Twitter tests Reddit-style upvote and downvote buttons • Hacker News Board

Re: Twitter tests Reddit-style upvote and downvote buttons

#191

Post by heurisko » Thu, Jul 22, 2021, 12:08 PM UTC

The problem is, is supposedly, upvote = adds to the conversation, downvote = detracts from conversation.

In reality, upvote = I agree, downvote = I disagree.

However I don't think anything can save twitter from being a toxic platform.

What makes it especially toxic, I think, is its lack of separation of communities.

Reddit is toxic sometimes, but at least there is some separation: if you just want to talk about knitting, you can avoid the people talking about politics.

I think it's important to be able to have controversial debates in real life, as body language and audience response seems to keep people from being truly awful.

The Quakers have an interesting history of trying to facilitate such controversial debates. They have been involved in some contemporary ones too.

https://www.quakersintheworld.org/quakers-in-action/210/Inte...

It's concerning to me, how much of real life discussion we have lost due to the pandemic.

Re: Twitter tests Reddit-style upvote and downvote buttons

#192

Post by throwaway0a5e » Thu, Jul 22, 2021, 12:09 PM UTC

oldsecondhand wrote: post #166

Sergiu37 wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reddit is not toxic if you agree with the majority views. If not it is probably the most toxic social media. So other views people leave and so reddit remains a bubble of like minded people that don't see their toxicity. You can just look at some popular subreddits like iata i am the asshole or idiotsincar or murdered by words, justiceserved to name a few and many other where people just laugh and are being toxic tow…

"am I the asshole" and idiotsincars are pretty normal places where people can politely disagree; MurderedByWords and Politics are political echochambers and that territory brings a bit of toxicity like black-and-white thinking, but I would only call "justiceserved" particularly toxic.

>am I the asshole" and idiotsincars are pretty normal places where people can politely disagree

These places are echo chambners too you just don't realize it because you agree with the echo.

Go on I am the asshole and give even the slightest hint of approval for a parent that's parenting in a traditional manner (e.g. approving of a "my house my rules" attitude toward an older teenager) and you'll get all sorts of hate.

Go on idiots in cars and talk about how people can't be expect widespread compliance for asinine road signage (like a 55mph speed limit on an interstate highway designed and marked for a much higher speed) and you'll be inundated with "hurr durr the law is the law" types.

Re: Twitter tests Reddit-style upvote and downvote buttons

#193

Post by everdrive » Thu, Jul 22, 2021, 12:09 PM UTC

whalabi wrote: post #116

I've wondered why Twitter seems far more toxic than Reddit (certain now-banned subreddits excluded) and I believe the downvote is a powerful tool used to achieve this, along with Reddit's community-style moderation, even though that can border on toxic itself at times. I wrote about it here a little while back https://unlikekinds.com/article/trolls-and-consequences-what...

Reddit is broken up into sub-communities, and I think this is what is helping a lot here. Many subreddits are quite awful and toxic. Even ones which are not terribly evil are still awful and insipid. But there are also some really amazing and beautiful subreddits out there. This is all because of the existence of subreddits. Any subreddit past a certain size or popularity will begin to become terrible.

Re: Twitter tests Reddit-style upvote and downvote buttons

#194

Post by TeMPOraL » Thu, Jul 22, 2021, 12:12 PM UTC

yreg wrote: post #169

TeMPOraL wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm seconding your suggestion. I also think it's mostly moderation. Through close to two decades of watching and participating in discussions on Reddit, HN, Facebook, Twitter, Mastodon, YouTube comments, some phpBB boards, website comment systems, as well as a bunch of local discussion boards in the age before social media, I've observed that: - Niche forums fare better than general ones - Voting systems don't matter…

Heavy moderation (/r/askhistorians) and niche (this forum?) for sure help, but they are not the solution for the most "public" and mainstream places like comments under posts on BBC's Facebook page. And the toxic polarising discussion in those mainstream places is the one that threatens all of our societies the most. Disciplining a RuneScape phpBB board is trivial in comparison.

> Heavy moderation (/r/askhistorians) and niche (this forum?)

I'd consider these two to be both niche and heavily moderated: history is a niche topic too, and HN is heavily moderated.

> they are not the solution for the most "public" and mainstream places like comments under posts on BBC's Facebook page

I think heavy moderation is a solution, probably the only solution. But these places would have to implement it first. Moderation doesn't scale, and companies like Facebook only want to do the things that scale. Their toxicity problem is self-inflicted - they don't want to pay for what's needed to solve it. See my tangent in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27917473.

Re: Twitter tests Reddit-style upvote and downvote buttons

#195

Post by baseballdork » Thu, Jul 22, 2021, 12:13 PM UTC

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #189

azangru wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Reddit is not toxic if you agree with the majority views. Different subreddits will have different majorities with different views, no? > toxicity ... toxic towars other people What does this mean? For example, if you are sitting inside your bubble and laughing at the outsiders, who don't even come to your bubble, is there any toxicity going on?

>Different subreddits will have different majorities with different views, no? No, not really. Ignoring standard left/right policy bickering points you are still going to catch a lot of hate on Reddit if you don't think people are fundamentally untrustworthy by default and that centralized authorities (be they governments, academia, professional organizations or BigCo) are fundamentally trustworthy and credible by de…

Unless you go to /r/libertarian?

It's hard for me to accept such a final "No" when there seems to be a sub for literally every viewpoint. However, I am willing to accept that those subs get brigaded and maybe that's what you're referring to?

Re: Twitter tests Reddit-style upvote and downvote buttons

#196

Post by kortex » Thu, Jul 22, 2021, 12:13 PM UTC

randomdata wrote: post #23

endisneigh wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is great as a poor man's analytics system, providing knowledge that at least someone read your comment, allowing you to evaluate if it is worth posting more or if your efforts are disappearing into the void. However, having both up and down seems redundant. The both provide the exact same information. I disagree. If a comment has 100 likes and 100 dislikes that clearly is different than a comment that has 200 li…

> I disagree. If a comment has 100 likes and 100 dislikes that clearly is different than a comment that has 200 likes or 200 dislikes. There is no information provided by the button click other than that the button was clicked. Which button the user decides to choose may as well be considered arbitrary because onlookers have no way of ever determining the true intent unless the button presser also comments with their…

Looks like you are being rewarded quite handsomely.

Not only is "there is no info provided by which button was clicked" a really odd take when we humans explicitly assign semantic to up/down vote, this contradicts your other point, which is that "having your post read is the real reward," since there is no guarantee the post was read before voting.

Re: Twitter tests Reddit-style upvote and downvote buttons

#197

Post by tomrod » Thu, Jul 22, 2021, 12:15 PM UTC

azangru wrote: post #140

Sergiu37 wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reddit is not toxic if you agree with the majority views. If not it is probably the most toxic social media. So other views people leave and so reddit remains a bubble of like minded people that don't see their toxicity. You can just look at some popular subreddits like iata i am the asshole or idiotsincar or murdered by words, justiceserved to name a few and many other where people just laugh and are being toxic tow…

> Reddit is not toxic if you agree with the majority views. Different subreddits will have different majorities with different views, no? > toxicity ... toxic towars other people What does this mean? For example, if you are sitting inside your bubble and laughing at the outsiders, who don't even come to your bubble, is there any toxicity going on?

> if you are sitting inside your bubble and laughing at the outsiders, who don't even come to your bubble, is there any toxicity going on?

Yes.

Re: Twitter tests Reddit-style upvote and downvote buttons

#198

Post by BuyMyBitcoins » Thu, Jul 22, 2021, 12:19 PM UTC

heurisko wrote: post #191

The problem is, is supposedly, upvote = adds to the conversation, downvote = detracts from conversation. In reality, upvote = I agree, downvote = I disagree. However I don't think anything can save twitter from being a toxic platform. What makes it especially toxic, I think, is its lack of separation of communities. Reddit is toxic sometimes, but at least there is some separation: if you just want to talk about knitt…

>”if you just want to talk about knitting, you can avoid the people talking about politics.”

I don’t find this to be the case at all. The amount of politics tolerated in each subreddit is almost entirely dependent on the personalities of the mods who run it. And for whatever reason, most Reddit mods tend to be activist friendly or at least look the other way when it comes to obvious soapbox accounts breaking the rules.

In my experience most subreddits choose to flair political posts rather than prohibit them.

Re: Twitter tests Reddit-style upvote and downvote buttons

#199

Post by BeFlatXIII » Thu, Jul 22, 2021, 12:22 PM UTC

BuyMyBitcoins wrote: post #198

heurisko wrote: post #191

The problem is, is supposedly, upvote = adds to the conversation, downvote = detracts from conversation. In reality, upvote = I agree, downvote = I disagree. However I don't think anything can save twitter from being a toxic platform. What makes it especially toxic, I think, is its lack of separation of communities. Reddit is toxic sometimes, but at least there is some separation: if you just want to talk about knitt…

>”if you just want to talk about knitting, you can avoid the people talking about politics.” I don’t find this to be the case at all. The amount of politics tolerated in each subreddit is almost entirely dependent on the personalities of the mods who run it. And for whatever reason, most Reddit mods tend to be activist friendly or at least look the other way when it comes to obvious soapbox accounts breaking the rule…

To be fair to the Reddit moderation staff, they’re also paid $0.00, so being strict about keeping the sub on-topic may not be high up on their list of daily priorities.

Re: Twitter tests Reddit-style upvote and downvote buttons

#200

Post by BuyMyBitcoins » Thu, Jul 22, 2021, 12:23 PM UTC

_nalply wrote: post #170

TheFreim wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Different subreddits will have different majorities with different views, no? Different subreddits do have different majority views, yes, but the largest subreddits all pretty much have the same ones.

Probably of the general majority. This is an almost natural consequence. The largest sub-groups start out with having most of the same people of the whole society. Then the minorities get turned off and leave to smaller sub-groups where they feel more welcome.

>” Then the minorities get turned off and leave to smaller sub-groups where they feel more welcome.”

Then communities like r/AgainstHateSubreddits show up and try to get those subreddits banned for even the slightest infraction.