I don't have the expertise to check the API, myself, but I've noticed a ton of innocent comments lately all having -1. Mbin shows the upvote and downvote counts separately, so I can see that entire threads are all receiving a single downvote, presumably from a single user. Seems like somebody's being a gremlin and just downvoting everything they see.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

I've been noticing that ever since I joined Lemmy over a year ago. Feels like people are way more trigger happy with downvotes here. It's not a big deal though.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 days ago (1 children)

It's just more visible since downvotes and upvotes are shown separately. On the old site, that hasn't been the case for years.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 days ago (2 children)

Nah, I noticed that on clients without separate counts. A LOT of comments go down to 0 before climing back again (or not).

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago

I think there are a few unchecked bots that do that. Every once in a while I'll make a post or comment and it goes to 0 immediately.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 days ago

I think they start on 0 here though. Reddit automatically upvotes your own posts, but not here

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 days ago (1 children)

I mod for a community that doesn't align with the interests of a 'typical' lemmy user and a lot of our posts get a negative vote or two early in their lifespan. I just assume that the fedi is full of haters lol

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago (1 children)

I went to your profile expecting to see you modding and commenting on a community about how great it is to subjugate others or something. I forget that some folks hate sports so much that they also don't want others to enjoy sports.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago

Yeah doesn't make sense to me, I don't downvote anime or foodporn posts and sometimes I even read them. It ain't much but it's honest work

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago

I say dumb shit from time to time, especially while drunk, and I've noticed after that I tend to have several comments in a row downvoted pretty quickly no matter the subject or thread. Things that are completely unrelated.

I'm not saying that's what happened here, it's just a trend I've noticed.