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

Re: Twitter tests Reddit-style upvote and downvote buttons

#321

Post by minitoar » Thu, Jul 22, 2021, 3:56 PM UTC

jimbilly22 wrote: post #259

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…

This is spot on. The only wrinkle -- Twitter could actually do something to create separate communities if they wanted. Some large investors have asked them to. They've drafted up plans to create a separate space for financial discussion. Just haven't acted on it. I really just think it comes down to Twitter being poorly run. I know Paul Singer made a run to have Dorsey replaced as CEO, but eventually backed off. The…

Twitter has announced they are working on a feature called “Communities”.

Re: Twitter tests Reddit-style upvote and downvote buttons

#322

Post by mistermann » Thu, Jul 22, 2021, 3:57 PM UTC

hobo_mark wrote: post #271

mistermann wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Yes...tagging for grouping, notes for annotating, etc. There's also massive opportunity for crowd sourcing of topic based discovery.

The YouTube platform is amazingly horrible (from an end user perspective) considering how valuable its content is, if you could implement something that can't be blocked somehow I think it could be a financially rewarding little business, there are lots of heavy users of YouTube.

Re: Twitter tests Reddit-style upvote and downvote buttons

#323

Post by intended » Thu, Jul 22, 2021, 4:03 PM UTC

Blikkentrekker wrote: post #270

baq wrote: post #147

slashdot had this covered years ago. literally decades. 1. upvotes limited to +5. 2. votes categorized: funny, informative, insightful, etc. 3. number of votes limited per time frame and user karma. 4. meta-moderation: your votes (up/down both) were subject to voting (correct/incorrect). good score == more upvotes to spend. and yet, simple trumps good. i was very happy to see parts of this implemented in steam review…

It was solved long ere that: no votes. There are many boards were ranking is simply decided by recent activity of replies. I find that DeviantArt has the ideal forum: a tree-based structure like Reddit , and H.N. , and the top comment within a branch of the tree is simply the one which had the most recent reply to a child recursively, and any new replies always end up at the top. This achieves two important goals: 1)…

Content will always find a grey area that your rules don’t cover.

Re: Twitter tests Reddit-style upvote and downvote buttons

#324

Post by dcow » Thu, Jul 22, 2021, 4:04 PM UTC

Ignoring the fact that you probably consent to be studied in the Twitter ToS (and perhaps fairly since nobody reads the ToS so I’m not sure it constitutes a contract in spirit), why is it okay for Twitter to run an experiment on their user-base in this manner but not for say a research group to do the same without some sort if ethics review? E.g. is Twitter screening the users they opt in to make sure they don’t include people especially susceptible to seeing negative sentiment who’s day might be ruined by the presence of new downvotes? Not trying to be hyperbolic just thinking of a rhetorical example. What if this introduces more stress into people’s lives and they don't want/can’t/shouldn’t be expected to tolerate it?

Re: Twitter tests Reddit-style upvote and downvote buttons

#325

Post by dragonwriter » Thu, Jul 22, 2021, 4:04 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…

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

That's the HN theory. The twitter theory is that dislikes, like likes and every other behavior on the site is a signal to feed into an engagement optimization algorithm.

Twitter has zero interest in conversation quality for its own sake, and every interest in optimizing audience size and engagement.

Re: Twitter tests Reddit-style upvote and downvote buttons

#326

Post by kart23 » Thu, Jul 22, 2021, 4:04 PM UTC

drannex wrote: post #47

kart23 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

wow, that old reddit screenshot looks incredibly similar to the HN interface.

I don't know if you meant that as a joke, sarcastic, or you just didn't know but just in case: they were developed at the same time, by Alexis and Co when Reddit was initially funded by YC.

I was being serious, I knew Reddit was funded by YC, but didn't know if there was any connection to HN.

Re: Twitter tests Reddit-style upvote and downvote buttons

#327

Post by jimbilly22 » Thu, Jul 22, 2021, 4:04 PM UTC

minitoar wrote: post #321

jimbilly22 wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is spot on. The only wrinkle -- Twitter could actually do something to create separate communities if they wanted. Some large investors have asked them to. They've drafted up plans to create a separate space for financial discussion. Just haven't acted on it. I really just think it comes down to Twitter being poorly run. I know Paul Singer made a run to have Dorsey replaced as CEO, but eventually backed off. The…

Twitter has announced they are working on a feature called “Communities”.

it's a good move.

Re: Twitter tests Reddit-style upvote and downvote buttons

#328

Post by dragonwriter » Thu, Jul 22, 2021, 4:09 PM UTC

intended wrote: post #318

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…

The front page of Reddit is not always outrage. Besides, if our brains are designed to zoom in on certain signals, is it rational to expect technology to somehow prevent this?

> Besides, if our brains are designed to zoom in on certain signals, is it rational to expect technology to somehow prevent this?

Technology can mitigate it (by suppressing the signals, offsetting the effect) or exploit and exacerbate it. The former is often socially useful, but the latter is usually the path of least resistance to profits, and capitalism isn't a system whose incentives optimize for social utility.

Re: Twitter tests Reddit-style upvote and downvote buttons

#329

Post by BizarroLand » Thu, Jul 22, 2021, 4:12 PM UTC

zthrowaway wrote: post #253

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 knitting community has become very political in the past few years. And a lot of people feel left out. My point being that just about every facet of life has been invaded by political stances that nobody wanted to be involved in and some are left to conform or feel pushed out.

I read an article where an online knitting community was invaded by far-right trolls and it caused a massive rift.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/24/style/ravelry-knitting-ba...

Re: Twitter tests Reddit-style upvote and downvote buttons

#330

Post by ChildOfChaos » Thu, Jul 22, 2021, 4:13 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…

I used to love twitter back around 2007 to early 2010's but as it became more popular it became more toxic and now Reddit is becoming the same with a lot of people spreading nonsense or politics.

The one benefit of reddit is I can choose the subs I go on, the problem is there are still a lot of subs that are of a topic I would enjoy that end up getting toxic as well.

So i'm trying to find a balance, because reddit for example does give me a lot of my news in topics I love and it's great for finding stuff, like a good movie, book, youtube stuff etc, but then the downside is getting bigger and bigger each year.

I struggle to cut it out completely but I also struggle to find any tool that curates content in a good enough way. Everything is just noise and nonsense online with a small amount of good stuff, but very little that focuses on just giving you that.

Everything just needs clicks and attention, I want something that doesn't need that and just gives me the type of stuff I want, not on a schedule, but when there is actually something worthwhile to say.