genuinely helpful and honestly meaningful (especially if you’re going to invest any level of your mental health in posts (which i don’t recommend but is natural if you try to post what’s on your mind)) being able to see like, oh even if 20 people downvoted me, 7 people agreed with me, i have seven fighters. it’s so much better to see that and get a fuller picture of how your comment was received.
i remember seeing reddit make that change out of nowhere for no reason and thinking…jesus, this is the beginning of the end
Reddit obfuscating vote counts was part of its “vote fuzzing” feature. The goal was to make it impossible for ninja banned accounts to know if their votes were actually being counted. So banned people/bots would keep using their banned accounts rather than make a new one.
that was the idea, anyway. of course, anyone using a 3rd-party app was able to get the real vote counts. and it only ever worked when shadow banning was a thing, which they (mostly) stopped doing years ago. don’t know if that’s back because i left months ago.
That was the idea, until Reddit realised the potential of manipulating vote counts for their own benefit.
also true, but that’s a whooooole other load of spezshit1.
[1] spezshit-- bullshit, but from spez