Upvotes and downvotes have zero real-world stakes.
Imagine if your upvote button was wired directly into your wallet and extracted some amount of money with every press.
Even if you control the amount, even if it is fractional cents per upvote, you now have to figure out how much it is costing you in real world dollars to upvote people each day/week/month whatever.
Also "I liked this" is different from "This is worth $value to me"
> Imagine if your upvote button was wired directly into your wallet and extracted some amount of money with every press.
Every press? Nobody has ever proposed that. All I want is a button in my browser (not on websites) that I can configure ahead of time. Perhaps I'd set it to $0.10. Then, when (and only when) I want, I can click on that button, knowing it will attempt to send $0.10 to the website I'm currently viewing, if that website has set up the ability to receive money in this way.
Maybe I won't click it for a week, but then click it ten times on one article (or website) to send a dollar to that site.
I was just using it as an example to illustrate why a micropayment button press is a different and more difficult decision than an upvote, because you asked why those decisions were different.
If you would not use them interchangeably, then of course they are different.
Imagine if your upvote button was wired directly into your wallet and extracted some amount of money with every press.
Even if you control the amount, even if it is fractional cents per upvote, you now have to figure out how much it is costing you in real world dollars to upvote people each day/week/month whatever.
Also "I liked this" is different from "This is worth $value to me"