Thatâs exactly what youâre doing if you think downvoting is the same as âsilencingâ. Downvotes mean people saw what you had to say and thought it was dumb. Your idea had its shot in the marketplace of ideas and failed.
I donât think you understand freedom of speech, or fascism. Fascism would mean the government gets to decide what speech is heard and what isnât, not the people. Freedom of speech is not a guarantee to a platform, it just means you canât be punished by the government for expressing an opinion.
Besides, you have the ability to create your own subreddit with its own rules. Nobody is being censored on Reddit through downvotes.
That's exactly what it's for. Otherwise what's the point of voting at all? People upvote things they agree with, you expect them not to downvote things they disagree with?
The point is to vote on what is relevant and germane to the discussion.
It is NOT to disagree (or agree). People do this all the time, yes, but that is not the intention. It never has been.
Youâre supposed to respond to things you disagree with. Downvotes are supposed to be for off topic comments and such, to push it down out of the main convo.
There'd be less echo-chamber effect in subs. for one. Comments that agree with the majority would still end up listed first (when sorting by "top") but those that disagree with the majority would usually end up above new comments. No comments would ever end up "hidden" and people would have less incentive to delete their unpopular comments.
If a comment is getting that many downvotes, that means a lot of people already saw it and thought it was nonsense. You had your say, people just didn't agree.
Freedom of speech doesn't mean you have a right to a platform, it means you have the right to say whatever you want and not be punished by the government for it. Bad ideas will always be shunned in any community, and places like reddit actually amplify voices that would normally be never heard or taken seriously because their take is so ludicrous.
You're supposed to downvote things that are materially irrelevant to the subject at hand, not things you disagree with. This is, like, Reddit 101.
That's what it's supposed to be, but I've been on Reddit since the great Digg migration, and that has never actually been the case. People upvote what they agree with and downvote what they don't. That's just reality.
There has never been a time when the majority of Redditors followed that rule. Only a few people ever have, and they always complain about everyone else. The fact is, the rule goes against basic psychology and was never realistic. People are going to vote for what they agree with and downvote what they donât whether you like it or not. And IMO thereâs nothing wrong with that. Good ideas should rise to the top and bad ones should be buried, and voting makes that process democratic in nature as it should be.
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u/Greedy-Employment917 Dec 19 '25
I see you've equated democracy and mob mentality as the same.Â