Are the "Upvote" and "Downvote" buttons "Agree" and "Disagree" buttons?

That's how I treat them. Maybe with a bit more nuance: I'll upvote for something funny, informative things, or general good takes. I'll downvote if someone has a bad take, is unnecessarily mean, or is generally incoherent.

If the comment doesn't spark a reaction I just keep scrolling.

I upvote content that may be useful or interesting to others, content I agree with and good jokes.

I try to only downvote spam, misinformation and any troll content.

Shouldn't be but they tend to be.

Sometimes people just straight up use them as agree/disagree buta lot of folks struggle to admit that an argument in favour of something with which they disagree can still be a worthwhile argument.

There are no up or down vote police. You use them as you like.

I see the upvote and downvote count as an overall room temperature/vibe check.

Whenever votes are good everything's chill, otherwise if approaching <50% happiness then I recheck/reflect and look for where I could've done better.

You can't please everyone however most can still avoid making fools out of themselves by trying to learn and improve from past mistakes.

No. Good content: up. Bad content: down.

Nobody's going to upvote shit takes, obviously.

If someone's being an asshole or an idiot, I'm going to downvote them.

If someone says something that needs saying, or that's interesting or funny, I'm going to upvote it.

I generally upvote when I see a comment that makes a good point I think is underrated. You could argue that this is a kind of agreement. But, in my view, agreement alone is not the only criteria. Stating obvious truths isn't really worth anyone's time, even if they are agreeable. I will also upvote posts that changed my mind or are close to doing so, or impress me (insightful, or funny).

I down vote spam and posts that misrepresent a position or argument (straw man).

I will not vote at all for most posts.

"Agree and “Disagree” will just leave us in a Lemmy bubble.

They should be more about "good post or bad post", so something that may be disagreeable gets upvotes if it is well stated.

Reward thought, creativity, etc, and let us all learn.

If a story about someone getting hurt because X is posted, you don’t downvote it because you dislike what happened, you upvote it because it’s important information that should be shared.

If someone makes a civilized and measured argument that you don’t agree with, you don’t downvote it because you disagree with their stance, you upvote it because it’s worthwhile discussion and all viewpoints deserve to be heard.

If you’re unsure how to feel about something, you can just not vote on it and scroll on. Unfortunately, there are apps that hide things when you vote. Some people are trained to always vote as a way of clearing their feed.

And other social media has spent decades training people that up means like and down means dislike. So the distinction that places like Lemmy or Reddit have from places like YouTube or Facebook is always going to be hard to convey to the many, many people who have been taught to think otherwise.

This is a question of prescriptivism vs. descriptivism. People might say they shouldn't be used as such, but I'll bet a lot of people who say that are guilty of doing it anyway.

Sometimes. I think the meaning of the arrows are somewhat contextual.

Downvoting spam for example isn't "disagreement", but it is a kind of disapproval.

Upvoting your post isn't "agreement", but I do it because I think it's an interesting question (maybe a kind of approval)?

If we generalized I guess we could ask whether upvotes are always relating positive emotion (approval, agreement, joy, etc.) and downvotes always relating negative emotion (disagreement, disapproval, anger, etc.)?

That is, are upvotes "yays" and downvotes "boos"?

They do sometimes end up used as agree/disagree buttons, but they're intended to be more about whether it's good content that provides some value, and downvotes are when you don't provide any value. This leave room for disagreement without downvoting a well written post that does add to the discussion.

I use downvotes for spam, and posts/comments what are just plainly wrong, incorrect, misleading or dangerous. Stuff I think is good gets upvoted, and stuff I disagree with but there's otherwise nothing wrong with it, I don't vote.

They shouldn't be used as such, but frequently are. It is even more difficult to distinguish between disagreement and insufficient argumentation.

Using the upvote button to agree isn't a problem, but it's more of a problem to use the downvote as a disagree if you're actually engaging with the person to debate the topic since it in theory lowers the visibility of the original post and your own commentary.

I always liked the idea of having a "recommend post" button, and let the better stuff with more recommendations and replies rise to the top naturally. It also avoids the weird feeling in clicking an upvote/agree/like to a topic that you want to discuss but is negative.

I honestly wish there was a moderation system like Slashdot. You got a limited number of points each week, and you could vote comments "Insightful, Informative, Funny, Overrated, Spam" etc. Comments, etc could go up to +5 or down to -1; and you get a slider to determine at what point value comments are hidden at (+4, +2, etc)

It makes it so people can't be buried into the ether by brigading (they'd have to keep up a sustained downvote campaign to continually knock it down to -1), and can 'come back from the dead' so-to-speak, and also allows categorization of comments and may even allow the filtering of joke-comments so that conversations stay on topic or just so that you engage with the serious content instead of low-quality stuff. This encourages people to comment more genuinely and productively.

No, that's the [other place] mentality. Upvote if you want to increase visibility to the post. For example, there may be a post with a link to an article about some politician doing something I disagree with. I would still upvote it if the post allows me to discuss why I disagree with said action.

Downvote if the content is harmful to the community (for example spam, overt racism, etc).

If they were, they'd be called Agree and Disagree buttons.