I saw from a recent post that downvotes does not propagate. That seems counter-intuative to me, how does it actually work?

  • Does my downvote affect the visibility on such a posts in my feed when I vote on it on my local instance?

  • Does my downvotes on such an post impact the visibility of the post among my fellow lemmy-browsers on a third party instance?

  • Will turning off downvotes on an instance give its posts and posters an artificial boost when federating compared to instances where posts can get downvotes?

I’m suspecting this can be used to create false consensus and artificially high visibility around posts.

  • Cold HotmanOP
    2•1 year ago

    If there is an issue with gaming the system, that’s where the solution will be.

    I don’t think participating in something percieved as unfair should be the solution to something I percieve as unfair. In such a situation, actively distancing myself would be more aligned with my ethics. On a personal level it’s easy to block other individual users from cetain instances (although a never-ending process), but as an admin action it would impact a lot of users on both instances.

    But as I’m unsure about how it works, it might be a non-issue. I respect other instances choice to disable downvotes, and if instance X’s downvotes on posts from such servers are propegated to my instance - Both sides preferences would be achievable.