I actually made the same point in the part that you quoted. I said that I only use downvotes for things that I think mods should remove. You stated it more clearly, though.

And I think your other point about removing downvotes leading to increased trolling would need to be investigated with better controls. You even said that the forums you’re talking about are “lesser-moderated”, so my mind immediately latches onto that as the reason for more trolls, while you see the differences in voting as the problem. I think moderation is the vehicle to decrease visibility, while votes are the vehicle to increase visibility.

It could also be related to something like the number of users and traffic. Likely trolling is encouraged by many of these factors combined.

That part you quoted is the least important part of the comment. I put it in because I think it’s important that everyone knows votes are public, but it doesn’t really have anything to do with my point. But I’ll just remove that paragraph so that it doesn’t confuse people who only read the bare minimum.

Apparently, this is a joke about Carnation’s slogan. From Wikipedia:

In 1907, the promotional phrase “Carnation Condensed Milk, the milk from contented cows” was introduced.

Downvotes are inherently broken. They are a bad idea and they cannot be easily fixed.

Why are they broken? Because users with good intentions don’t use them as much as people with bad intentions, yet the system actually rewards users for downvoting.

How are people rewarded for downvoting? Well, their votes count more. If I upvote a comment I agree with, it becomes more visible. But if I downvote all of the other comments, the one I agree with becomes even more visible. It’s like giving downvoters double votes. And since votes are private on Reddit, it’s impossible to know for sure what is happening. People may even have extra accounts just to get more ability to downvote.

If you reward people for acting in bad faith, then they will keep acting worse and worse.

Welcome to Trump’s America. “Well that fucking sucks for humanity,” might as well be the phrase that historians use to summarize his second term.

If you’ll recall, he tried to withdraw America from the WHO at the end of his first term, but failed due to losing the election before the request was accepted. The WHO’s recommendations didn’t match what Trump said during the COVID pandemic, and Trump will use any means at his disposal to quash dissent.

Oh there definitely is a way to defend it.

Reading your comment, I have realized that you are correct, there are at least several ways to defend it contrary to what I said, but I think your specific example is flawed.

Trans people are evil incarnate trying to destroy humanity.

I said it was impossible to defend “without basing it on bigotry,” and that is simple bigotry. I do agree with you that this is almost certainly the sort of argument you’d hear from a Trump supporter.

Like I said, though, reading your comment, I did realize that it’s theoretically possible to defend without bigotry, just as long as you allow fantasy and insanity as defenses. Like, if they say, “God told me it was the job of religious people to take away the pensions of trans people,” that would not be bigotry.

Also, sheer ignorance and stupidity can be a non-bigoted defense. You know, like, “Trump would never do something evil. Therefore, this must be good.”

There may even be some sort of pedantic defense, something like, “People who are dishonorably discharged are supposed to lose their pension.” (I don’t know that they were dishonorably discharged, or that people who are dishonorably discharged are supposed to lose their pensions. It’s just an example of how there might be a pedantic argument.)

I’d be interested if there was actually an argument that could be used to defend Trump that didn’t insult everybody’s intelligence, though.

I hate to say anything positive about this situation, but sometimes, it’s nice to have definitive, unambiguous evidence that you’re fighting on the side of good against evil. There is no way to defend the Trump administration here without basing it on bigotry.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relationship_of_Donald_Trump_and_Jeffrey_Epstein

In 2002, speaking to New York magazine, Trump said “I’ve known Jeff for 15 years. Terrific guy.” He also stated that “He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.”

and

In 2017, Epstein told Wolff that he had been Trump’s “closest friend for 10 years”.

Two guys who say they’d been friends for a long time.

Moderators cannot understand context, sarcasm or satire

or subtlety. I was once banned by admins for explaining how criticizing a religion’s official dogma is different from hate speech against individuals who practice the religion.

This is probably because of how shitty American trademark law is, more than anything. I’m not a lawyer, but I’ve heard it over and over that trademark owners are legally required to defend their trademarks from potential violators like this, or they can lose the trademark.

Everybody knows this, but why let the truth get in the way of an exciting news story?

“I am starting to regret my vote for Trump.” - David Cross bit from Trump’s first term.

You can’t see people’s faces through a glory hole.

You are closely tying together the timelines for the way that the change is proposed/designed/approved and the way that the change is validated/iterated. There is no need to do that, and I’m not sure how you came to that way of thinking.

You’re acting as if normal people think about things before forming an opinion.

When you want to explain other people’s actions, you should first imagine that they never think about anything, that they’re incapable of reasoning, and that their opinions about others tend to be formed the first time that they notice those others, which is often the first time they are bothered by them.

If you cannot explain their behavior in that way, then you should start to explore the idea that they’re intentionally doing things as assholes. This is essentially the same idea as the old saying, never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity. Whether you agree with the underlying concept, I find it’s an extremely useful tool to predict the actions of others.

“Killings at sea” is a better phrase than some I’ve heard, but I wish they’d emphasize that we are using our military to murder civilians. They are non-military targets.

They were not charged with a crime. They had no chances to defend themselves. They received nothing remotely resembling due process. They were not convicted by a court, nor given the death penalty. We in the US do not execute people for possessing or transporting drugs.

Our military is simply murdering people.

What? They get to vote for that? When do I get to vote whether we let Qatar have a base on American soil?

Thank you for all the links, but nothing is more persuasive than his Wikipedia page.

I guess I could look past one or two of those things. But his support for Prop 8 and his publicly criticizing masking during the pandemic are big no-gos for me. One shows that he lacks basic empathy, and the other shows that he thinks highly of his uninformed opinion, even to the point of betting other people’s lives on it.

If that’s true then I will switch today.

Yeah, just for people who didn’t even read the summary above, Kasparov said:

People would have been shaking their heads in disbelief if someone had predicted, 15 months ago, that Putin would annex Crimea and grossly violate European postwar borders.

It was easy to predict that Putin would be violating borders to expand Russia based on his extremely recent history of violating borders to expand Russia.

Although I am constantly disappointed with the state of social programs and funding in America, the one area where we sometimes can compete is in our libraries. My local library lends CDs, movies, and games. Not sure about puzzles. They have a publicly available 3d printer lab and computer lab. They have a large ebook catalogue, and while their film streaming service is frustratingly limited, it does exist. They have all sorts of community events. They host crafting nights.

They host speakers, especially authors, book signings, and special interest events. One of the events even calls itself a convention, you know like comicon, but… well… it’s not really big enough for that to actually make sense. It’s actually a pretty small local library.

Libraries to this day are a very cultural thing in America, and act like a community center. They are a place where even homeless people can go and not be too harassed. And on top of all that, they even lend out books!