no, sometimes people suck and deserve to have their sentiment downvoted - at least on a site where voting has to exist

on proper forums where there is no voting, there are better ways to discourage behavior, like just ignoring the user / posts. but if the buttons are there you want to click them

Absolutely not. It is misleading like on YouTube. Before they removed downvotes everyone could see if a video is useful or not. “Best tips and tricks for car repair” … 15341 upvotes? Nice! Maybe it’s helpfu–… 98412 downvotes? Maybe not THAT helpful.

I far prefer it to be transparent. But its good that instances can make the decision for themselves.

deleted by creator

If someone’s mental health is impacted that greatly from viewing a number on the internet, and they consider that bullying, then that person has some work to do on themselves instead of the website having to do some work to change something for every single person on the website.

If that is someones preference, then their answer is really simple already - use another Lemmy instance that hides them.

I think downvotes are ok as long as they show the real ammounts along the upvotes, besides there’s no karma here.
Also for those that say people could abuse downvotes to bury discussion, well guess what? People abuse upvotes too to increase their visibility, then we should disable upvotes so they can’t be abused either, right?

I think it’s ok if an instance decides to disable them (or both) if they don’t want or can’t deal with being downvoted, but trying to spread it to other instances is just trying to create a circlejerk.

No. Downvotes can help drive engagement as more people try to understand what was said.

People being downvoted doesnt necessarily mean it is hateful, it could just be incorrect or morally objectionable… it’s important that discourse is there, too.

I personally feel like restricting downvotes is cutting off a vital voice that people may have so that’s why in my instance I have them enabled. If there’s something that the community disagrees with I feel like the community should be able to vote on that rather than only allowing upvotes and not allowing everyone to voice their proper opinion on something.

I like that profile view in lemmy does not show the total “score”. So when someone downvotes your comment, they downvote just that, the comment, not you. Which I think is good for mental health.

Speaking for myself, I feel that possibility of getting downvotes makes me more careful to not invoke negative emotions in others and instead keep more positive tone. In the long run that may be good for everyone’s mental health as well!

No. Downvotes aren’t nothing more than gauge of the specific place climate anyway. Disabling them always looks for me like cheap try of enforcing positivity and openness in places where there is problem with it. Downvotes also help people find their own interests communities.

I feel that downvotes / dislikes don’t contribute in large forum-style communities. The “proper” use of them is very useful, but the “improper” usage of downvotes becomes rampant on larger communities, rather than people expressing “this doesn’t contribute” with downvotes they end up using them to express “I don’t like you and/or your opinion” which results in high-quality posts and comments getting downvoted into oblivion because they do not conform to what the majority deems correct.

This also can be exasperated in communities that are more taste-based, e.g. a community discussing music rather than a community dealing with more objective knowledge.

I guess this is a really long way of saying that I agree with them disabling them but I do not think “mental health” is the concern, more so that they cannot fulfill their intended purpose in larger communities or taste-based communities.