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

Re: Twitter tests Reddit-style upvote and downvote buttons

#341

Post by fartcannon » Thu, Jul 22, 2021, 4:57 PM UTC

dmurray wrote: post #260

captainmuon wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Up/downvotes always have multiple conflicting dimensions. - The post is factually right / wrong - Confirms to the site rules / breaks the rules - I agree / disagree - I want to promote / bury this post - Reward poster with XP / punish I am usually very pragmatic and upvote a post when I want other people to read it (because I want to see the discussion, or because I want to spread the idea). I also upvote to reward t…

Didn't Slashdot have multiple dimensions, a post could be "+5, insightful" or "-3, off topic". If you squint you could say the same about emoji reactions on Facebook and probably other platforms, this post got 5 :heart and 2 :scary reactions. They don't have a visible one for relevance but presumably the reactions feed into one behind the scenes. I'm not sure any of these have been shown to be clearly superior to the…

Slashdot still exists. Why did the internet go elsewhere?

Re: Twitter tests Reddit-style upvote and downvote buttons

#342

Post by dgellow » Thu, Jul 22, 2021, 4:58 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...

The core issues with Twitter are the Retweet feature and the short character limit. That's also what defines the platform, so that's unlikely to change.

The problem with the retweet feature: Person A starts talking about a topic and post a few tweets. Person B sees one specific tweet, retweet it (with or without comment). People who were following person A see the original tweets. People who were following person B see the reactions to the retweeted tweet, without the original context. Every time the discussion is split with two crowds isolated from each others and everything taken out of context.

The problem with the character limit: given that people link to or retweet a single tweet (120-240 characters I believe), that can only contain a very limited, and often dumb down, version of the actual message being communicated.

That's of course worse given their feed algorithm.

Re: Twitter tests Reddit-style upvote and downvote buttons

#343

Post by ItsMonkk » Thu, Jul 22, 2021, 4:59 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…

This comment being down-voted, along with the top most up-voted child being a quip about being rewarded for being down-voted, is art.

It's very clear that absolute vote count is a meaningless number. The vote count depends on which side of the argument that the reader belongs to. The simpler side of the argument will therefore attract more upvotes.

What the writer of the comment ultimately cares about is how many people were against the writer's comment that is now for it. Or at the very least, a piece of the argument has pushed the Overton window for that individual so that if they continue reading that writer's post and those whom allegiance with them, they will flip. That must be a vanishingly small number of the votes. Votes don't give you that.

It's very clear from my perspective that randomdata's post was made in good faith. randomdata's argument is one of clarity from understanding this nuance. He doesn't go into this depth, but it's there. The only way that you make the argument that randomdata is making is after having comes to terms with the mechanics. As he has skipped showing this depth his comment is unable to bring those of which understand the simpler argument but don't understand his argument, and he is therefore down-voted for it.

The fact that it has taken me five paragraphs to explain this nuance and not even go into it myself is why Twitter can be such a nasty place, as you don't have five paragraphs.

I'm now making this post 12 hours later, right when the post is at the bottom of the frontpage is therefore about to fall off a cliff of readability. As I care about getting my message across, I'm in complete agreeance with randomdata's argument. (+200 / -200) is much more important to me than ( +3 / -4). It's very likely the only person who might read this at this point is randomdata, of which I am speaking to the choir and achieving no change of view.

Re: Twitter tests Reddit-style upvote and downvote buttons

#344

Post by gilbetron » Thu, Jul 22, 2021, 5:00 PM UTC

fartcannon wrote: post #341

dmurray wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Didn't Slashdot have multiple dimensions, a post could be "+5, insightful" or "-3, off topic". If you squint you could say the same about emoji reactions on Facebook and probably other platforms, this post got 5 :heart and 2 :scary reactions. They don't have a visible one for relevance but presumably the reactions feed into one behind the scenes. I'm not sure any of these have been shown to be clearly superior to the…

Slashdot still exists. Why did the internet go elsewhere?

I think this is a really interesting question as I loved Slashdot's moderation, but I wonder if it results in less engaging (ie less toxic) behavior. Good question ... fartcannon!

Re: Twitter tests Reddit-style upvote and downvote buttons

#345

Post by evan_ » Thu, Jul 22, 2021, 5:04 PM UTC

dmurray wrote: post #260

captainmuon wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Up/downvotes always have multiple conflicting dimensions. - The post is factually right / wrong - Confirms to the site rules / breaks the rules - I agree / disagree - I want to promote / bury this post - Reward poster with XP / punish I am usually very pragmatic and upvote a post when I want other people to read it (because I want to see the discussion, or because I want to spread the idea). I also upvote to reward t…

Didn't Slashdot have multiple dimensions, a post could be "+5, insightful" or "-3, off topic". If you squint you could say the same about emoji reactions on Facebook and probably other platforms, this post got 5 :heart and 2 :scary reactions. They don't have a visible one for relevance but presumably the reactions feed into one behind the scenes. I'm not sure any of these have been shown to be clearly superior to the…

Slashdot comments could never go below -1 (or above +5). Also, moderation wasn't an "everyone votes" thing, moderators were picked semi-randomly and if you got picked, you could only place 5 votes. If you voted and the posted a comment on the same topic all of your moderations would go away.

There was also Meta Moderation where you'd randomly get shown a handful of comments and votes on those comments and you would be asked to judge whether the votes were fair or not. Supposedly those votes would affect your likelihood to get tapped for moderation again.

It would only show one adjective, but the ordering was kind of funny. If someone moderates your comment as a troll but enough people marked it with positive votes, you'd get the coveted "+5 Troll" badge.

Re: Twitter tests Reddit-style upvote and downvote buttons

#346

Post by dfxm12 » Thu, Jul 22, 2021, 5:05 PM UTC

Is there any meaningful distinction between liking and upvoting? Also, I think it is very important to signal to users that it's OK to just ignore something. You don't have to voice displeasure, take away a fake internet point, it's perfectly OK to just go on with your day.

Twitter especially is not meant for discussions. It's a poor way to have a discussion (because of organization, character limits, etc.). It's also too ephemeral. It's great at microblogging, or just throwing out an idea, or piece of news you want to share, but that doesn't mean it should be the standard of all types of communication!

And, for what its worth, I already find relevant replies are at the top. Are they the most relevant? I don't know, nor do I care.

Re: Twitter tests Reddit-style upvote and downvote buttons

#347

Post by TeMPOraL » Thu, Jul 22, 2021, 5:06 PM UTC

nsonha wrote: post #247

TeMPOraL wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> It's just twitter only allows shalow takes with no nuances

There's nothing in Twitter that disallows nuance and deep take. The structure may somewhat discourage this, but this has long been overcome with "Tweet thread" pattern (also known as "Tweetstorm").

The problem is that there's nothing preventing shallow takes from becoming dominant. There's nothing forcing people to think before they tweet. Thoughtfulness is not the default steady state for humans, so without any external factor to prevent it, people just slide down the ladder of civilization. In on-line communities, that external factor is typically moderation (and secondarily, the social norms that build around the rules enforced by moderators).

> My personal view is bubbles are actually bad for discourse, make people intolerant.

Maybe opaque bubbles. But with subreddits, we're talking about transparent bubbles. Content there isn't hidden out of sight - it just doesn't automatically leak out to everyone on the platform.

As for intolerance, well... there's a reason why the phrase is "Twitter mob" and not "Reddit mob". The most intolerant people perform their acts of intolerance on the former. Outside of any bubbles.

Re: Twitter tests Reddit-style upvote and downvote buttons

#348

Post by dfxm12 » Thu, Jul 22, 2021, 5:13 PM UTC

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…

You also couldn't take place in discussions if you chose to moderate, which I think is a +1 insightful way to handle things.

Re: Twitter tests Reddit-style upvote and downvote buttons

#349

Post by rpastuszak » Thu, Jul 22, 2021, 5:41 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).

I wouldn’t mind YT RSS

Re: Twitter tests Reddit-style upvote and downvote buttons

#350

Post by Abishek_Muthian » Thu, Jul 22, 2021, 5:50 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…

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

I feel its actually We agree, We disagree.

The points induce conformity as its now with likes and shares with every social media and in-spite of personal opinions most will stick with what the majority do.

This can be easily resolved by hiding the points and if it serves the purpose of validation then showing it to the owner alone, I've done so in the forum I run and has improved the quality of discussions.

But those point numbers are the bread and better of social media, Who will let go of those sweet dopamine triggers? Twitter cannot chase both conformity and quality of discussions. Reddit went from latter to now a half-baked social media, But still can produce some quality discussions because of the topic silo of subreddits.