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

Re: Twitter tests Reddit-style upvote and downvote buttons

#271

Post by hobo_mark » Thu, Jul 22, 2021, 2:07 PM UTC

mistermann wrote: post #244

hobo_mark wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Had not considered youtube but that is indeed another great example of where I would not want an algorithm decide over the user what they get to see.

By tagging and private comments you mean being able to take private notes about a particular tweet/video?

Re: Twitter tests Reddit-style upvote and downvote buttons

#272

Post by Blikkentrekker » Thu, Jul 22, 2021, 2:08 PM UTC

yreg wrote: post #76

tester34 wrote: post #55

upvote/downvote system is flawed allows to manipulate, promotes groupthink and kind of harassing people it maybe worked over decade ago or so, but it's definitely not state of art nowadays. edit. or maybe it just doesn't work for e.g news/discussions (especially about politics and other "hot" topics) meanwhile for meme sites it should be fine

I agree with the flaws you point out, but I still find reddit discussions to be of much higher value than Facebook discussions. I atribute it to the voting system. The Facebook discussions (e.g. under posts by serious media in my country) are overrun by antivaxers, xenophobes and the like. It makes it seem like they hold the opinion of almost everyone. I believe that's not the case, but most non-extremists are tired…

> I agree with the flaws you point out, but I still find reddit discussions to be of much higher value than Facebook discussions. I atribute it to the voting system.

Why? Youtube discussions are a disaster but it has a voting system.

It more so seems to me that the quality is proportionate to the subject matter. r/programming tends to have far superior discussions to many other subreddits, but the same voting system. The simple reality is that a certain minimal level of intellect is required to understand the subject matter.

Re: Twitter tests Reddit-style upvote and downvote buttons

#273

Post by babyblueblanket » Thu, Jul 22, 2021, 2:08 PM UTC

stared wrote: post #160

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 diverse. I hear a lot of “Reddit is toxic”. Or that “Reddit is the best place”. Both are correct. It is not only about the majority view. It is mainly about which subreddits you pick. I am not a massive Redditor. Yet, for some time, I opened r/MachineLearning daily. Some subreddits are/were highly toxic (e.g. the infamous r/incels). Some other are full of vulnerable life stories you won’t find anywhere else…

I disagree with the notion that subreddits can be so considered atomically and not part of a whole. r/Fantasy has had this problem where the regulars and the moderators are generally great, but authors they invite to do AMAs will often risk being harassed by users who aren't even regulars of r/Fantasy. The mods even had to go to other subreddits for new beta features condemning some planned stuff specifically because it would enable even more harassment of authors.

Re: Twitter tests Reddit-style upvote and downvote buttons

#274

Post by randomdata » Thu, Jul 22, 2021, 2:13 PM UTC

kortex wrote: post #196

randomdata wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> when we humans explicitly assign semantic to up/down vote

What kind of semantic would that be? Using a real-world example, some of the comments I have made in this thread have had the up button pressed multiple times. Others the down button multiple times. There is no difference in the comments. The are all about the same subject, all written by me about that subject. There is no discernible explanation for the difference. All I know is that the buttons were pressed. There is no more information provided to me.

> 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.

How so? My "other point" (it is the same point) explicitly calls out that those guarantees are not made, using an accidental press as an example.

Re: Twitter tests Reddit-style upvote and downvote buttons

#275

Post by Majestic121 » Thu, Jul 22, 2021, 2:15 PM UTC

codesections wrote: post #235

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…

> The problem is, is supposedly, upvote = adds to the conversation, downvote = detracts from conversation. > > In reality, upvote = I agree, downvote = I disagree. Maybe Twitter should go all the way back to the Slashdot model, and let people vote up and down on "insightful", "funny", "normal", "offtopic", "redundant", "interesting", or "troll", etc.

It might be too complicated, but maybe a 4 directions vote ?

Up/Down : Agree/Disagree Left/Right : Makes the discussion go backward/forward

This way you could express disagreement while acknowledging that the point is interesting, or like a joke without having it drown a conversation

Re: Twitter tests Reddit-style upvote and downvote buttons

#276

Post by dawnerd » Thu, Jul 22, 2021, 2:20 PM UTC

I just wish they’d add a report option for misinformation. There’s just way too much of it and it doesn’t seem Twitter cares. They’ll do something about high profile cases but it’s the smaller boy accounts that ready spread it.

Downvotes/dislikes could help signal their algo if done right and I’d love to see where it goes.

Re: Twitter tests Reddit-style upvote and downvote buttons

#277

Post by nkingsy » Thu, Jul 22, 2021, 2:22 PM UTC

CydeWeys wrote: post #263

nkingsy wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it works and it sort of scales. Why, then, does the outrage porn rise to the top of the Reddit home page? Because it measurably increases sales in a huge way right now. To use a baseball analogy, how do you tell a juiced to the gills superstar that steroids are actually hurting their long-term outlook? There’s no way to show Barry Bonds a future in which he’s shadow banned from the hall of fame and unmentionable…

Outrage has always traveled faster than dry factual information. This isn't a new Internet phenomenon. You can see it in action all the way back in Greek and Roman history as well. It's an inmate feature of human psychology, not a new invention by reddit/Twitter.

Yes, and the fact that these platforms haven't taken steps to prevent abuse of the cheat code in our psychology means that they find the benefits of outrage to their bottom line outweigh the "unmeasurable" costs such as damage to society and the hollowing out of their platform.

Re: Twitter tests Reddit-style upvote and downvote buttons

#278

Post by hackinthebochs » Thu, Jul 22, 2021, 2:24 PM UTC

rightbyte wrote: post #65

user3939382 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Twitter is already very groupthink Just like all social platforms including this one. Here on HN if you have a controversial opinion the site literally fades your comment away until it disappears.

And it is bad. The concept of hiding what you don't agree to is really bad for discussions. I wish the fading was only due to flagging not votes.

Fading a comment helps to signal that it has already been downvoted enough. This is to avoid going -100 because no one can see how far you're down already.

Re: Twitter tests Reddit-style upvote and downvote buttons

#279

Post by AlwaysRock » Thu, Jul 22, 2021, 2:27 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…

Do you have a lot of unwanted things in your twitter feed? Sure during major events some things creep into mine but it's rare that I get a lot of political talk because I don't follow that many people who tweet political things. You can also use lists to curate this. I'm sure there are great twitter knitting lists that wouldnt have political tweet in them.

The lists are less used than reddits subreddits but they function in a similar way.

Re: Twitter tests Reddit-style upvote and downvote buttons

#280

Post by hiptobecubic » Thu, Jul 22, 2021, 2:30 PM UTC

codesections wrote: post #252

Tainnor wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not super active on reddit, but I do frequent (mostly as a lurker) some subreddits from time to time, such as r/math, r/learnjapanese, r/history etc. I don't remember running into any sort of heated political argument in any of these subreddits. Of course, for other subreddits it might be different, but this is my experience.

> I do frequent (mostly as a lurker) some subreddits from time to time, such as r/math, r/learnjapanese, r/history etc. I don't remember running into any sort of heated political argument in any of these subreddits. I haven't spent any time there, so I'm genuinely curious: how does r/history avoid political arguments? Some people say that everything is inherently political, but history seems especially adjacent to po…

All of the "successful" subs are either small enough to self-govern effectively because they feel like actual communities or they have hardcore, uncompromising moderator teams that enforce the rules swiftly.

askhistorians is the best example I can think of. askscience close behind.