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Downvoting on Social Media is Toxic
(aussie.zone)
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this post was submitted on 17 Jul 2026
-37 points (18.6% liked)
Unpopular Opinion
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Welcome to the Unpopular Opinion community!
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Vote the opposite of the norm.
If you agree that the opinion is unpopular give it an arrow up. If it's something that's widely accepted, give it an arrow down.
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Isn't that what the "hot" sort is for? Also if someone's spouting hate, they will naturally settle at the bottom, and that's kind of what the report button is for right? If 4 people agree with the jerk but 17 agree with the other people, that's telling in of itself.
"naturally settling at the bottom" is also what happens to new comments, or neutral comments that just don't provide much information. that's not on the same par as someone who's spreading misinformation, or hate speech.
and yes, the report button can potentially get that comment removed, but that depends on moderators agreeing with the report, being active, being in a similar time zone, etc.
downvoting harms no one but can help by pushing harmful comments out of sight & below the neutral / new comments.
Do you think my comments in this thread are harmful? The downvotes don't exactly spark joy.
Edit: I feel like one of the top comments explains people's mindset perfectly:
People know it's a negative button, that's the reason they press it. It's the "I want you to feel bad" button, as they put it, and so many others agreed with. It has nothing to do at all with moderation, that's not how people use it or think about it.
If you don't mind, I will weigh in, with my opinion.
When you get a drivers license, you agree to follow the laws of the road, or face consequences. Same thing for most things we do outside established rights. Hell, even with things within established rights.
Some things are clearly written. Some are social contracts.
By signing up for (anti)social media, or platforms where the option to up and down vote exist, you are agreeing to let people take those actions on your content.
Would you go to a seafood restaurant, and complain to them you're allergic to shellfish? I would hope not. You wouldn't demand a company to change their very nature to accommodate you, knowing that you're the outlier.
By complaining on the very platform that offers the feature you're complaining about, you're not voicing an "unpopular opinion", you're putting your hypocrisy on display, front-and-center.
I don't think those analogies are quite right.
In the driving one, it's more like, imagine when you were driving your car, you could downvote other drivers around you. It would create this toxicity ecosystem where everyone gets even angrier and more negative. You would arrive at your destination with -5 downvotes and think to yourself, "what the heck, I didn't even do anything wrong! I bet it was xyz cars who did it." Then, next time you drive, maybe you downvote more people, which makes them more upset. It would be like a cycle of negativity, like a virus, infecting everyone and making road rage even worse and drivers becoming more judgemental.
You go to a seafood restaurant and you get similarly scored on your behaviour in public and how good of a customer you are. Maybe people nearby get annoyed at you because you have kids, or any other reason that doesn't actually matter that much. Or maybe you're an obnoxious group that doesn't care about others. Again most people just end up with a whole bunch of negativity and feel put upon.
Maybe you did do something wrong, maybe not, but the vote doesn't teach you anything. At the end of the month you see -200 down votes just because you happened to be in a traffic jam, and -20 because you had to take back some undercooked food. You didn't break a single law, but how does that make you feel? All it teaches you is that there are people out there that vaguely disagree with you, or don't like you, which is basically worthless information. It's negativity without context. These sorts of voting systems generally don't translate very well to real life, outside of a Black Mirror episode. Thankfully.
I'm allowed to voice my opinion. I don't believe it's hypocritical to complain about something that I think could be better. It would be hypocritical if I downvoted every post in this thread that I disagree with, but I didn't. I generally only downvote people who personally attack me.
It's completely normal to enjoy something, and also notice it's faults. I believe it's strange to think that something is completely perfect because you enjoy it, and stomp on any criticism.
not especially, but i think communities like unpopularopinion is the kind of community that people head to, with tomatoes and boos at the ready 😅
i think downvoting here is supposed to mean that you're actually spouting a popular opinion, which would translate to how most people also don't enjoy being downvoted. idk if people actually stick to that here, though
i generally stick to smaller communities about things like foraging or diy etc and find them fairly positive, so maybe bigger comms have a higher chance of negative interactions..? best o' luck in future 🫡
Yeah definitely bigger communities seem to be more toxic… I'm not sure why that is though. I wasn't expecting this one of all places to be, since it's supposedly a place for discourse. Thanks, hopefully future interactions are kinder in this service.