You won't find a "like" button on DirectGov. Instead, you'll find votes. This wasn't an oversight or a failure to keep up with social media trends. It was a deliberate design choice rooted in what we believe democracy requires.

The Problem with Likes

Social media platforms built around "likes" have a fundamental issue: they only measure positive sentiment. You can like something or you can stay silent. There's no respectful way to disagree.

Sure, most platforms eventually added other reactions—angry faces, sad faces, laugh emojis. But these don't solve the core problem. They're still primarily designed to amplify what's popular and bury what's not. The algorithm shows you more of what gets likes and hides what doesn't.

This creates echo chambers. If you post something your followers agree with, you get likes and visibility. If you post something they disagree with, you get silence and algorithmic suppression. The platform incentivizes conformity, not discourse.

Democracy Requires Disagreement

But democracy doesn't work that way. Democracy requires the ability to disagree—respectfully and constructively.

In a functioning democracy, when someone proposes a policy, others don't just applaud or stay silent. They vote. Some vote yes, some vote no. The measure of support isn't "how many people liked this" but "how many people supported it versus how many opposed it."

That's a fundamentally different question. A proposal with 100 upvotes and 10 downvotes (91% support) is very different from a proposal with 100 upvotes and 90 downvotes (53% support), even though they both have "100 likes."

DirectGov is designed to surface that nuance. We need to know not just who supports an idea, but how many people have considered it and chosen to oppose it.

Votes Are a Cleaner Measure

Votes give us a much clearer picture of a proposal's actual support:

Net votes (upvotes minus downvotes) show overall community sentiment

Support ratio (upvotes divided by total votes) shows how controversial or consensus-driven a proposal is

Total votes (upvotes plus downvotes) show how much attention a proposal has received

A proposal with 1,000 upvotes and 50 downvotes (95% support, +950 net) is clearly different from one with 1,000 upvotes and 900 downvotes (53% support, +100 net). The first has broad consensus, the second is highly divisive.

On a "likes" platform, both would just show "1,000 likes" and you'd have no idea which was which.

Respectful Disagreement Built In

Here's the crucial part: voting down a proposal isn't disrespectful. It's democratic.

When you downvote a proposal on DirectGov, you're not attacking the person who created it. You're not leaving a mean comment. You're not trying to humiliate anyone. You're simply saying "I considered this proposal and I don't support it."

That's exactly what voters do in a democracy. You vote for candidates and measures you support. You vote against candidates and measures you oppose. It's not personal—it's civic participation.

By making downvotes a normal, expected part of the platform, we remove the stigma. Disagreement isn't hostile—it's information. It tells the proposal creator that their idea needs refinement. It tells other users that this proposal is controversial and worth examining carefully.

How This Shapes Behavior

The vote system changes how people engage with DirectGov:

Proposal creators can't just count "likes" and assume success. They need to look at their vote ratio and understand where opposition is coming from. This encourages iteration and improvement.

Voters are encouraged to engage with proposals they disagree with, not just ones they like. Your downvote is valuable feedback, not a hostile act.

The community gets a much clearer picture of which proposals have genuine consensus versus which ones are only popular with a subset of users.

Likes can't express that nuance. Votes can.

Democratic Design for Democratic Policy

DirectGov exists to help citizens create policy proposals that reflect genuine democratic consensus. To do that, we need to know where disagreement exists, not just where support exists.

A proposal that passes with 95% support is stronger than one that passes with 53% support. Both might be "popular" on a likes-based platform, but in a democracy, that difference matters enormously.

When someone takes a DirectGov proposal to their representative and says "this has community support," the representative needs to see honest numbers. Not inflated like counts, but real votes showing real democratic deliberation.

It's Not About Negativity

Some might worry that allowing downvotes invites negativity. But we've designed the system to prevent that:

• You can't downvote comments into oblivion—they don't disappear based on votes
• You can't spam votes—one vote per user per item
• The focus is on net votes and ratios, not raw downvote counts

The goal isn't to shame unpopular ideas. It's to give an honest assessment of where the community stands.

The Bottom Line

We chose votes over likes because DirectGov is a democracy platform, not a popularity platform.

Likes measure affection. Votes measure decision-making.

Likes encourage echo chambers. Votes encourage deliberation.

Likes hide disagreement. Votes surface it respectfully.

If we want to create policy proposals that can actually pass in the real world, we need to know where opposition exists and how strong it is. Votes give us that information. Likes don't.

Democracy requires the ability to disagree respectfully. Our design reflects that principle.