Sometimes down votes are a sign that you're saying things people don't want to hear or the right things but on a crazy instance, but sometimes down votes are a chance for self reflection where you have to ask yourself "Am I the asshole?" and in the latter case yeah I'm probably just going to delete it. No apologies though, I'm not looking to be a saint here.

I will say in their defense that some people delete their comments/posts not because they care about "karma" but because they now feel they were wrong and are genuinely embarrassed or think that its continued presence is just an annoyance to other people.

That said, imo, unless you realize you've broken a rule in posting it or literally just posted by accident, it's healthier for yourself and the community to simply e.g. edit in a correction and a "mea culpa", even if you continue to get dogpiled for it.

As someone with social anxiety for some people seeing a large negative social response to something you said or did, even if just abstractly represented by a number, can be pretty distressing 🤷🏻‍♂️

I generally leave stuff up unless its misleading or something, but I can empathize with why someone would take it down

people not liking them

Half of lemmy:

I've had discussions here with people that don't want down votes, like in YouTube. There are instances that have them disabled.

I've seen it a few times. It's stupid. Why bother participating if you're just going to take your ball home, so to speak.

The other day somebody asked me a question and I couldn't be bothered to deal with them, but later on I decided to answer in earnest and deleted the previous response.

Have you seen the president, or met any of the millions of people who voted for him?