Meta and Announcements

My initial, knee-jerk reaction to this question is a strong no. However, I've seen good arguments on both sides. I personally don't like reporting unless it's something very obviously and/or egregiously problematic, as I feel that getting admins or mods involved and potentially silencing someone as a result is not a thing to be done lightly. Downvotes provide a bit of granularity here. (Though whether that's actually needed or if it just makes me feel better is debatable.) If a post does warrant reporting, downvoting it as well can help prevent it from getting more attention in the time it takes the mods to act.

On the other paw, I'm a trans former-Redditor so I know all too well how downvotes can be abused to silence people in favor of bigoted disinformation. A bunch of downvotes early on can prevent a quality post from gaining any traction at all, especially if people gain and use the option to hide posts below a certain karma threshold like some in here have suggested. It may not be much of a problem now, but if Lemmy really grows we may start to have issues with brigading.

So I guess my real answer is a resounding "meh." Neither option is perfect, and I suspect tackling these problems for real will require more complex solutions.