Why I Upvote Online Content

Image by DALL·E (an AI)

Sometimes I see people being dragged online for upvoting (or “liking”) content that’s highly contentious or espouses unpopular views. I often do this, so I’d like to publicly share my list of reasons why I may upvote online content, especially because it’s rare that I upvote content just because I agree with it.

So, here’s my list of reasons as to why I “like” or “upvote” content online:

• It’s funny
• It made me laugh (even if I wouldn’t describe the entire thing as “funny”)
• It’s something I think should be said
• I think a writer took a risk for sharing an unpopular opinion and I want to reward them
• I agree
• I would have written the same thing
• I liked how it was written
• I like that the person is trying
• It validates something I’d heard about earlier
• It shows a new side of something I’d heard about earlier
• They shared something that I appreciated learning about, even if the presentation was abhorrent
• They put a lot of effort into it, and I hope they’ll keep on trying (even if it didn’t work out this time)
• The content displays ideas that are against a large organization that may use bots to try to downvote the content so fewer people see it
• I want to see more things like it (training the algorithm)
• Even if I patently dislike something and think it’s terrible (I don’t really want to see more things like it), I may upvote it because I want the algorithm to show me what it’s showing other people so I can learn more about things that I don’t agree with
• There is a part of the content that one of the above reasons is true for, even if for the rest of it, these reasons are not true

In other words, I may upvote a lot of things that I personally highly disagree with. Please do not take my upvoting of content as a sign that I agree with the content.