It’s very nice to see that X people liked a post/comment and Y people disliked it instead of just having a singular “goodness/badness” rating. It (literally, in a mathematical sense) adds a whole new dimension to post ratings and gives us a more nuanced understanding of people’s opinions. Plus, it feels a lot better to see that 5 people agreed with you and 7 disagreed when you made a controversial statement instead of just seeing a score of -1 telling you how bad you are.
Woah, I can even see who downvoted on there! It does seem to be a bit behind though, as I see less upvotes and only one (instead of 12) downvotes.
IMO allowing downvotes is good because when used properly, it can filter out toxic and hateful content more effectively than just allowing upvotes, as well as giving people a way to reduce the visibility of misinformation. A good case study for this trying to find a good tutorial for something on YouTube before and after the removal of dislikes.
That’s the problem. Downvotes often aren’t used properly.
I always thought part of the fun was to see if your comments pissed off enough people to get downvoted into the negatives!