They might also be meaningless internet points. Who knows.

    • hypna@lemmy.world
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      2 hours ago

      I’ve been thinking recently that Lemmy would simply be better off without any comment votes. I’ve heard some instances disable them, but it still seems to be the norm. Group think already has enough pull given human nature. It doesn’t need a boost.

      • gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works
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        1 hour ago

        I mean I don’t think showing votes on posts and comments is inherently bad… but aggregating them to a user across instances seems not only technically challenging from a protocol sense (given that (de)federation and blacklisting is entirely in the control of the server admin), but also a feature that should be intentionally omitted. It’s genuinely not a useful metric in terms of building communities, which I think the lemmy stack should (and does) consider to be an essentially overriding priority.