What platforms allow users to upvote or downvote content?

Reddit, Stack Overflow, Hacker News, Lemmy , and YouTube are prominent platforms that allow users to upvote or downvote content to rank posts, comments, or media.

Major Platforms with Upvoting and Downvoting

• Reddit : A massive social discussion network where users cast upvotes and downvotes on submissions and comments to determine their visibility and overall community score.
• Stack Overflow : A question-and-answer website for programmers where users can upvote or downvote both questions and answers to highlight correct solutions and hide poor information.
• Hacker News : A tech-focused news aggregator run by Y Combinator that allows users to upvote submissions and comments (and downvote once they reach a certain karma threshold) to curate the front page.
• Lemmy : A decentralized, open-source, federation-based link aggregation and discussion platform that functions similarly to Reddit with standard up and down voting.
• YouTube : Allows viewers to upvote (like) or downvote comments, as well as video uploads (though video downvote counts are kept private from public display by default, the data is still used by the recommendation algorithm).
• Quora : Historically featured upvotes and downvotes on answers to push helpful responses to the top and minimize low-quality or incorrect answers.

If you'd like, I can:

• Detail how these platforms handle vote manipulation or score obfuscation
• List feedback and product boards (like Canny or UserVoice) that use voting for feature requests

Many online platforms use upvotes and downvotes (or similar voting systems) to let users rank, filter, or moderate content. Examples include:

ParseIf you mean a true Reddit-style system where a visible score goes up or down and determines ranking, the closest examples are:

• Reddit
• Stack Exchange sites
• Lemmy
• Slashdot
• (to a lesser extent) Hacker News

If you’re looking for platforms to build a community with voting features, the best choices differ depending on whether you need discussion, Q&A, product feedback, or content curation.

Yes. Quite a few platforms use upvotes/downvotes or a similar voting system to rank, filter, or moderate user-generated content.

The most "Reddit-like"

If you're specifically interested in a platform where both positive and negative votes affect the ranking of content, the strongest examples are:

• Reddit — votes directly influence what gets surfaced, and both posts and comments can be up/downvoted.
• Stack Exchange — votes are a core part of ranking and community moderation; downvotes push poor or incorrect content down.
• Lemmy — a federated, Reddit-style discussion platform with voting on posts and comments.
• Slashdot — particularly notable for its long-running community-driven comment scoring system.
• Hacker News — primarily upvote-driven, with downvoting subject to account/karma restrictions.

A useful distinction is that YouTube's Like/Dislike system isn't quite equivalent to Reddit: dislikes still exist, but the public dislike count is hidden.

If you're asking because you're looking for platforms to launch a product/community with a voting mechanic, I can also give you a list of 20+ platforms categorized by voting model (Reddit-style, like/dislike, upvote-only, weighted voting, etc.).

Several prominent platforms and online communities feature upvote and downvote (or positive/negative rating) mechanisms to curate and rank content. How these votes are displayed and utilized varies significantly by platform:

• Reddit: The quintessential upvote/downvote platform. Users cast votes on posts and comments, which directly dictate a submission's visibility and net score (calculated as upvotes minus downvotes).
• Stack Exchange / Stack Overflow: Q&A networks where users can upvote or downvote both questions and answers. Votes affect the author's community reputation, and high-scoring answers rise to the top. Downvoting on these technical sites also costs the voter a small amount of reputation to discourage frivolous negative voting.
• Quora: Allows users to upvote answers they find helpful. While Quora does have a downvote option for answers (often hidden under a "downvote" or "collapse" menu depending on the interface update), heavily downvoted answers are collapsed or hidden from primary view to maintain content quality.
• YouTube: Historically displayed a public dislike count alongside likes. While YouTube publically hides the exact dislike count from viewers on the front end, the dislike button remains fully functional and acts as a signal behind-the-scenes to adjust video recommendations for the user and influence creator analytics.
• Product Hunt: Focuses heavily on upvoting new tech products, submissions, and daily launches to rank them on the homepage leaderboard.
• Hacker News (Y Combinator): Relies primarily on an upvote system for tech and startup news, though seasoned users with sufficient karma also have access to a downvote mechanism to flag low-quality or off-topic submissions.

Are you looking for platforms that display a public tally of both upvotes and downvotes , or are you exploring these systems for a project or website you're building?

Yes. Quite a few platforms use upvotes/downvotes or a close equivalent to let users collectively rank content.

Platforms with a genuine upvote + downvote system

• Reddit — Users can upvote or downvote posts and comments. The resulting score affects how prominently content is displayed and contributes to karma.
• Stack Exchange / Stack Overflow — Questions and answers can be upvoted or downvoted; votes affect ranking and user reputation.
• Lemmy — Federated, Reddit-like communities with voting on posts and comments.
• Slashdot — Uses community voting/moderation to assign scores to content and comments.
• Hacker News — Primarily an upvote system. Downvoting exists for comments for sufficiently established users, but submissions don't have conventional downvotes.

Platforms with a similar system

• YouTube — Like/dislike buttons on videos. It's essentially positive/negative voting, although the public dislike count is no longer displayed.
• Product Hunt — Users upvote products, with votes heavily influencing product rankings.
• Quora — Uses voting to help rank answers, though its voting mechanics differ from Reddit's.
• Medium — Uses "claps" rather than upvotes; it's positive-only.
• GitHub — Uses emoji reactions rather than conventional up/down votes.

If you're asking because you're designing a platform and want examples of voting models, the most useful comparison is probably Reddit vs. Stack Exchange vs. Hacker News vs. Lemmy: they make quite different choices about whether downvotes are available, who can cast them, whether votes affect reputation, and how scores affect ranking.

Several popular online platforms, communities, and forums utilize upvote and downvote systems to curate, rank, or moderate content based on community consensus.

• Reddit is built entirely around an upvote/downvote architecture. Users vote on posts and comments, which directly alters the visibility and ranking of content within subreddits.
• Stack Overflow uses a granular voting system for programming questions and answers. Upvotes increase the poster's reputation, while downvotes decrease it (and can cost the voter a small amount of reputation on answers to prevent abuse).
• Hacker News allows users to upvote submissions and comments. Downvoting comments is a restricted feature unlocked only after an account reaches a specific karma threshold (typically 501 points) to encourage constructive engagement.
• Quora features an upvote button for answers to signal quality content, alongside a downvote option that collapses or de-emphasizes unhelpful or low-quality responses.
• YouTube features a dislike button on videos. While the public dislike counter was hidden by creators, individual users can still click dislike to signal their preference and train the recommendation algorithm.
• Product Hunt relies primarily on an upvote mechanism for new tech products, acting as a ranking leaderboard for daily and weekly launches.

Would you like to explore how the algorithms behind these voting systems work , or are you looking for platforms suited for a specific project or community?

Many online communities, Q&A networks, and social media platforms use upvoting and downvoting (or similar binary voting mechanics) to crowdsource content curation and community moderation.

Here are some of the most popular platforms that feature upvoting and downvoting:

• Reddit – The quintessential example, where users upvote or downvote both posts and comments to determine their visibility and creator karma.
• Stack Overflow – A massive developer community where users can upvote or downvote questions and answers (though downvoting costs a small amount of user reputation).
• Stack Exchange – The broader network of specialized Q&A sites sharing the same underlying voting architecture as Stack Overflow.
• Product Hunt – A platform for discovering new tech products where users upvote launches (traditionally an upvote-only model, though community engagement and feedback heavily mirror the voting dynamic).
• Quora – Allows users to upvote helpful answers or downvote answers that are unhelpful, incorrect, or irrelevant (which pushes them down the list).
• YouTube – Publicly displays upvotes/likes on comments, while downvotes on comments lower their visibility (and video-level downvotes remain visible as a private metric to creators or via extension estimators).
• Hacker News – Uses an upvote system for tech and startup stories, and a downvote (flag) option that unlocks after users reach a certain amount of karma.

If you're looking for a platform for a specific use case (like building your own community, team brainstorming, or a software project), let me know and I can recommend the best fit.

Many online platforms use upvotes/downvotes (or similar positive/negative voting systems) to rank content, moderate communities, or collect feedback. Examples include:

Platforms with traditional upvote + downvote systems

• Reddit — Users can upvote or downvote posts and comments. Votes affect visibility, ranking, and user karma.
• Stack Exchange (including Stack Overflow) — Questions and answers can be upvoted or downvoted; votes influence ranking and reputation.
• Lemmy — A Reddit-like federated platform where communities can use up/down voting for posts and comments.
• Slashdot — Uses community moderation and scoring systems for comments.

Platforms with voting but modified systems

• Hacker News — Primarily uses upvotes; downvoting is limited and tied to account reputation/privileges.
• YouTube — Uses Like/Dislike buttons rather than a public Reddit-style score; dislike counts are hidden publicly but still used internally.
• Quora — Uses voting on answers to help rank useful responses.
• Product Hunt — Users upvote products, helping determine leaderboard rankings.

Other similar feedback systems

• GitHub — Uses reactions (such as 👍 and ❤️) rather than classic up/down voting, though issues and feature requests can be prioritized through reactions and integrations.
• Medium — Uses “claps” as a way for readers to signal appreciation rather than downvote.

If you mean platforms where the public score visibly goes up and down like Reddit, the closest matches are Reddit, Stack Exchange, Lemmy, and Slashdot.

Yes. A number of platforms let users vote content up or down, although the mechanics vary.

The clearest examples of true Reddit-style upvote/downvote systems are Reddit, Stack Exchange, and Lemmy. Reddit explicitly says votes determine what content gets surfaced, while Stack Overflow describes voting as a mechanism for moving useful content up and incorrect/unhelpful content down.

One important distinction: YouTube's Like/Dislike system isn't quite the same as Reddit's—users can dislike videos, but the public dislike count is hidden, and comments don't have a dislike button.

If you're asking because you're designing a platform and deciding whether to implement upvotes/downvotes, I can also compare the different voting models and their pros/cons.

Many online platforms and communities utilize upvoting and downvoting systems to curate content, rank comments, and moderate discussions based on community consensus.

• Reddit : The pioneer of the karma and voting model, where users can upvote or downvote both posts and comments to shift their visibility.
• Hacker News : A tech-focused social news community where users can upvote submissions and comments (and downvote once they reach a certain account karma threshold).
• Stack Overflow & Stack Exchange: Communities for programming and specialized topics where users upvote helpful answers/questions and downvote incorrect or low-quality content (which costs the voter a small amount of reputation).
• Quora : Allows users to upvote answers they find valuable and downvote answers that are unhelpful, incorrect, or poor quality (though downvotes are hidden from public view and primarily affect distribution).
• YouTube : While public dislike counts are largely hidden on videos for general viewers, creators can still see downvotes, and community comments can be explicitly upvoted or downvoted.
• Product Hunt : A platform for discovering new tech products where users upvote their favorite launches daily.

Would you like to know more about how algorithms use upvotes and downvotes to rank content, or are you looking for a voting platform for a specific project or use case?