A few days ago I downvoted someone’s comment, and the next day I happened to notice every single comment I’ve ever made had at least one downvote. All from the person I dared to downvote the ONE time. I straight up asked why they did it, and they seem to think I’m an “obvious” troll account that “apparently just exist to downvote other people”. I assure you I’m no troll account, and ironically don’t really downvote all that often.
I know the topic of public downvotes has been discussed before, but I never used to care either way. Now I’m kinda leaning in the “I don’t like it” side. Honestly, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel a little offended, maybe even attacked. Also, there goes all my imaginary internet points. Lol
Has anyone else had something like this happen to them, or am I just unlucky?
Didn’t you just see the upside too, though? You can see who’s downvoting all your comments and call them out on it. Someone could downvote stalk you on Reddit (quite sure that has happened to me before) and it would be invisible and unprovable.
True, but if they hadn’t seen it was me that downvoted them in the first place, they wouldn’t know who to stalk, and I wouldn’t have to call anyone out at all. Really though, I can still see both sides here. I’m just bitter it happened to me. Lol
@billothekid2 I’m with @FaceDeer on this, it’s way better to know you have a Downvote Fairy than to just think no one appreciates your comments.
Back on reddit it happens a lot, but the targets are more likely to feel discouraged or think the person they are replying to is the one downvoting them.
Besides, I had someone doing this to me here on kbin for a couple of days and they are not someone I ever downvoted or had even argued with.
I asked them to stop and they downvoted me one last time and then stopped. I don’t think they’d realized I can see them.
So the cause isn’t that people can see your downvotes, it’s that some people are just dicks.
Words to remember.
They went through all the trouble to downvote every post. You lived in that user’s head rent free all that time. Wear that shit like a badge of honor. They’re internet points; they’re not important.
@FaceDeer the super annoying thing on reddit would be when I was having a polite discussion with someone and a third party came along and silently downvoted everything they said to me.
Then they’d get all annoyed assuming it was me who did it.
A “fun” experience from Reddit that I’m glad is impossible here on kbin is when I’m in an argument with someone and they would insta-downvote every response I made to them, then vociferously deny that they were doing it even when it was basically impossible for it to be otherwise (for example if we were in a days-old thread nobody else was paying attention to and the downvote was happening within a minute or two of me posting - too fast to even have read the comment).
On a related note, I’m pleased that blocking someone doesn’t prevent them from responding to your comments here. The “get the ‘last word’ in and then block me so I couldn’t answer” pattern was even more annoying, since karma was meaningless anyway but the block disrupted the flow of informative debate if other people were following it too. In such situations I’d edit the last comment I’d made to mention what had happened, at least. Hope that shamed a few folks at least a little bit.
@FaceDeer yeah that secret downvoting thing was super passive-aggressive.
What was most annoying about blocks was that bug where you couldn’t reply to anyone downthread of a comment by the person who blocked you, so they could effectively end your other conversations with other people.
Yeah, trolls really care about being “called out”. Trolls can’t stand negative attention, so be sure to tell lots of people who they are and what they did!
Assuming you’re being sarcastic and mean the opposite, this hasn’t been my experience, actually. Just like with @livus, above, I called out a downvote-stalker once who’d been following me around and when I described how I was seeing his downvote pattern he instantly vanished. In my experience the “downvote warriors” are a cowardly bunch, they love being able to throw punches without being seen to throw punches. Once you make it clear to them that everyone can see what they’re doing they crumple under scrutiny.
The trolls you’re talking about are the kind that love to get into an argument with you. That’s quite different.
Okay. Yeah, I was being sarcastic, but now I see we had different kinds of trolls in mind. Thanks for taking the time to explain.
No problem. And I can imagine that there might be some out there who would indeed be gleeful about being called out for downvoting because they’re just that deep into the “raging asshole” state that any negative attention is giving them the dopamine hit they crave. But I suspect that kind of troll is going to be blatant enough that he’ll get blocked or banned by most places worth hanging out in anyway.
I probably shouldn’t admit it, but one of my favourite ways of dealing with a raging asshole on Reddit was to be impeccably polite to them until they blew their stack badly enough while trying to provoke me that I could report them. :) I’d only do that if they were clearly already unredeemable, though.
@FaceDeer interesting, wonder if it was the same person!
The other thing that hasn’t bern mentioned yet is vote manipulation is easy to spot on kbin.
When reddit first migrated here I remember someone being called out for having 3 or 4 profiles upvote/downvote all the same things.
Could be, I have no clue what their name was. I feel the worst fate for such people is to be irrelevant so I try to forget about them. :)
Yeah, the ability to spot vote manipulation is a nice one. The current interface for kbin makes it laborious to click through so many comments and posts to check, but once the API is settled it should be possible to write some nice tools for that kind of thing.