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Twitter tests Reddit-style upvote and downvote buttons

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Re: Twitter tests Reddit-style upvote and downvote buttons

#211

Post by captainmuon »

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...

I think what makes Twitter toxic is that everybody is in their little bubble. You are mostly shown content similar to what you liked, and you are encouraged to block outsiders. When you do see content from outside of your bubble, the contrast is harsh. Most of the time you don't even see dissenting tweets themselves, you see a lot of reactions in your bubble and have to fish for the original 'scandalous' tweet.

Also, as somebody else said here, the discussion takes place "on" your identity, as opposed to reddit where you have your identity and then go out to places to discuss.

I have separate accounts because my different interest belong to different bubbles, and I'm afraid they would outrage each other. Also, one is mostly for consumption and the other is mostly write-only.

(My ideal social network would have each user in full control of their identity page - a bit like MySpace or the old Facebook. And then you would be able to go and create pseudonymous subaccounts for discussions. The system would only show what you want to share, e.g. "this handle's main account is female, on the site for >3 years, and has ~5000 rep". This way you'd have anonymity but still some measure of trust.)

Re: Twitter tests Reddit-style upvote and downvote buttons

#212

Post by Applejinx »

endisneigh wrote: post #11

I think up and down voting are great, however what is dumb is that neither has a cost. If you think of karma as an economy, taking an action should have a cost. Of course this leads to the question: if voting has a cost, then how do people accumulate irrespective of themselves receiving a vote? You could give everyone say, a fixed number of karma to begin with that could then be allocated. You can then give people mo…

I think it's important to acknowledge that in social networks attempting to manage their communities through mechanisms like this, there's a tacit assumption that everyone participating is

a: human and discrete

b: in good faith while of differing opinion still

This is not true. As long as social networks have a worldwide reach and a real-world significance, it'll be valuable to accumulate bots/minions to compose an aggregate person, representing some force or entity, and then use that brigade to direct discourse.

If it becomes expensive to do this, it takes the behavior out of the hands of small groups and reserves it for the most powerful and well-resourced actors.

The question to ask here is how expensive karma farming will be, and how easily can it be coordinated by outside forces in the absence of 'good faith, discrete, human actors'.

Re: Twitter tests Reddit-style upvote and downvote buttons

#213

Post by aww_dang »

It will be interesting if they are willing to rank things voted by a user's cohort, rather than straight ranking. However, I suspect Twitter's political biases will play an role.

Reddit is interesting in that it offers a "sort by controversial" option. Toxic nonsense generally gets downvoted uniformly, while contentious arguments can float to the top.

Re: Twitter tests Reddit-style upvote and downvote buttons

#214

Post by howaboutnope »

dave_sullivan wrote: post #142
nightcracker wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's naive to think that downvotes will cause something to be de-amplified, companies like Twitter know all too well how to use controversy and outrage to their advantage.

What are you talking about? It works effectively on HN and reddit and has for years.

Except when it's used to "disagree" with comments without actually having or making an argument. Then just reduces the quality of discourse and thought.

Re: Twitter tests Reddit-style upvote and downvote buttons

#215

Post by YinglingLight »

BeFlatXIII wrote: post #199
BuyMyBitcoins wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>”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.

also, by being paid $0.00, they're extremely easy and cheap to persuade/get on an entity's payroll.

Re: Twitter tests Reddit-style upvote and downvote buttons

#216

Post by BeFlatXIII »

endisneigh wrote: post #16
randomdata wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think up and down voting are great 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. > however what is dumb is that neither has a cost. If there is a cost then…

> 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…

> you could allow people to like or dislike without limit, but after a certain amount (them exhausting their own karma) its effect changes, but regardless they can continue to do it

Reddit already applied this at the aggregate scale: any individual comment can only cost you up to 100 karma and negative karma scores on user profiles are capped at -100.

That all said, how would these karma economy proposals interact with the fact that some subreddits are orders of magnitude less popular than others? Would it cost less to vote on items in small subreddits?

Would upvoting already highly-upvoted submissions be free (but do nothing on the back end) or would it be expensive as an encouragement that the community has already spoken and to spend your votes elsewhere? Would doing against community opinion be cheap (since more people agreeing the Earth is round doesn’t add much to the discussion) or would it be a pricey 10x vote?

Re: Twitter tests Reddit-style upvote and downvote buttons

#217

Post by azangru »

tomrod wrote: post #197
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?

> 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.

So what does toxicity mean then?

Re: Twitter tests Reddit-style upvote and downvote buttons

#218

Post by throwaway0a5e »

baseballdork wrote: post #195
throwaway0a5e wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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?

A half dozen subs out of thousands and hundreds of big ones doesn't really change the overall picture IMO.

Re: Twitter tests Reddit-style upvote and downvote buttons

#220

Post by bagacrap »

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…

"I disagree" and "detracts from the conversation" have a lot of overlap. A (subjectively) very wrong take on a subject distracts from where you think the conversation should be heading.

On Reddit I see many comments, convincingly written, that are (imo) flatly wrong. These comments are potentially very harmful because they're persuading others of a falsehood. Am I supposed to upvote or downvote? (what I actually tend to do is not visit the site)

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