Whenever I post or comment (collectively, “post”), it has my upvote automatically without me doing anything, so the post always starts at +1/-0.
Now I’ve seen fresh posts with +0/-0, so not even the user itself is upvoting.
I don’t really care that much about votes, but I’m curious. Is this the user removing their own upvote, a client feature, some server feature, or some other reason?
Thank you in advance.
Edit: typos
Why are we caring about score points?
I care so little about the arrows that I treat it like a scoreboard sometimes. If I see that I’ve got 1 Upvote and 2 Downvotes, I’ll throw up a upvote to tie. I’ll treat it like it’s a sports game too if it’s tied.
“AND WITH A SWING, HE HITS A HOME RUN!! THE GAME IS NOW 6 - 5! BALL GAME OVER!!”
It’s a matter of influence. People just tend to believe in “popular” opinions.
If someone asks: “What’s the best vacuum cleaner?” And there is a highly upvoted answer, people tend to believe it as true.
Same goes for political opinions btw., that’s why dessalines bans users from lemmy.ml for downvoting.
I read it affects some comment/post sorting modes, so votes may be useful in some communities. I could see a support channel wanting correct answers at the top, for example