• bh64@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    It sounds like a weirdly specific thing for a bot to do.

    It could be a case of the Baader–Meinhof phenomenon:

    Frequency illusion, also known as the Baader–Meinhof phenomenon or frequency bias, is a cognitive bias referring to the tendency to notice something more often after noticing it for the first time, leading to the belief that it has an increased frequency of occurrence.The illusion is a result of increased awareness of a phrase, idea, or object – for example, hearing a song more often or seeing red cars everywhere.

    • mateomaui@reddthat.com
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      1 year ago

      I was just informed that someone is following me around downvoting everything, which is hilarious since my instance has downvotes disabled. It’s definitely some idiot or a group of them.

      edit: also, its adorable that you suggest it’s all in my head, it’s not. I have the receipts. And the fact they are all coming from new accounts with only the one comment each is pretty obvious.

      • bh64@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        Oh that’s bad. Good luck getting rid of them.

        I personally find downvotes useful because there are a lot of low quality comments and content. Downvotes help me (and others) to avoid seeing them. Thus not wasting time with uninteresting posts or comments. But you aren’t supposed to downvote everything that someone says.

        • mateomaui@reddthat.com
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          1 year ago

          Not that bad, the block feature works great.

          I place zero value on downvotes because they’re used as a weapon, such as right now for me if my instance actually logged them, or as a harassment strat against lgtbq individuals, etc, and they have the potential and often do hide perfectly valid solutions in help threads because someone suggested an unorthodox method for a specific case that gets downvoted to oblivion because that solution didn’t toe the line with everyone else’s preferred one.

          So feel free to engage with that, I’m not.

          • evranch@lemmy.ca
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            1 year ago

            Sorry pal I’m gonna have to give you a downvote for this, lol.

            Downvotes are incredibly valid. They mean “not only do I not approve of this content, I think it’s actively bad”. Simply not upvoting and moving on is the shrug of the internet. I probably give out 50x the upvotes as I do downvotes, but when I do serve one up it’s usually because the comment outright promotes misinformation.

            Look at the current state of YouTube sans downvotes. You used to be able to look at the ratio to tell if a video wasn’t even worth looking at. Now, you see oh, 100k people liked this. But what if 200k disliked it and it’s actually hot garbage? Oh, we’ll never know!

            Removing downvotes is just an attempt to drive “engagement” over quality, part of the downward slide of the internet.

            Note: I didn’t actually give you the downvote, lol. A valid discussion or debate should not earn a downvote. I don’t agree with your take, but it’s not trash.

                • mateomaui@reddthat.com
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                  1 year ago

                  I don’t wonder at all because I don’t see downvotes or care about them, advantages of being on a downvote disabled server. Y’all can circle jerk and I can ignore it.