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Please Bring Back Our Downvotes: Society Desperately Needs It

theapeiron.co.uk

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

#421

Post by aeturnum »

hashkb wrote: post #208
Pxtl wrote: post #176

I've noticed a difference between downvoting and non-downvoting discussions systems. In downvoting discussions, the top post will represent the consensus of the people engaged in the discussion. Note that this isn't "the truth" or "the consensus of the community" but of the people engaged on the subject. For example, if you see an otherwise-liberal community discussing gun-rights, the gun owners within that community…

But with downvotes, we ensure that only popular opinions get visibility, defeating the entire purpose of sharing ideas within a community.

An idea I've been interested in trying is requiring people to downvote for a reason: "unproductive," "inaccurate," "off-topic."

The hope is both to increase friction and to allow each person to decide which downvote reasons they want to respect. It also forces people to foreground why they are downvoting and gets rid of "why the downvotes" and changes it into "why is this unproductive?"

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

#423

Post by Veen »

MisterBastahrd wrote: post #369
Veen wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My love of my partner and my nephews and nieces. My enjoyment of art. My appreciation of the natural world. You can do a political analysis of those things, but they are not intrinsically political. Of course, some on the left believe that there is nothing that isn't political. But I don't think they're correct.

You made it 4 words into your reply before using veiled political language regarding your relationship with whomever you are romantically involved with. "Partner" became common in the mid 80s because it was a way for gay people to refer to their love interests without revealing their gender. You say that art and love aren't political, but that's only useful when trying to split hairs about the subject.

You're missing the distinction I am trying to make. The language may be political, but my love for my partner is not the same thing as the language I use to describe it. It's why this conversation is important: we are not merely symbol processing units, we are human beings with perceptions and feeling that are not entirely mediated by language and politics.

That may seem to you as if I am splitting hairs. For me it's one of the most important distinctions in the world, and one that is lost when we insist everything is political.

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

#424

Post by Pxtl »

anigbrowl wrote: post #378
hashkb wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure. But it's a double edged sword. "You should wear your mask" is getting downvoted (edit: I'm using the term loosely here, I hope it tracks) across the country and responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths. We need to engage with ideas we don't like, and be open to persuasion. Downvotes preclude that.

No we don't, and no they don't. If you engage with ideas you don't like and debate them in good faith, and the promoters of said ideas keep just pumping them out (perhaps even using botnets or whatever) while ignoring all your good-faith attempts to refute them, then you are wasting your time. At some point you have to cut your losses; you stay open to persuasion by people who consistently exploit your willingness to…

I'd love to see a site like Reddit or HN experiment with using relationship graphs to research this. Start with some fixed points of "this person is a credible source of information" vs "this person is a neo-nazi conspiracy theorist" and examine the networks of people who support them and oppose them, and use that to establish credibility-scoring system-wide and weigh people's votes based on that.

I mean, it would be super-biased but at this point I'm all about systems that are biased in favor of scientific consensus and human rights.

Yes, you could reverse the "credibility" of those paragon users and make a system where the people surrounding the neo-nazi conspiracy theorists are the ones who hold all the power but we already get sites like that without any moderation or voting at all so that would be redundant anyways.

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

#425

Post by fpgaminer »

rspeele wrote: post #415
sfink wrote: post #396

Perhaps the model simply isn't rich enough. Right now, we model posts as either belonging to the good bucket or the bad bucket, and do various things (upvoting, downvoting, AI, ...) to guess the "right" bucket. Maybe it shouldn't be surprising that a system based on polarization results in polarization? Which is not to say that just adding complexity is the right fix. Sure, you can add dislike + disagree + ijusthatey…

Perhaps I misunderstand your idea, but this clustering sounds like exactly the thing to drive polarization. Put me in my comfortable bubble where I only see content and comments from like-minded people, and I'll be increasingly unable to understand where people outside the bubble are coming from. The only thing I see about those people is ragebait about how awful and stupid they're being this week, written by other p…

Somewhat related to this, I recently watched a video essay on VR Chat and one of the takeaways was how VR Chat is much more like the earlier internet (think around the dawn of Web 2.0 and before). There's no recommendation systems or an algorithm partitioning people into isolated spaces. It's just a bunch of random strangers browsing through uncurated rooms. And, as the author argues, that lends itself to a much healthier environment where people are exposed to and more understanding of those outside of what would otherwise be their bubble.

I definitely feel some nostalgia for those days.

To be clear, it's not like VR Chat or even the early internet were completely bubbleless. But without an algorithm dividing people, it was just the path of least resistance to ... explore. Click on links and see where they go. Would you end up on some neo-nazi forum sometimes? Sure. But you were just as likely to end up on a Pokemon fan page. It was far more random and diverse. As you point out, that's different today with these algorithms driving people directly towards radical content.

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

#426

Post by sokoloff »

Pxtl wrote: post #176

I've noticed a difference between downvoting and non-downvoting discussions systems. In downvoting discussions, the top post will represent the consensus of the people engaged in the discussion. Note that this isn't "the truth" or "the consensus of the community" but of the people engaged on the subject. For example, if you see an otherwise-liberal community discussing gun-rights, the gun owners within that community…

My experience is that on predominantly (left) liberal communities, that a gun rights topic’s top post will rarely represent the view of gun owners.

Everything else you said resonated, but that part strongly contradicted for me.

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

#427

Post by romwell »

aeturnum wrote: post #421
hashkb wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But with downvotes, we ensure that only popular opinions get visibility, defeating the entire purpose of sharing ideas within a community.

An idea I've been interested in trying is requiring people to downvote for a reason: "unproductive," "inaccurate," "off-topic." The hope is both to increase friction and to allow each person to decide which downvote reasons they want to respect. It also forces people to foreground why they are downvoting and gets rid of "why the downvotes" and changes it into "why is this unproductive?"

Hahahahahaha.

This is exactly what reddit told its users to do (only downvote due to one of these reasons) - and exactly nobody does it.

People will figure out to downvote for whatever "reason" that maximizes the impact of the downvote real fast; groups of people will make sure to weaponize it too even without coordination.

E.g.: "the comment I hate doesn't have enough 'inaccurate' downvotes to sink into the abyss, so I'll do my job and add one".

The only reason why things are downvoted is "I don't like what I feel when I read it", which most of the time is "I disagree with what this says" or "I hate people who say things like that" (the latter more commonly).

You want people to dislike things for the "right" reasons — but the only way to do this is to filter the people, not the content.

(I've been a mod of a decently-sized subreddit, and a user since 2008)

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

#428

Post by anigbrowl »

Pxtl wrote: post #424
anigbrowl wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No we don't, and no they don't. If you engage with ideas you don't like and debate them in good faith, and the promoters of said ideas keep just pumping them out (perhaps even using botnets or whatever) while ignoring all your good-faith attempts to refute them, then you are wasting your time. At some point you have to cut your losses; you stay open to persuasion by people who consistently exploit your willingness to…

I'd love to see a site like Reddit or HN experiment with using relationship graphs to research this. Start with some fixed points of "this person is a credible source of information" vs "this person is a neo-nazi conspiracy theorist" and examine the networks of people who support them and oppose them, and use that to establish credibility-scoring system-wide and weigh people's votes based on that. I mean, it would be…

I'm very into that (because I spend a great deal of time studying neo-nazi conspiracy theorists and similar people).

I think platform operators to some extent have to eschew moral judgements and let things play out, eg if a variety of distinct and persistent clusters emerge naturally, and 98% of people in a community make nazis' lives miserable for being in the 'nazi cluster' then it doesn't need any additional help from the platform operator. Of course the nazis will whine 'so much for the tolerant left' but honestly, who cares. The key is that if enough people in a community tag individuals participants in a particular negative way, those individuals can either accept it (and then be habitually ignored) or change their ways.

This isn't always a moralistic dichotomy. For example I post a lot of environmental stories to HN, which are not-interesting to some readers who prefer to focus on pure technology. I'm OK with them ignoring such posts or even downvoting them/flagging if I make too many in a row. Likewise there are many technical topics of wide interest on HN which I find deathly boring, but which I am happy to ignore.

Researchers at Stanford have come up with some results on clustering and conflict in online spaces, which you might find interesting: https://snap.stanford.edu/conflict/

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

#429

Post by romwell »

alach11 wrote: post #389
dmkolobov wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something that I've learned: nobody owes you an explanation for why they disagree with you, nor are they bound to care whether you learn something. Furthermore, I would argue that self-reflection about why people might disagree with your viewpoints is a valuable experience in that it provides an opportunity to practice empathy and awareness in how your words are perceived by others.

In many communities (HN, Reddit, etc.) downvotes are ostensibly not to be used for disagreement. Forcing users to supply a reason could introduce enough friction to encourage more thoughtful usage of the downvote.

"ostensibly" is an important qualifier.

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

#430

Post by asdff »

hashkb wrote: post #208
Pxtl wrote: post #176

I've noticed a difference between downvoting and non-downvoting discussions systems. In downvoting discussions, the top post will represent the consensus of the people engaged in the discussion. Note that this isn't "the truth" or "the consensus of the community" but of the people engaged on the subject. For example, if you see an otherwise-liberal community discussing gun-rights, the gun owners within that community…

But with downvotes, we ensure that only popular opinions get visibility, defeating the entire purpose of sharing ideas within a community.

You got downvoted for this which I find ironic. Imo, sharing an opinion also shouldn't equate downvote. Adding a comment that contributes nothing to a discussion on the other hand, maybe something like "I agree with that." with nothing more added of substance, should equate a downvote since that sort of post doesn't further discussion, the thread ends there.
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