When I first found out it was an interesting concept that I was pretty neutral on but the more I engage/lurk with the community the more I enjoy it.
I generally don’t post/comment much on Reddit because I tend to be extremely sincere and that’s not always well received. Usually I don’t get much hate, but what I do get is a lot of non-interaction mixed with downvotes. And it’s just really discouraging when I’m just trying to share my thoughts.
But having no downvotes here is so nice because I’m not afraid that I’m going to get silenced into oblivion. Either people will actually engage with me (and maybe disagree, but in a meaningful way), or they’ll move on and not randomly share their disdain via downvoting.
It’s such a small change but makes a big difference. I bet a lot of people feel the same as me - it’s more comfortable to engage here.
That… Sounds fantastic, actually. Although I could see people just generating puppet accounts to send harassing messages that only the victim and mods see, and switching accounts when they get banned. Could go especially bad in situations where the mods are also kinda in on it, as can happen (see also: organizations that turn out to have been “secretly” openly racist all along, in a way that was invisible to white workers but blatant to black workers, and that kind of thing).