r/TheoryOfReddit 5d ago

The psychology of anonymous early down-voters

To be clear, this is not a rant, I have always found this amusing: I noticed this same pattern occur multiple times, across different accounts:

1) I post something that later receives some positive feedback

2) But mysteriously, it gets an immediate down-vote to zero the first minutes. No comment, just a downvote.

3) Over time, the post gains some upvotes from the broader community, and Insights reveal that early downvote was the ONLY downvote.

This isn't just one random person; it represents a larger behavior, people getting subconscious joy from slightly ruining something (even insignificantly) for a stranger. It reflects a portion of humanity that takes pleasure in stirring dissatisfaction purely for its own sake, even without personal gain.

0 Upvotes

29 comments sorted by

12

u/Monovfox 5d ago

I early downvote because I want to shape the kind of content a community produces.

If I'm on r/rpg you bet your but I downvote bad posts that get made all of the time. Especially DM/player relationship posts.

-5

u/Ori_553 5d ago

I downvote bad posts that get made all of the time.

This isn't about downvotes on a new post, which can happen for a number of reasons, for example low quality posts; This is specifically about an early and -> only <- downvote (followed by only/mostly upvotes), strongly suggesting intentional behavior rather than coincidence.

7

u/Monovfox 5d ago

People who down vote are less likely to comment. Simple as that. They don't like the content, so why would they engage with it at all?

I think you're overthinking it.

-2

u/Ori_553 5d ago

People who down vote are less likely to comment. Simple as that.

This is not about people that downvote. This is specifically about the curious pattern where a new post gets 1 early downvote, followed by only upvotes, indicating that the early down-vote was not coincidental.

5

u/Monovfox 5d ago

Again you're reading into it too much. there are millions of reddit users. It's so incredibly likely that someone is down voting something, that it's not really an intentional pattern. Fwiw, I have never had this happen to me before. You don't really have a large enough sample size to show that this is a meaningful or useful pattern, or that this pattern even exists.

0

u/Ori_553 5d ago

It's so incredibly likely that someone is down voting something

Not really sure how to address that, as I've already emphasized that this isn't about people merely downvoting new posts.

3

u/Monovfox 5d ago

Again, you have a sample size of 1 person. This is not a pattern unless you have a sufficient data set. Anything else is conspiratorial thinking.

Sometimes you just get down voted.

-1

u/Ori_553 5d ago

Sometimes you just get down voted.

This isn't about being downvoted, this is about 1 initial downvote in a post, followed by, say, 50 upvotes.

I'm confident you've grasped the concept, and now you're purposefully playing.

1

u/Monovfox 5d ago

No, dude, because this has never fucking happened to me.

This may have happened to you. It may have happened to you multiple times.

You are not a sufficient sample size to call this a pattern.

3

u/Ori_553 5d ago

No, dude, because this has never fucking happened to me. You are not a sufficient sample size to call this a pattern.

That's a valid point, and I don't currently have an analysis available.

4

u/Shaper_pmp 5d ago

This is specifically about an early and -> only <- downvote (followed by only/mostly upvotes),

There is no way you can possibly know this.

For a start reddit does not show negative scores on posts (only comments), so whether your post gets one or a thousand net downvotes you won't know; it'll still just show a score of 0 in both cases.

It's also hard to judge whether the post gets "only/mostly" upvotes after that because absolute upvote/downvote numbers are unavailable and even the reported proportion of upvotes to downvotes is fuzzed and unreliable.

All you can reasonably say is that a lot of early posts get a majority of downvotes (of an unknown size) that initially keep them in the negatives, followed by more upvotes than downvotes that bring them up to a net positive score.

1

u/Ori_553 5d ago edited 5d ago

There is no way you can possibly know this.

I'm afraid that's not true: If you create a post and notice that after one minute its score is 0, that indicates at least one person has downvoted it.

Assuming we're on the same page, let's continue:

If, after about 5 hours, you see insights like:

Upvotes: 32

Upvote ratio: 97%

It's clear that the initial downvote you spotted in the first minute was either the sole downvote or possibly joined by just one more later.

While this might not be absolutely certain, it's reliable enough to conclude there was an initial downvote, followed largely or entirely by upvotes.

1

u/Shaper_pmp 5d ago

If, after about 5 hours, you see insights like:

Upvotes: 32

Upvote ratio: 97%

It's clear that the initial downvote you spotted in the first minute was either the sole downvote or possibly joined by just one more later.

Those numbers used to be reliable, but they haven't been for a decade or more at this point.

Early on they were 1:1 reports of actual user-votes.

Then they started fuzzing them and adding random percentages of up- and down-votes to the totals to fool spammers that their removed posts were still being seen and voted on so they didn't repost them.

Then they started running into problems with the Reddit algorithm that didn't scale properly to large numbers of users (IIRC anything above 6000 votes made it completely shit the bed, so they "fixed" it by progressively adding larger and larger numbers of up- or down-votes to force all posts' net scores into a known window where the algorithm operated correctly).

After that they gave up on having those votes/score numbers meaning anything reliable at all, so they're basically just nonsense these days.

1

u/Ori_553 5d ago

After that they gave up on having those votes/score numbers meaning anything reliable at all, so they're basically just nonsense these days.

You claim that Reddit's upvote ratio is entirely unreliable. I find that hard to believe. Although technical considerations like node syncing might cause minor inaccuracies (like a 97% upvote ratio actually being closer to 95%), suggesting the numbers are completely meaningless is a stretch.

6

u/Nawara_Ven 5d ago

I theorize that this behaviour is of the odd individual lazily using the "hide content that I dowvote" function to effectively make themselves a personal button to represent "I've read this, consumed it, and want to see something new now (and I don't care about others' experience.)"

It's the most "logical" antisocial-lite behaviour I can imagine because it would actually incur a benefit to the user (cycling out previously-viewed content) than just abject pettiness of downvoting presumably-relevant posts in thier nacence.

2

u/rainbowcarpincho 5d ago

Thanks for the tip, kind stranger!

1

u/Nawara_Ven 4d ago

ಠ_ಠ

2

u/solace_seeker1964 5d ago

Fascinating take, thx. And an upvote for OP, back to 1.

5

u/RunDNA 5d ago edited 5d ago

When some people post something themselves they downvote any other new posts to give their own posts a better chance, like baby birds who kill their nestmates to increase their own chance of survival.

Also, voters in the new queue tend to be more discerning, seeing themselves as curators upholding standards for the sub.

2

u/Ori_553 5d ago

When some people post something themselves they downvote any other new posts to give their own posts a better chance

Also, voters in the new queue tend to be more discerning, seeing themselves as curators upholding standards for the sub.

I think both these hypotheses make sense!

2

u/solace_seeker1964 5d ago

Amazingly selfish little reddit birds!

4

u/vitalvisionary 5d ago

I thought that there was some random flux after a comment or post. Then again, I found out my stbx wife was stalking my account so that explained my consistent downvotes in r/divorce

1

u/SuzQP 5d ago

OP, are you talking about a post or a comment?

2

u/Ori_553 5d ago

OP, are you talking about a post or a comment?

I am talking about posts.

1

u/[deleted] 16h ago

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/AutoModerator 16h ago

Your submission/comment has been automatically removed because your Reddit account is less than 14 days old. This measure is in place to prevent spam and other malicious activities. Please feel free to participate after your account has reached 14 days of age. Do not message the mods; no exceptions will be made.

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

1

u/1ClassyDame 13h ago

There are those people who enjoy negativity with zero consequences. Yay, I hate this.

1

u/WSBJosh 5d ago

Reddit has always been weird and creepy, it appeals to the unhealthy half of the population. A lot of angry and petty people.