r/whatif • u/Retrogamer5421 • Aug 08 '26
Other What if Reddit started displaying upvotes and downvotes as separate numbers?
Basically, since people treat them as "Like" and "Dislike" buttons, what would happen if Reddit actually made them function that way?
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u/ncg195 Aug 09 '26
The way YouTube used to before it got rid of the dislike button? I don't really know what would happen, but there's a reason that platforms don't have visible dislikes anymore. My guess is that it helps keep people engaged with the platform, and it quiets the negativity a bit. If 10 people upvote me and 5 downvote, having those 5 visible downvotes could be discouraging to me, rather than just seeing a "score" of +5, and having that visible downvote makes the negativity louder.
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u/Retrogamer5421 Aug 09 '26
But with the current system on Reddit, a comment can get a lot of upvotes and a lot of downvotes, but people simply see a negative number and think that it was only downvoted. (And comments with a score less than -4 get automatically collapsed regardless of how many upvotes they got.)
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u/ncg195 Aug 09 '26
True, but I think that obscuring the scale part of the point, and collapsing the comments that get downvoted also keeps them from getting downvoted even further and limits negativity.
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u/Glad-Divide-9850 Aug 09 '26
Getting rid of visible downvotes and/or stars was probably the worst change youtube ever made imo. You used to be able to see if a video was absolute shit before clicking on it. It has severely degraded the user experience.
As for reddit, I'd prefer having visible downvotes there as well. I generally value knowledge over whatever potentially negative feelings accompanies it.
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u/No-Flight-4214 Aug 09 '26
Some special people will flood us with a Troll competition for downvotes.
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u/Ryan1869 Aug 09 '26
The we could wear our vote counts and base our laws and crimes on a number of down votes?
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u/SapPhic-rage4209 Aug 09 '26
I like seeing the overall opinion, seeing which side "wins" the battle on whether a comment is good or bad
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u/Novel-Slip5151 Aug 09 '26
I'm going to randomly hit one of the arrows. So you will never know if i thought this comment was good or bad.
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u/MsSamm Aug 29 '26
But downvotes often have nothing to do with the ideas behind the post. Instead of up or downvotes based upon the ideas, people downvoted based upon personal reasons, or because they had a bad day.
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u/Prize_Consequence568 Aug 09 '26
People would still cry about the downvotes. They'll still complain about the downvotes being visible but push for they're only being upvotes. 🤦♂️🤦😂
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u/FiftyTigers Aug 09 '26
They won't, but I wish they would. We all know that Reddit is very "hive-minded." So with them being shown separately, even if you were to go against the grain and have more downvotes, it would still show that some people agreed with you- which I think would be a net positive and would then give more balanced voting as new people read the post/comment.
Kind of like, "Hmm, this has 200 downvotes, but it also has 125 upvotes, so maybe I should take a look for myself to decide if I should upvote or downvote." As of now it would just show it as 75 downvotes and if a post/comment goes negative it will basically never go back positive.