I see in instances like beehaw.org and lemmy.one that dislikes are disabled for bullying people. Do you think it is a good practice for mental health?
no, sometimes people suck and deserve to have their sentiment downvoted - at least on a site where voting has to exist
on proper forums where there is no voting, there are better ways to discourage behavior, like just ignoring the user / posts. but if the buttons are there you want to click them
imo we should 100% keep downvotes, how else would we shame bigoted opinions?
I far prefer it to be transparent. But its good that instances can make the decision for themselves.
I personally feel like restricting downvotes is cutting off a vital voice that people may have so that’s why in my instance I have them enabled. If there’s something that the community disagrees with I feel like the community should be able to vote on that rather than only allowing upvotes and not allowing everyone to voice their proper opinion on something.
I like that profile view in lemmy does not show the total “score”. So when someone downvotes your comment, they downvote just that, the comment, not you. Which I think is good for mental health.
Speaking for myself, I feel that possibility of getting downvotes makes me more careful to not invoke negative emotions in others and instead keep more positive tone. In the long run that may be good for everyone’s mental health as well!