Please Bring Back Our Downvotes: Society Desperately Needs It • Hacker News Board

Re: Please Bring Back Our Downvotes: Society Desperately Needs It

#51

Post by dahart » Wed, Jul 28, 2021, 1:34 PM UTC

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #14

helsinkiandrew wrote: post #3

The 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…

> 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.

While that might happen every once in a while, it is important to remember that politely worded comments with citations can (and often are) still rude, wrong, misguided, and/or spin. Unfair downvotes to death have even happened to me once or twice, but I don’t think HN is going to hell in a handbasket yet. I think I’ve seen a lot more people jumping to conclusions about why downvotes are cast than I have of actually positive and helpful comments being unfairly downvoted purely for harmless but unpopular opinions. Unless the downvoter explains their reasons, we don’t know why the downvotes were cast, so it’s not safe to assume it’s for popularity reasons just because it appears polite. HN threads are sometimes interesting because they can attract experts in the domain of the posted article, and it’s common for people who are curious but relatively ignorant to argue with people who really know what they’re talking about. Sometimes it’s not easy to tell who’s who.

Either way, if you see comments that don’t deserve to be gray, upvote them!

Re: Please Bring Back Our Downvotes: Society Desperately Needs It

#52

Post by yKnoTho » Wed, Jul 28, 2021, 1:35 PM UTC

crazy_horse wrote: post #21

I've been in academia for awhile, I'm used to getting serious criticism. I'm a man, my whole life I've been told to toughen up. There's really almost nothing you can say to me that is going to hurt me. I really mean it. But downvotes? I pretty much won't post on HN or Reddit because of them (and the culture associated with it). I've got no problem being wrong, but when I spend a significant amount of time trying to r…

The world is binary, there are just a lot more binary decisions than we often tote around. It’s a great model for academic and scientific work but not for society.

Thank the powers that be who push statistical analysis as being the “one path” to truth.

The mathematicians who first defined our statistical tools warned about using them to run society, as they are all designed with a certain amount of loss of precision.

When it comes to running a society, applying statistical models to people means rounding people off to make a choice work. Human biology works on adapting agency to the most common inputs; currently we are fine with man made behavior of treating each other like rounding errors.

This meme we can just statistically carve up wealth held by a minority is a huge joke of a cultural effort; as you can see here you are berating the efforts of one of the minority we protect as being pathological.

For starters, what real obligation is there scientifically to believe that Zuckerberg is that wealthy?

Oh that’s right; their experts who built their systems that train our biology to stay addicted to them, using scientific theory of biology to manufacture consent.

Re: Please Bring Back Our Downvotes: Society Desperately Needs It

#53

Post by frankish » Wed, Jul 28, 2021, 1:36 PM UTC

crazy_horse wrote: post #21

I've been in academia for awhile, I'm used to getting serious criticism. I'm a man, my whole life I've been told to toughen up. There's really almost nothing you can say to me that is going to hurt me. I really mean it. But downvotes? I pretty much won't post on HN or Reddit because of them (and the culture associated with it). I've got no problem being wrong, but when I spend a significant amount of time trying to r…

This pretty much sums up my sentiment as well. I think people should comment their disagreement instead of downvote. Others can then upvote the response, but at least dialogue can remain open.

I've actually considered using a screenname like commentdontdownvote lol.

Re: Please Bring Back Our Downvotes: Society Desperately Needs It

#54

Post by smolder » Wed, Jul 28, 2021, 1:36 PM UTC

DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #8

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #5

Facebook 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?

Part of this is their capability of processing image posts and giving it a text description. For example Facebook will look at a jpeg of an old man with some text on it and use image recognition to actually determine a description of "photo of old man saying 'top text bottom text'". I've seen these descriptions appear in the page and they're pretty impressive accuracy-wise. Beyond that, comparing posts for similarity is likely mundane stuff like who wrote it, associated words, the type of people that engage, and how.

Re: Please Bring Back Our Downvotes: Society Desperately Needs It

#55

Post by _v7gu » Wed, Jul 28, 2021, 1:37 PM UTC

A person with extremely mainstream views suggests that the mainstream should be able to bury opinions that do not align with theirs. Oh my, how surprising.

Re: Please Bring Back Our Downvotes: Society Desperately Needs It

#56

Post by yoran » Wed, Jul 28, 2021, 1:38 PM UTC

I think Americans don't give enough attention to the bi-party system as an important cause for the current political divide, and increasingly, civil divide.

My hypothesis is that a two-party system creates the divide because it encourages such a powerful "us vs them" feeling. I've never seen such disdain or hatred towards people on the other side of the political spectrum as in the US. I'm from continental Europe and that divide there is much less present. And I think it's because we have so many different parties, that the "us vs them" feeling isn't so powerful.

Sure, social media and the completely politicized media landscape exacerbate the issue. But I think the root cause is the two-party political system.

Re: Please Bring Back Our Downvotes: Society Desperately Needs It

#57

Post by selfhoster11 » Wed, Jul 28, 2021, 1:38 PM UTC

TheAdamAndChe wrote: post #39

oconnor663 wrote: post #20

Downvotes 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.

Negative feedback from your peer group is normal, and provides conformity pressures, which is important when forming and maintaining a community bound together by a common culture.

It's also a way to apply peer pressure.

Re: Please Bring Back Our Downvotes: Society Desperately Needs It

#58

Post by playguardin » Wed, Jul 28, 2021, 1:38 PM UTC

irjustin wrote: post #16

drstewart wrote: post #15

Earlier 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?

Yes it's bad. Only boring agreeable normies get the up vote's necessary to get downvote privs, then they do their school marm routine, exercising their petty tyranny.

Re: Please Bring Back Our Downvotes: Society Desperately Needs It

#59

Post by sickcodebruh » Wed, Jul 28, 2021, 1:39 PM UTC

spinax wrote: post #24

crazy_horse wrote: post #21

I've been in academia for awhile, I'm used to getting serious criticism. I'm a man, my whole life I've been told to toughen up. There's really almost nothing you can say to me that is going to hurt me. I really mean it. But downvotes? I pretty much won't post on HN or Reddit because of them (and the culture associated with it). I've got no problem being wrong, but when I spend a significant amount of time trying to r…

It's especially bad on a site like HN - an account only gets a downvote capability if they've received what is it, 400 upvotes? - so you're assured that every downvote you receive is someone who says lots of things other people like to upvote (or are a serial link poster getting link karma upvotes). There is an echo chamber here based on how the downvote rules work, and I've watched people's comments get brigade down…

I’ve been using HN for a few years now, mostly lurking but commenting every now and then, and I’m creeping up to the downvote privilege threshold. (I think it’s 500, not 400.) I wouldn’t describe myself as “someone who says lots of things other people like to upvote,” I think it’s more “someone who says little things over many years and some people have upvoted them here and there.” In other words, for what it’s worth, I don’t think that your description of HN matches everyone’s experience, and not everyone with downvote ability is the same type of person.

Re: Please Bring Back Our Downvotes: Society Desperately Needs It

#60

Post by cyberge99 » Wed, Jul 28, 2021, 1:39 PM UTC

_v7gu wrote: post #48

gus_massa wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> then someone comes along with their four accounts and downvotes every comment I got In HN you can send an email to the mods so they can take a look. Also the site may detect it automatically (the details are unclear, it's part of the secret sauce). > because I'm not sufficiently ideological Avoid political threads. Everyone is talking pass each other, and you will not convince anyone. Upvote grey comments if they a…

> Avoid political threads. Coupled with the new catchphrase "everything is political", this is quite impossible to do.

I haven’t heard that new catchphrase to date.

There’s an old joke about the Network OSI layer: What are layers 8 and 9? Political and Financial.

I think the context with things like that refer to internal business politics and having diplomatic conversations versus State or National Politics.

Avoid religion and politics in general seems like solid advice as it’s too emotionally charged for most people to discuss purely logically. (Also, there are too many x factors and most politicians are relatively short term (speaking of USA here).