Look, with nearly 100 comments a day, we realize that no amount of downvotes is going to silence you from commenting in every post. However, for us mere mortals, can you not see
how a dogpile of downvotes from the local majority opinion might dissuade some individuals from wanting to engage in discussion?
It’s clearly psychological. It’s not that it quantitatively “matters.” I suspect very few people are going around using the downvote button with the intent of statistically decreasing the view count of a particular comment. On these politically charged posts, it’s used as a litmus test for whether or not you are part of the ‘right side’ or ‘the other side.’
Look, with nearly 100 comments a day, we realize that no amount of downvotes is going to silence you from commenting in every post. However, for us mere mortals, can you not see how a dogpile of downvotes from the local majority opinion might dissuade some individuals from wanting to engage in discussion?
Nope. I don’t see why it matters when it didn’t even matter on Reddit except that comments with enough downvotes were hidden. They aren’t hidden here.
It’s clearly psychological. It’s not that it quantitatively “matters.” I suspect very few people are going around using the downvote button with the intent of statistically decreasing the view count of a particular comment. On these politically charged posts, it’s used as a litmus test for whether or not you are part of the ‘right side’ or ‘the other side.’