My first ever suspension from Reddit was for an anti religion comment. On Reddit. Then after my 3 days were up, the first thread I saw was on the subject of religion, full of people saying worse thing than I had, and in one of the major subs, not even atheism or anything.

I could definitely buy that they’re using AI but personally I always had the impression that they outsource the job and don’t make sure everyone is even on the same page or can read English properly.

Because even the stuff that gets [removed by Reddit] seems to be nonsense a lot of the time. A while ago I saw someone make a post saying something like “Hi guys, haven’t been active much lately. But I’m back and gonna be posting more.” Came back later and it was [removed by Reddit]. So not even that is trustworthy or gives the impression that they actually know wtf they’re doing.

Personally, I still haven’t started judging users by the instance that they made their profile on. Unless there’s right wing instances but in that case I’m guessing they’re de-federated from my current experience. I prefer to go by what I’m reading from an individual user or the vibe in a particular community. When you browse instances on the join page, there’s no cliff notes on the turf wars between them. So a lot of users are signing up based on the written description.

Ah that’s a fair compromise. In that case, assuming they were all going to join, I’d go for the non Elon / Zuck / Spez run platform for sure.

That just makes me think, this is a strange question for the fediverse because I’m pretty sure a fair amount of instances aren’t American run already.

Fuck no. The Americans provide 90% of our entertainment and they’re actually fun people to interact with and chat with (the ones that aren’t wearing MAGA hats that is). What am I gonna go without Americans on social media? Talk about fucking Table Mountain? Join the Europeans in looking down on the USA for everything and always acting like their own shit doesn’t stink?

Fuck that, I’d start using VPNs.

As in “getting their shit done.”

As a non-American, it’s always looked to me like the Republicans manage to get their shit done whether they’re in charge or not and the Democrats are just there to assure everyone they have a choice in voting and not much else.

The whole thing to me looks like a game of good cop / bad cop. Bad cop comes along beats the shit out you, and then good cop comes along to give you a cup of weak shit coffee as a consolation for your black eye and says something unconvincing about being unhappy with bad cop’s behaviour, before letting bad cop back in to beat the shit out of you some more.

And for every cycle of that, bad cop achieves his goals while good cop just acts as a glorified tea lady that tries to make sure you don’t have any hard feelings about bad cop.

Around the time I first started using this username about 7 or so years ago, I was playing through the Megaman Zero games, that take place approximately 100 years after the events of Megaman X, which take place during “year 21xx”. So ‘Zero22xx’ specifically references the version of Zero from the Megaman Zero games.

On top of that, I also just thought it was a cool mix of letters and numbers that can look pretty random if you don’t know the games, or if I’m not using a profile pic.

The only annoying thing is that at some point around the time I created this username, I started seeing an anime character called ‘ZeroTwo’ around. So I guess it could be mistaken that I’m referencing that too.

All depends on which app / UI you’re using I guess but it should look pretty much like Reddit almost everywhere. The only difference here is that there’s no grand total at the top of your profile like a high score. But when I was signed up on world, in the app I’m using you could see separate up and down vote counts for everything.

They’re really not meaningless though. For one thing, they allow moderators and admins to more easily detect trolls and bad faith actors. And on platforms or with add-ons that allow better tracking of vote history, it allows the user to more efficiently moderate their own experience, should they so choose.

Also, I think you’ve got to be kind of an asshole to not recognise that a little bit of validation from communities that you participate in is a nice thing to have and that downvotes can hurt to an extent, even if it’s not the same as getting physically slapped. And to be clear, I’m not pointing at you or anyone, I’m just riffing here. I haven’t even seen downvotes for a while now.

So yeah, I’d say they’re meaningless in a video game sense. You’re not going to win any prizes with them. But there’s a reason they exist, plus no one is immune to the effects of positive or negative reinforcement.

I dunno but I always get the impression that these fucking people that are too cool for school and need to loudly tell everyone how little they care about downvotes every chance they get, are probably also the people that go around using downvotes in bad faith and making the platform a little less welcoming for everyone.

My advice would probably be to just stay away from instances that are populated with the kind of people that use downvotes as a ‘disagree’ button or panic button to make themselves feel better when reading something they don’t understand. Those were always the worst people on Reddit that dragged the experience down for everyone. And it sucks that they’re all here too. And in a smaller pond, they’re going to be making a bigger splash.

I’d find a nice instance and / or communities to spend 90% of my time in and only actually go to places like Ask Lemmy in world when you actually feel like dealing with smart alecs and neckbeards.

Edit: and downvoting people for talking about downvotes isn’t actually funny, it’s just proof that you use downvotes for the wrong reasons. For the meme and ‘disagree’ button.

Something I’ve seen pointed out about Lemmy and I’m starting to notice a little bit occasionally, is that people love ‘answering’ questions by not really answering and grandstanding a little bit. Someone asks “is there a gen z community?” and the responses they get are things like “who cares about these generation labels?” and no answers to the question.

Here you ask why there’s a large amount of downvotes on a particular instance, and not what people’s personal philosophy regarding downvotes is, and yet the top answer is someone that came here especially to tell you that they don’t care and no one cares.

And these guys are gonna complain about people going to places like Bluesky instead of joining the fediverse. AskReddit was basically the gateway to Reddit for new users.

To try and guess at an answer, even though I’m new here and haven’t even seen downvotes for the last few days. I think that people are trying to keep a certain political atmosphere and not let trolls / right wingers / people who are “just asking questions” take over. So votes go hard in that direction. And also I think there’s probably a lot more of the types around here that’ll have a ‘discussion’ while downvoting every response they get from you, more than on Reddit. Just going by the sneering that comes with how some harmless questions are answered.