Every day, I see absolutely moronic comments getting upvoted while perfectly reasonable takes are downvoted. This would be a great opportunity to curate your feed by blocking these users en masse. Active curation like this is the only way to make social media even half-tolerable.

Whether you use it to filter out toxic users or to build an echo chamber, I think everyone should be free to do so. No one should be forced to share space with people they feel bring no value to the discussion - or, worse, make it more toxic.

  • JubilantJaguar@lemmy.worldEnglish
    101·
    11 days ago

    Blocking this, banning that. The result will be a bunch of filter bubbles where people only see what confirms and validates their own prejudices. Echo chambers, as you call them. I agree that this is a better scenario than a cesspool of cynicism and hate and negativity, but surely we can do better.

    If the objective is incentivizing good behavior, here’s another idea: reward upvoting and make it costly to downvote. Details TBD but other forums have done it and it works.

    • ContrarianTrail@lemm.eeOPEnglish
      41·
      11 days ago

      I can already block entire instances along with every single user there. I don’t see why I should care if that’s what someone wants to do.

    • BonerMan@ani.socialEnglish
      31·
      11 days ago

      OK but there are people you just don’t want to see and that shouldn’t be able to bother you. Just because you project what you would do on others doesn’t mean that others will do that. The current block on Lemmy is just a hide feature, every other social media has a working block feature.

      A echo chamber comes when toxic assholes can troll normal people out of Lemmy, wich is the current state of matter.

    • Lvxferre@mander.xyzEnglish
      2·
      9 days ago

      If the objective is incentivizing good behavior, here’s another idea: reward upvoting and make it costly to downvote. Details TBD but other forums have done it and it works.

      A simple way is to make downvotes “cost” more clicks. For example:

      • if you want to upvote someone, you click the arrow up button and you’re done.
      • if you want to downvote someone, you click the arrow down button, then a pop-up confirming it.

      It isn’t too much of a deal if you downvote people sparingly, but if you’re consistently downvoting others it would get annoying.

      Additionally, PieFed has a feature in line with your idea: up/downvoting people gives you “attitude”, and if your attitude is too low (too many downvotes in comparison with upvotes), a warning mark appears near your username. Mods can also use this as a piece of info to decide how to handle you, as users who are consistently downvoting others are typically combative.