Preface: Love this instance, happy to be here and this isnt a complaint just an observation.
OK so I mod a few communities across several instances, big and small. 3 on this very instance, I have noticed a pattern that posts on this instance tend to get a consistent early downvote count.
This might be my bad observations or the type of posts I see so I’d love to hear if anyone else has noticed the same.
Also got to say, this literally does not matter at all, this is just a random observation
There are definitely instances with early downvotes, yours being one of them.
And even though “it doesn’t matter”, it’s still mildly-infuriating to see obviously innocuous/irreverent posts/comments being dogpiled, nevermind the innocent/informative ones seemingly because “I disagree!”.
Somebody wrote some down vote bots earlier, just to downvote everything… I think a couple of them got banned, but maybe they put them back up…
I believe a lot of the down vote behavior is the classic " I disagree ". Though I wish people used downvotes more sparingly, and to indicate they think somebody is not contributing at all to the conversation.
I do think the down votes have a chilling effect on some people, especially people who like to lurk, they see a bunch of downloads on a conversation they’re unlikely to say anything.
Oh I didn’t know about that
I think early downvoters are just trying to induce others to follow them because they’re assholes and have nothing better to do. Unfortunately, it’s pretty common with both Reddit and Lemmy.
It seems to be more prevalent on lemmy - if the post or comment gets 3 or 4 downvotes before it even gains traction, then it’s dogpiled.
You can see it irl yourself. Post the same comment in a different thread (within the same post!), and watch the difference.
I’ve noticed this with the two largest Lemmy instances – .ml and .world.
I don’t mod any communities but I do put in the effort to curate my “All” feed and most of the users & communities I block come from those 2 instances. Toss hexbear on there and that’s almost 100%.
The .world is tricky bc it is such a large instance and that’s where many new lemmings land so it’s always going to be messy.
I still have my world account but never use it. I prefer being part of db0.
🖤
I specifically avoid all three of them as well, along with Beehaw.
I normally use my .world login, and there are 2 instances specifically on my regular scroll (all, active) that are at 0 or less mere minutes in…
That’s weird. Someone else here in the comments section mentioned downvote bots, so it might be that (?)
My only fear is how it affects either on the scaled algorithm or how people’s view is biased seeing a controversial post.
Once a post or comment gets to -2, it’s doomed.