Found this comment in the reddit archive on a post asking how does downvoting actually work.

I think there are a lot of reasons that go into this perception:

1. Interpretation. What is the *right* reason to downvote? Reddiquette suggests “Moderate based on quality, not opinion”. But if you think somebody’s thought process are very poor and is submitting a low quality comment, how is that different from disagreeing?

2. Correlation. Low quality and disagreement overlap heavily. You *can* disagree with a high-quality, well thought out comment, but those are rare and I don’t believe most people downvote those.

3. Confusion. Reddiquette says not to just downvote because you disagree, but it also says “The up and down arrows are your tools to make reddit what you want it to be.” What if we don’t want it to be a reactionary, intolerant, racist, uneducated place? What if we want people to think before they speak? Isn’t that a legitimate use of downvotes as per Rediquette?

4. Inaccuracy. I’ve certainly heard this perception that people downvote things they disagree with before. But is it even statistically true?

Most people don’t vote at all on most comments. That would take far too long. I don’t know the ratio of downvotes to upvotes total on Reddit, but I’d bet there are more upvotes than downvotes. (A bigger problem *might* be that the upvotes tend to go to lowest-common-denominator jokes rather than insightful, explanatory (long with references) comments.)

How would you even go about separating other people’s downvotes for simple disagreement versus those they think are poorly thought out (i.e., low quality). How do you know *why* they downvoted.

Also, is confirmation bias at hand here. Seeing a few cases of this might lead one to think it is far more common than it is.

I don’t know the answer. I don’t even know that there is a problem. I’ll believe it when I see the statistical evidence.