Pretty much the same. I’ll look at the post or headline or whatever and make my assessment of if I want to see more like that. If I see downvotes already there tho, I try to figure out why. Sometimes the post does turn out to be spammier or more controversial or more factually wrong than it first appeared.

If it’s generating discussion, I upvote, regardless of how many votes it has.

If I participate in the discussion, I upvote, regardless of how many votes it has.

If people are participating in the discussion in good faith, I upvote, regardless of how many votes each comment has.

It’s the only way to boost engagement in the community, by pushing quality discussions and posts to the top.

Also my instance disabled downvoting so I don’t do that.

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.

I do, only to try and suss out if it’s a .ml drama reason for downvotes, or, just, like, something normal.

I usually glance at it just to see what I’m getting into.

If a post in new is heavily downvoted, I’ll check the username. Sometimes it’s just Cheese! That lovable rascal, asking stupid questions in the “No Stupid Questions” munis. Sometimes it’s one of a handful of other users, drunkposting or similar.

But if I don’t recognize the name, I know it’s either trolling or drama. Trolling I downvote or report and move on. Drama I wade in and start shitkicking.

Just to feel the room’s temperature, but I always speak my mind regardless (it’s Lemmy, if you’re not honest here where are you honest?). Unless I’m missing something, the post stands by itself (or not) regardless of votes.

No, I have disabled seeing votes. Don’t care about it all.

I downvote for inaccurate/old/not relevant/misinformation.

However, I also see down votes on the posts themselves to signify for others they disagree with the finding/topic but I myself try to refrain from doing that to still encourage people to keep posting.

I.E. Topics that are not privacy-respecting but still interesting is commonly downvoted, some trivial news sometimes about media, etc.

Honestly, if its an article I dont agree with the findings of, I just move on. No downvotes or up votes.

If I dislike a comment but notice that it has a decent amount of upvotes, I’ll reread it in case I’ve misconstrued what the OP was actually saying.

Not really. If I like it I upvote it, if I dislike it I downvote it. If it seems interesting I’ll click it, if not I won’t. And if I got something to say I’ll say it.

No, I disabled that in the settings so I don’t see it

The upvote/downvote thing mostly indicates whether a comment or post agrees with the current popular opinion of the social bubble it’s found inside. I’ve said the same thing in different places and see quite different ratios. It’s not very useful for analyzing the content itself, it just tells you what the room thinks of it.

I used to, but I try to do better. Lately, I’ve had “blind voting” turned on in my app, so I can only see the score after I’ve voted one way or the other. Basically forces me to read and vote on the submission without being influenced by the current score.

nah… didn’t care on yt with starts, didn’t care on Reddit with arrows, don’t really care here either.

up/down votes aren’t a good metric… it’s like trusting yelp, except no bribes. people gonna hit whatever and do whatever.