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

Re: Twitter tests Reddit-style upvote and downvote buttons

#371

Post by sellyme » Fri, Jul 23, 2021, 4:01 AM UTC

matheusmoreira wrote: post #232

bagacrap wrote: post #220

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?

Usually when I find someone posting something I believe is completely false online, I double-check my own belief with reputable sources to make sure I'm not mistaken or out of date. In the 80-90% of cases where I don't find a good argument contrary to my prior understanding, I check the post history of the user in question to see if they're some kind of subject matter expert that might have a deeper knowledge of the topic than the journalists writing articles for a general audience.

Unfortunately that's rarely the case. More often three of their last four comments contain racial slurs and misspellings of two-letter words, which doesn't instill a huge amount of confidence that they know what they're talking about.

Re: Twitter tests Reddit-style upvote and downvote buttons

#372

Post by kaba0 » Fri, Jul 23, 2021, 6:58 AM 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…

Facebook is beyond useless when it comes to constructive discussions. For all practical purposes it counts even laughing or angry reactions the same way as a simple like and there is no dislike. The very real effect is the current information/trust crisis where even if someone were to patiently explain for the 1000th time that no, COVID is not a hoax or whatever the current ridiculous stupid shit is currently pushed, a newer irrelevant comment will be displayed with the explanation buried deep somewhere.

Re: Twitter tests Reddit-style upvote and downvote buttons

#373

Post by nsonha » Fri, Jul 23, 2021, 6:59 AM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #347

nsonha wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> The structure may somewhat discourage this > Tweetstorm

The nuances of discourse are not in the size of the blobs of text you can throw in other people's faces and be done with it. They are in that it engages people to interactive in long thoughtful responses and build competing naratives.

You can make a tweetstorm but as soon as someone replies and adds another narative, it's impossible to follow. HN and reddit make this very easy.

> transparent bubbles

as opposed to what? Bubble are normally "transparent" anyway. People choose to not read/watch "the others", instead of being gatekeeped from alternative media. The leaking out is good for informing majoriry of the public who want to only stay in their bubbles.

It only becomes toxic when people feel compelled/manipulated to engage. I don't think twitter manipulates people with their recommendation. It's just the kind of message that twitter encourages are sentimental and more triggering, hence people can feel offended and could not simply not care sometimes.

> not "Reddit mob"

You go into one of the more opinionated subreddits and tell me how diverse and tolerant they are. I look up depression discussion on related subreddits all the times, most of the posts I see in those are people reinforcing victim mentality and hopelessness attitute to each other. Don't you dare to suggest them to fix their attitude

Re: Twitter tests Reddit-style upvote and downvote buttons

#374

Post by nicbou » Fri, Jul 23, 2021, 7:03 AM UTC

Sergiu37 wrote: post #137

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...

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…

Local subreddits can also be incredibly toxic. I thought that moderating one of them would be fun, but I got stalked and harassed. Other mods had it worse. I thought people would appreciate the Internet janitors that occasionally improve the subreddit, but indifference is the best I could wish for.

Thankfully, I didn't have the wrong opinions. Another mod did, and there were threads calling for his resignation, for a change of mods. Of course, no one actually volunteered their own effort.

I don't go there much anymore.

Re: Twitter tests Reddit-style upvote and downvote buttons

#375

Post by nicbou » Fri, Jul 23, 2021, 7:08 AM UTC

Sergiu37 wrote: post #137

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...

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…

The front page content changed. There's more and more outrage porn and other content that work on your anger. I noticed that the quality of the community changed accordingly, and became more unpleasant to interact with.

I used to post waaaaay too much, but lost all interest in it because there are only downsides nowadays.

Re: Twitter tests Reddit-style upvote and downvote buttons

#376

Post by nicbou » Fri, Jul 23, 2021, 7:10 AM UTC

hnbad wrote: post #316

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…

Some people say the same about Hacker News, by the way. Arguably Reddit at least has niche communities which are small enough to avoid the problem of dogpiling and mass downvoting (except via brigading).

Hacker News is smaller, and has much tighter moderation. The conversation tends to stay civilised. I can't remember a negative interaction here. On reddit, they're the norm.

Re: Twitter tests Reddit-style upvote and downvote buttons

#377

Post by kaba0 » Fri, Jul 23, 2021, 7:22 AM UTC

overspeed wrote: post #299

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…

> What makes it especially toxic, I think, is its lack of separation of communities. Interesting that you say this because Reddit users will tell you that this is a problem in itself since it creates echo chambers that validate the viewpoints you already hold.

Hobby level “echo-chambers” have never been a problem, eg. kitting will likely have a balanced political view. Problematic groups are the ones that have nothing else but a very specific ideology as a common point, eg. r/conservative or the like (as well as the left-leaning counterparts) — occasionally viewing them is not bad imo, if one spends sufficient time in other places as well. The problem is when somebody wants to spend all of their time there, shutting off any alternative source of information.

Re: Twitter tests Reddit-style upvote and downvote buttons

#378

Post by kaba0 » Fri, Jul 23, 2021, 7:44 AM UTC

7ewis wrote: post #179

TheFreim wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Different subreddits will have different majorities with different views, no? Different subreddits do have different majority views, yes, but the largest subreddits all pretty much have the same ones.

I've been on Reddit for over 10 years now and have to agree. Generally all the larger subreddits are fairly left. There have been some hard right subs, but most of the larger ones are banned now. I find a lot of the mods of large subs are quite power hungry too, for example r/soccer. If someone breaks some news, linking good sources, correct post format etc. mods will regularly take the post down and repost it themse…

It’s probably a controversial opinion, but when it comes to certain subjects like accepting homosexuality or just accepting the existence of trans people, it is no longer politics - not doing so is a moral failing. That’s not left-leaning anymore than believing that war crimes are bad.

While reddit is actually left leaning in a more purely political view as well, I don’t find conservative viewpoints banned/discriminated against that are actually political, only those that are anti-people — which is welcome.

Re: Twitter tests Reddit-style upvote and downvote buttons

#379

Post by kaba0 » Fri, Jul 23, 2021, 7:45 AM UTC

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #234

simion314 wrote: post #230

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…

Disagree. Well formed arguments even against the very topic of a subreddit are well received in my view.

Re: Twitter tests Reddit-style upvote and downvote buttons

#380

Post by kaba0 » Fri, Jul 23, 2021, 7:48 AM UTC

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #218

baseballdork wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

As if there would be more and less popular opinions among the general population? Like, I would be surprised if r/clojure had more subscribers than a gaming sub.