Blåhaj Lemmy is a Lemmy instance attached to blahaj.zone. This is a group for questions or discussions relevant to either instance.
It's a per-instance setting. Downvotes just go into the void, here.
I also think it's a good idea. If downvotes were just used as a way for communities to self-moderate it might be nice, pushing things that are objectively not contributing anything valuable out of view. But in reality they're used as a disagree button at best, and in harmful ways at worst.
We just use the report button if something is truly out of place.
Downvotes are recorded locally on instances that support it. If you view blahaj communities on an instance that allows down votes you will see them but it will be a count of just users from that instance, rather than from all instances that support them. Downvotes do not federate unless the host instance supports them.
There are more negatives from downvotes than upsides. They are always used as a disagree button no matter how much you try to coach users not to.
It doesn't seem like that is the case anymore, modern versions of Lemmy seem to pass downvotes through, since counts seem similar on other instances now. I don't understand why though.
@[email protected] maybe this is something to discuss with the lemmy devs about since it diminishes the merit of disabling downvotes in the first place.
here's your answer: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/5493235/4449914
Downvotes were often turned against trans folk on reddit simply because they’re openly trans. I have no desire to see that repeated here, and so I disabled them when we were setting up the instance.
Given that lemmy still has plenty of transphobes, it’s unlikely we’ll change it any time soon. Ideally, it would be a per user setting that allows the admins to set the default settings for new users, but that’s not functionality that exists at this time.
See also: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/104422