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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

#241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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…

How do you know you aren't the one who's wrong?

Provably incorrect comments get upvoted on Reddit all the time. Happens a lot on subs about X where the post involves Y, and somebody says something very authoritatively about Y that is just wrong.

Re: Twitter tests Reddit-style upvote and downvote buttons

#242
post #94
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN has a downvote system as well. What you describe happens when a comment gets downvoted enough times, which makes it another good example of downvotes amplifying groupthink.

I kinda like that I only have upvote button currently here since I haven't hit the karma threshold. I do feel like the HN crowed doesn't downvote comments unless its spam or way out of the current topic. It happens but not like reddit where it acts like a disagree button.

People downvote for disagreement here all the time, it's a cultural norm.

Re: Twitter tests Reddit-style upvote and downvote buttons

#243

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 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.

This sort of works, but it also disproportionately empowers psychopaths who are not vulnerable to social moderation and in fact can abuse it against other people.

The people who are good at winning debates in real life mostly constitute the politician class, who are A) usually pretty psychopathic B) seemingly pretty unconstrained by moral censure.

The internet is cool because it kind of makes everyone into a psychopath (because there’s no emotional connection), so actual psychopathic political types don’t have any advantage over normal people.

It would be better if you could create a community where no one was a psychopath but I’m not sure this is possible at scale, or even at all.

Re: Twitter tests Reddit-style upvote and downvote buttons

#244
post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Twitter's current "chronological" feed is only chronological in that the posts that appear in it are ordered by creation date, but it doesn't include all posts from the people you follow. This was one of the reasons why I finally stopped using Twitter.

You can make a clean chronological feed quite easily with the API (the API does not include sponsored content, suggested topics or suggested likes and replies, but I want none of that anyway), this is how I have consumed twitter for years. I have filters on top of it, but those are decided my me and not their algorithms. Have been thinking about polishing and releasing the service, but I'm not sure it is a convenienc…

Something like that for YouTube would be nice also, I miss so many videos from channels I'm subscribed to because they don't show everything in your New feed. I would gladly pay $12/year for a service that does that and maybe a few other obviously useful features (tagging, attaching private comments, subscribing to friends public archives, etc).

Re: Twitter tests Reddit-style upvote and downvote buttons

#246
post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reddit is absolutely toxic.

Parts of it are, but those tend to get banned. I'd argue reddit is more of an amplified hive mind of the communities that use the internet, of which some become toxic due to ineffective moderation policies or squelching of dissent. The elephant in the room is that large subreddits tend to avoid deep analysis if it disagrees with the hive mind, and cross-brigading from smaller subreddits happens all the time. Add infl…

> Parts of it are, but those tend to get banned.

Only if politically and economically convenient. I've seen people openly condoning torture and rape as long as they happen to unsympathetic victims. The subreddits fostering this behavior won't get banned unless it threatens reddit's advertising. In practice it means only politically incorrect communities get banned.

Re: Twitter tests Reddit-style upvote and downvote buttons

#247

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...

Personally, I think it's just because of subreddits: - Well-moderated subreddits are bubbles of locally higher quality - Discussions on one subreddit stay contained within it - each subreddit is also a social bubble On Twitter, there's no quality standards moderation, and Tweets spread along the social graph, not within bounded communities. You may be discussing a niche topic with a group of like-minded friends, but…

It has nothing to do with bubble or not. It's just twitter only allows shalow takes with no nuances, so people either are lazy and give in to that, or they are frustrated by not being able to say what they want to say and get angry instead. My personal view is bubbles are actually bad for discourse, make people intolerant.

Re: Twitter tests Reddit-style upvote and downvote buttons

#248

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…

On HN, if a comment is well-written and appears to be made in good faith but is (in my opinion) wrong, I neither upvote nor downvote, I reply.

Downvoting a good-faith comment because you disagree with it does no one any favors. It creates a sense of persecution among those who disagree with you, while not actually providing any counter-argument for the benefit of the undecided. Leave the vote counts alone, make your own convincing argument.

Re: Twitter tests Reddit-style upvote and downvote buttons

#249
post #6

I personally don't like this. Hackernews and slashdot do good jobs of moderation by making you have to be a participant that's contributed with well thought out comments. Reddit fails because the "upvotes/downvote machine" is just an opinion meter. Also the gaming of it is not good either so it's a matter of time before Twitter publicly displays your stats as you tweet. It's another slippery slope for them to show ig…

Reddit is alive and well. If Reddit is a failure, I want such failures.

I tried to refrain from making reddit out to be a "failure" but it's undeniable they're not the same as they were 10 years ago. Reddit definitely felt more HackerNews like: decent articles, articulated comments, and the moderation was not nearly as bad. I am fully aware that they're successful and they're keeping it that way. Reddit however has gone the ways of just following the mob. They're not trying to foster a reason for people to stay on aside from addiction and boredom.

Re: Twitter tests Reddit-style upvote and downvote buttons

#250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Avoid the large ones, I am not even referring at politics, any big movie,book,game subbreddit will be filled with garbage , better to find or create a subreddit with strict rules. For politics, I have no advice , probably try real life

That still doesn't help. Unless you 100% tow the party line in whatever sub you're on you will get inundated with hate. Try telling any car sub that Toyotas can break or that Germany's automotive regulations are even slightly over-bearing and see where that gets you. No matter how narrowly you scope your dissent from the local norms the platform rewards everyone dog-piling onto the dissenter. There is simply no room…

Are you always on all topic in a minority? If yes then maybe is your way of communicating.

Still you need to find a subreddit with rules like:

- comments only on topic

- no personal attacks, only critique the content

- always provide sources when providing some information as a fact

- no lazy comments like me too, memes, jokes,

When you find such a subreddit then do a bit of work and report comments and threads that are breaking the rules and of-course respect the rules.

I wish HN would have such rules, you could have lazy comments, bad jokes, aggressive comments, information without a source removed.

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