I'd like to propose an "informative" button and a "political" button so that I could ask to see things that are useful & intelligent but have nothing to do with politics.
Reminds me of steam reviews
Please Bring Back Our Downvotes: Society Desperately Needs It
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Re: Please Bring Back Our Downvotes: Society Desperately Needs It
#12> The expression to feed into an anonymous algorithm that we don’t just not like something — that we actually dislike it. The author seems to assume that this sort of interaction would lead to these algorithms recommending similar content less, but these algorithms tend to prioritize engagement, not enjoyment. Downvotes are a form of engagement, so don't be surprised if these algorithms use your downvote patterns to…
Reddit had downvotes which means every thread is full of people agreeing with eachother. Creates an echo chamber. People don't want to get downvoted so they eventually stop posting.
It's great for creating perception bubbles. Everyone agrees!
Re: Please Bring Back Our Downvotes: Society Desperately Needs It
#13I'd like to propose an "informative" button and a "political" button so that I could ask to see things that are useful & intelligent but have nothing to do with politics.
I don’t think that the right and the left agree on what’s informative and what’s political.
Re: Please Bring Back Our Downvotes: Society Desperately Needs It
#14The trouble with up and down buttons, or like and dislike is that they often are only used by the lovers or haters - the 10-20% of people at the opposite ends of the 'likeability spectrum'. I've never figured out if up/down votes mean the content is good or that people agree with it? (the old issue of people liking death announcements/obituaries) On HN I tend not to downvote unless the person is writing like they're…
> I've never figured out if up/down votes mean the content is good or that people agree with it?
Most social sites have guidelines that downvotes are only supposed to be used for comments that break their guidelines. On HN and Reddit it seems many people ignore this and readily downvote opinions they disagree with or comments they simply don’t want to hear.
This is most obvious on posts about contentious topics (politics, police, social media, drugs) where well-written posts quickly accumulate downvotes if they don’t agree with the popular sentiment on on HN.
It only takes a few instances of seeing your well-written, polite comments with citations being downvoted immediately to -3 to know that unpopular opinions aren’t welcome. That’s how the echo chamber is propagated.
Re: Please Bring Back Our Downvotes: Society Desperately Needs It
#15> The expression to feed into an anonymous algorithm that we don’t just not like something — that we actually dislike it. The author seems to assume that this sort of interaction would lead to these algorithms recommending similar content less, but these algorithms tend to prioritize engagement, not enjoyment. Downvotes are a form of engagement, so don't be surprised if these algorithms use your downvote patterns to…
Reddit had downvotes which means every thread is full of people agreeing with eachother. Creates an echo chamber. People don't want to get downvoted so they eventually stop posting. It's great for creating perception bubbles. Everyone agrees!
Yeah, my experience has been that any downvote system will turn an audience that's divided 51-49 to one that's partitioned 51-0 in very short order. If anything, I've come to the conclusion that downvoting should be completely removed from most online platforms.
Re: Please Bring Back Our Downvotes: Society Desperately Needs It
#16Earlier quoted context omitted.
Reddit had downvotes which means every thread is full of people agreeing with eachother. Creates an echo chamber. People don't want to get downvoted so they eventually stop posting. It's great for creating perception bubbles. Everyone agrees!
Yeah, my experience has been that any downvote system will turn an audience that's divided 51-49 to one that's partitioned 51-0 in very short order. If anything, I've come to the conclusion that downvoting should be completely removed from most online platforms.
What's happening in Hnews then? Is it bad?
Re: Please Bring Back Our Downvotes: Society Desperately Needs It
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, my experience has been that any downvote system will turn an audience that's divided 51-49 to one that's partitioned 51-0 in very short order. If anything, I've come to the conclusion that downvoting should be completely removed from most online platforms.
What's happening in Hnews then? Is it bad?
HN is a rare exception to this effect due to its more focused niche (though the bubble effect is definitely there to some degree). I'm more referencing larger platforms, particularly reddit.
Re: Please Bring Back Our Downvotes: Society Desperately Needs It
#18The trouble with up and down buttons, or like and dislike is that they often are only used by the lovers or haters - the 10-20% of people at the opposite ends of the 'likeability spectrum'. I've never figured out if up/down votes mean the content is good or that people agree with it? (the old issue of people liking death announcements/obituaries) On HN I tend not to downvote unless the person is writing like they're…
> I've never figured out if up/down votes mean the content is good or that people agree with it? Most social sites have guidelines that downvotes are only supposed to be used for comments that break their guidelines. On HN and Reddit it seems many people ignore this and readily downvote opinions they disagree with or comments they simply don’t want to hear. This is most obvious on posts about contentious topics (poli…
> Most social sites have guidelines that downvotes are only supposed to be used for comments that break their guidelines. On HN and Reddit it seems many people ignore this and readily downvote opinions they disagree with or comments they simply don’t want to hear.
On HN they aren’t ignoring anything; the original HN guideline, set by pg himself, is that downvoting for disagreement is okay here. (I don’t necessarily agree with that guideline, but I didn’t start this site.)
Re: Please Bring Back Our Downvotes: Society Desperately Needs It
#19Facebook has an option to “See fewer posts like this”. Select the three dots icon on the upper right corner of a post (mobile app) to see it. It doesn’t notify the person that you’ve chosen to not see their posts, so there’s no social risk in clicking it. I use it liberally and it works. I check Facebook maybe a couple times a month and almost never see anything I don’t want to see any more.
How does Facebook's engine score similarity between posts, exactly?
Obviously we don’t see the inner workings of algorithms, from Facebook’s feed to HN’s upvote/downvote/flag/decay system.
However, my sense is that by clicking the button I see fewer posts from the person who posted it, which is often quite effective at shaping my feed the way I want it anyway. Facebook does also seem to do some basic classification of hot topics (politics in particular) such that hiding a few politics posts results in fewer politics posts even from other people, too.
Likes are upvotes, so it’s also important to hit the like button on content you want to see more of, and to not hit the like button on content you don’t want to see. I know it sounds obvious, but I know people who refuse to press Like buttons because they object to the concept of Likes.
Using likes and the “hide post” features to curate a feed doesn’t take much more effort than upvotes and downvotes and it’s very effective at shaping my feed, in my experience. I think too many tech people simply ignore those features and can’t understand why their feed is only showing them content that other people are engaging with (often arguments).
Re: Please Bring Back Our Downvotes: Society Desperately Needs It
#20Downvotes on something like reddit are very different from downvotes on something like Facebook. Imagine being a teenager and getting downvoted by your own friends. These are complicated tradeoffs of course, but that's an important part of the story.