Voting is a popularity contest. Any unpopular opinion community that uses voting to drive the sorting will run into this issue. Genuinely unpopular opinions will be unpopular and thus downvoted, genuinely popular opinions will be downvoted from being clearly unsuited for the community. The opinions that get votes are the ones that many people agree with but think are unpopular. You won’t get unpopular opinions, only popular opinions that people think are a bit spicy.
This is the cursed problem of unpopular opinion threads on lemmy or reddit. It is unsolvable.
The fact that the moderators are moderating in a way that maintains the community as it is, is not the main problem as far as I see.
The best unpopular opinions are the ones that make good points. Saying “murder should be encouraged” might be unpopular and upsetting, but there’s nothing insightful to be learned from it. Saying “people shouldn’t go to jail for murder” might be unpopular and upsetting, but there’s at least some value in considering the perspective it comes from.
Voting is a popularity contest. Any unpopular opinion community that uses voting to drive the sorting will run into this issue. Genuinely unpopular opinions will be unpopular and thus downvoted, genuinely popular opinions will be downvoted from being clearly unsuited for the community. The opinions that get votes are the ones that many people agree with but think are unpopular. You won’t get unpopular opinions, only popular opinions that people think are a bit spicy.
This is the cursed problem of unpopular opinion threads on lemmy or reddit. It is unsolvable.
The fact that the moderators are moderating in a way that maintains the community as it is, is not the main problem as far as I see.
The best unpopular opinions are the ones that make good points. Saying “murder should be encouraged” might be unpopular and upsetting, but there’s nothing insightful to be learned from it. Saying “people shouldn’t go to jail for murder” might be unpopular and upsetting, but there’s at least some value in considering the perspective it comes from.
Or alternatively stuff that is unpopular, but harmless and entertaining. Like video essays about how the phantom menace is good actually
Un/popularOpinions always just turns into Reactionary opinions.