downvote
DOWN-voht
/ˈdaʊnvoʊt/
An online reaction registered by clicking a button to express disapproval or lower a post's visibility.
Decreases a user's total score or pushes unhelpful content down or out of view.
The story behind the word. Created alongside 'upvote' in early community news aggregators, combining 'down' with Latin 'votum'. The downvote mechanism was designed as a self-regulating democratic filter, allowing online crowds to suppress spam, off-topic comments, and inaccurate answers without needing constant moderator intervention.
Word relationships
- dislike: Dislike expresses personal distaste, while downvote actively reduces post prominence in forum algorithms.
- upvote: An upvote promotes content visibility, whereas a downvote suppresses it.
Commonly confused with
- flag: Flagging reports a terms-of-service violation to moderators, whereas downvoting merely registers disapproval.
Word family
- downvoted (verb): Having received negative votes from forum members.
Collocations
- downvote a post
- heavily downvoted
- downvote brigade
- downvote ratio
Example sentences
- "Inaccurate medical advice on the health forum was quickly downvoted by knowledgeable members." Community moderation
Memory hook
Push the vote DOWN to push bad content down. Voting down to hide poor quality.
When not to use
Do not use to describe formal legal vetoes or official election ballots.
Fun facts
- The most downvoted comment in Reddit history was an EA corporate response defending microtransactions, reaching over 660,000 downvotes.
Explore more words
discredit, uncomplimentary, talk down, deprecated, disparage, repudiate
Take your vocabulary further with LangBlitz
Our English vocabulary app: FSRS spaced repetition, 5,000+ curated words across 119 topic groups, CEFR A1 to C2. Explore your mastery with the beautiful Vocabulary World feature.