I came from Reddit where they definitely did matter. They don’t seem to hold any real weight here. Is this true for some or all instances? If they don’t matter, what are they for?

  • presoak@lazysoci.al
    41·
    11 hours ago

    It’s a democratic way of judging posts. Democracy is good.

    Developed further, voting could replace moderators. I’d like to see that happen.

    • Rayquetzalcoatl@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      52 minutes ago

      Voting could replace mods in some ways, but in others it would be less effective (I know, not all mods are effective).

      For instance, combatting spam; more users would have to see the spam and downvote it to have it removed (presumably in this system, a post could be removed when it reaches a certain downvote threshold? Not sure how else it would replace mods).

      Additionally, content moderators and admins do actually do at least one other good thing; they look at and remove illegal or seriously upsetting material. Unfortunately, Lemmy has had several issues with csam being posted by presumably bots – good, active content moderators remove this as quickly as possible, protecting more of the users on their instances than a downvote threshold.

      Outside of having some sort of threshold, I’m not sure I have a good picture of how downvotes could replace mods? Human oversight is really key to a lot of accurate and effective decision making; I’m sure we’ve all dealt with fully automated systems and know the pain of that.

    • Camille_Jamal@lemmy.mlEnglish
      1·
      5 hours ago

      I think it’s good for judging points and whatnot, but there’s definitely some places that could not have mods replaced by votes. I agree when it comes to most communities though. Have a great day! :D