(For instances that allow downvotes, obviously.)
I ask because if I see a post with more than a handful of downvotes assigned to what otherwise seems like decent content, I consider it a yellow flag, and I’ll often go to the comments section to try and discover why the post is controversial.
Sometimes I’ll find it’s truly a matter of personal disagreement (such as on a hot-button topic like veganism), however I’ll often discover the downvotes are there for a more objective reason, such as misleading or outdated info in the post. On many occasions this additional digging has led me to change what would have been an upvote from me to no vote or even a downvote. On the flip side, if I see a post that I like but that looks a bit fishy, if it has hardly any downvotes relative to the upvotes, I’ll assume that it has passed Lemmy approval (a kind of Cunningham’s Law I guess) and is therefore probably okay (e.g. I see a reference in a ScienceMemes or HistoryMemes post that seems too bonkers to be true).
So what about you all? Do you use the upvote: downvote ratio to guide how you interact with posts?
I prefer this account most of the time as it’s on an instance that doesn’t allow downvotes. It’s eye-opening what kind of comments and content get highly upvoted on Lemmy - it’s not all good. In fact, seeing some of the mass amounts of upvotes on sexist type comments is incredibly disheartening. It initially turned me away from Lemmy when I first joined.
Sometimes I do like to hop onto a different account and I utilize downvotes then. Usually try to save downvotes for vile opinions or things that don’t contribute to the conversation. It can be a good head’s up if a post is worth a curious glance. Hopping into the drama can be fun here and there.