[moomin]

I think one of the big things about downvotes is that it works better for a homogenous user base. Otherwise you can get in a situation where one group votes up and another votes down. It’s fairly obvious this happens on HN itself but the HN is FAR less diverse than the old Twitter user base, and has something more resembling a shared set of values.

With upvotes only, you can have a BLM community and a Proud Boys community and the negative interactions are replies, which Twitter interprets as positive interactions. With downvotes you have the prospect of entire communities downvoting each other. This will probably result in one or both communities leaving.

Social design is hard, is what I’m saying.

[unsignedint]

I think a dislike button makes more sense for replies. It might just speed up the echo chamber effect, but people are already hiding, muting, and blocking those with opposing or intolerable replies. So, in some ways, dislikes for replies make sense. People already weaponize blocks, and I often hear stories of accounts getting unjustly banned because of "organized bans" where a group of users coordinate to block and signal to ban someone they disagree with. Plus, you can already mark posts as "not interesting," so it might not make much difference.

[wkat4242]

I think it's also region dependent. I notice a lot of Americans have this strong drive to be a "winner" and are very sensitive to negative criticism. The same in southern Europe (though without the ambition but they are certainly sensitive)

In the Netherlands and Germany however we are pretty blunt and can tell people if we don't like something they did and they don't really take it personal if we're not an ass about it.

So for us a downvote button would be pretty normal.

[fragmede]

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