglethorn and notice from afar members of the guild and have to do some calculations if you'd manage to stay hidden from them to do your questing or if it would be better to just leave.
Yep, I feel you. Every time I'm on Reddit, I realize just how awful the downvote button is. I remember back when we had one and decided to get rid of it. The catalyst was it being used specifically to silence marginalized people. Looking back at it now, it was clearly the right choice. Having no downvotes hasn't impacted Hexbear in a negative way in the slightest. Bad arguments that you can ignore - you ignore. Bad arguments you cannot - you reply and dunk. And chuds get dunked on and reported/deleted.
Its was definitely dipshits downvoting threads about trans issues/people/solidarity, I've been here from the beginning! I think thats just another very good example of how it just stifles discussion. I remember kind of hating youtube doing away with downvotes but I've realized it just makes the importance of people engaging (read: openly rejecting) shitty people go way up and thats probably better (though admittedly discourse in youtube is ass)
I remember the Downvote Days....and getting rid of them was one of the best choices made by a webzone. We wouldn't have gotten where we are today with down votes. And now that federation is a thing it's even better cause we get accused of down vote brigading when that's not even possible.
Nice to meet another fello oldie 
On YT, I dunno. I do agree that the dislike button was used to just silence people, which was their stated reason for getting rid of it. But at the same time, it was also used to figure out which videos were just scams or advocating for harmful stuff lol. Oftentimes, you would click on a video looking for a solution to a problem, see the dislikes and realize the video is probably peddling some bs. Now, you don't have that as neatly - there's still comments (but they can be removed, and most people don't comment anyways).
But I agree, discourse on youtube is just ass. There isn't any good solution.
The way discussion is handled on youtube makes being the first person to say anything paramount, anything else is largely lost in the ether. I've thought about commenting on some rancid chud content before but realized its not even going to come close to being seen, all thats there is just gonna be a billion chuds agreeing with each other. Its really up to content creators to address other content creators (and is maybe a good reason more leftists should embrace content creation as a hobby)
The fact that downvoting is anonymous compounds the problem. If you post or comment, you can be suspended, banned, mocked, shunned, targeted, etc., but you can downvote whatever you want for whatever reason you want and no one will even know it was you. Reddit makes it a thousand times easier to shit on someone else’s opinion than to share one of your own. It’s amazing that anyone uses it at all.
Reddit has consistently made me miss the old web1.0 decentralized forums from the olden days (which honestly had plenty of its own negatives, so thats saying something), and I'm glad that hexbear is part of a project to kind of bring some of that energy back.
I feel exactly the same way. I occasionally need to use reddit for a few hobby subs, and every time I do I get sick of it faster and faster. You know how Hexbear can sometimes be a bit antsy and rude when a new user comes in to ask a political question because it's at times hard to tell if they are genuinely curious or if it's actually a wrecker doing the "just asking questions" thing on a sensitive issue here?
Well, reddit is billion times worse than that because this same type of interaction happens on every subreddit on any topic you could possibly think of no matter how low the stakes are. If you don't know something, you better keep that to yourself because asking about it is going to produce a flood of reddit cretins downvoting your post and talking about how much of an idiot you are. And lord help you if you have a disagreement about something with them, they will rip apart your argument with literally zero charitable interpretation, assuming you meant everything you said in the literal worst possible way, often to the point they are shadow boxing with shit you clearly never said.
Yeah I also had someone comment on a random sentence that I wrote fairly lackadaisacally, and when I kindly asked if they were commenting on my word-barf or the actual content they just downvoted me. Jesus christ. Its amazing how much can and should be learned about how forum design impacts discussion (hey I actually wrote a paper about this in college when web 2.0 was emerging!), and how little it seems to direct continued forum development. To be fair, the way reddit is designed also makes it really easy to artificially astroturf and elevate/stifle discussion for large actors.
A fellow exile?