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Twitter tests Reddit-style upvote and downvote buttons

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Re: Twitter tests Reddit-style upvote and downvote buttons

#151

Post by BoxOfRain »

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…

>For a good mental health is imperative to avoid reddit, or at least just take part in tech/thinvs you love, but even there the neagtive and frustrated people will bring their issue there.

I got into a real black hole of posting about politics on Reddit during lockdown, which as someone with fairly anti-authoritarian convictions couldn't have been timed more horrendously. Deleted all my accounts and it did wonders for my sanity.

Re: Twitter tests Reddit-style upvote and downvote buttons

#152

Post by geraltofrivia »

jokoon wrote: post #61

I'm interested/curious to see how a system where you can only downvote would behave. I think users would be much more interested to only downvote, if they could. The front page would only show items that were not downvoted. Of course if would also be possible to see which posts were the most downvoted.

It might happen that folks downvote things even if they like it, just because its the only interaction possible. From what little I understand of content reception, the drive to interact triumphs the drive to curate/(give your opinion for the collective good, for the lack of a better word).

In a few weeks the website would then introduce a ‘controversial’ or ‘worst’ sorting and ironic downvoting would become mainstream till the devs give in and treat the downvote as an upvote, or introduce both downvote and upvote (wherein imo they’d stand a chance of losing their userbase).

Re: Twitter tests Reddit-style upvote and downvote buttons

#153

Post by swalsh »

thinkingemote wrote: post #75

The way users might benefit is if Twitter learns what users like and dislike and curate a feed based on these preferences. At the very least one could expect them to use it for the list of who to follow. One similar strategy would be how Reddit introduced a subreddit filter feature (which was previously only available in a 3rd party extension) to get metrics on which popular but disliked subreddit to quarantine. Thes…

Our feeds are already heavily curated. I recently subscribed to the WSJ, and got paper delivery of the weekend editionfor free. At first, I clicked the option because I use a charcoal grill and I'm paperless to the point I struggled to find material to start it with.

But it seemed like a waste to not read it. Once I started though, I quickly started to really enjoy the experience of reading a paper news paper. Aside from the tactile feel, and fresh smell there is joy in a completely uncurated experience. I'm reading things that are way out of the bounds of my normal filter bubble. I'm exposed to topics I never knew I found interesting. Life is duller when its completely curated.

Re: Twitter tests Reddit-style upvote and downvote buttons

#154

Post by stared »

jokoon wrote: post #61

I'm interested/curious to see how a system where you can only downvote would behave. I think users would be much more interested to only downvote, if they could. The front page would only show items that were not downvoted. Of course if would also be possible to see which posts were the most downvoted.

Sounds like r/RoastMe.

Re: Twitter tests Reddit-style upvote and downvote buttons

#155

Post by geraltofrivia »

ookdatnog wrote: post #117
rpastuszak wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I prefer upvotes/downvotes to likes, but there's an issue with "I downvote because I disagree" instead of "I downvote because the content is of poor quality". I also 100% agree that groupthink can be an issue, it's almost like the highlighted notes on kindle--I feel like once they reach a critical mass, people start highlighting the same text without really thinking about it. So, the ideal, for me is to allow for up/…

Upvote/downvote have a design flaw. They are intended to be asymmetrical (one for "I like this or agree with this or find it interesting", the other is _intended_ for "irrelevant, doesn't contribute" and not "don't like this/disagree"), but their design is symmetrical. They are equally prominent in the UI, they have mirrored names, etc. So no wonder people use downvotes as the mirror concept of upvotes.

I always think that these interactions should be modeled as: upvotes as ‘I want others to read this’, and downvote as ‘I don’t want others to read this’. I believe your intended behaviours (I like this or agree with this or find it interesting/irrelevant, doesn't contribute" and not "don't like this/disagree) also fit the aforementioned model.

Re: Twitter tests Reddit-style upvote and downvote buttons

#156

Post by BoxOfRain »

tester34 wrote: post #55

upvote/downvote system is flawed allows to manipulate, promotes groupthink and kind of harassing people it maybe worked over decade ago or so, but it's definitely not state of art nowadays. edit. or maybe it just doesn't work for e.g news/discussions (especially about politics and other "hot" topics) meanwhile for meme sites it should be fine

I think using a combination of vote rank and number of comments is a good compromise. Reddit is one extreme which is a pure vanity contest while things like traditional forums or chan boards where ranking is purely based on bumps from new posts is another. There's no reason not to use both, and by adding biases we can tune it to a particular community. Too much of a circlejerk we can increase the influence of the comment rank, too many flamewars and we can increase the influence of the vote rank. You could even vary these parameters based on the time of day, for example one forum I was part of some time ago would vary enormously based on what parts of the globe were awake.

Re: Twitter tests Reddit-style upvote and downvote buttons

#158

Post by TeMPOraL »

jstx1 wrote: post #112
wanderingmind wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Works great at Hacker news. I rarely come across anti-scientific, illogical nonsense.

I wouldn't attribute this to the upvoting system - HN is highly moderated and somewhat specialised as a community. This can't scale to a platform as large and as broad as Twitter.

> This can't scale to a platform as large and as broad as Twitter.

I think this is the answer to the whole conversation about building communities on-line. That is: quality communities don't scale.

As I elaborated on here[0], I think the factor that enables high-quality on-line communities is active moderation - and that doesn't scale. The workload grows in proportion to the userbase / discussion volume. So, if we want a high-quality platform "as large and as broad as Twitter", we'll have to do it the hard way, and employ proportionate level of active moderation.

On a tangent: looking from this angle, the failure of big on-line platforms is just another example of the modus operandi of big tech companies: they do the easy 80% of the work, ignore the remaining 20% that's hard and most important, and then defend themselves by claiming "scale is hard". Other well-known examples of this phenomenon include counterfeiting problems on Amazon and Google's nonexistent customer support.

--

[0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27917125

Re: Twitter tests Reddit-style upvote and downvote buttons

#159

Post by ipsi »

lifthrasiir wrote: post #135
TeMPOraL wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm seconding your suggestion. I also think it's mostly moderation. Through close to two decades of watching and participating in discussions on Reddit, HN, Facebook, Twitter, Mastodon, YouTube comments, some phpBB boards, website comment systems, as well as a bunch of local discussion boards in the age before social media, I've observed that: - Niche forums fare better than general ones - Voting systems don't matter…

I actually have even stronger opinion: moderation also doesn't work, but it seems pretty much the only way to slow decay. For example niche forums fare better in particular because moderation is easier with smaller forums and they generally decay anyway as the forum itself grows. And I don't think the moderation skill is learnable either; I (painfully) learned that the founder is rarely a good moderator.

The one counter-example I can think of for that is https://forums.rpg.net - it's quite a large community, and has been around for something like 20 years. The moderators are very active in the forums themselves, and they've learned from their experiences over time. It's not perfect, but as the community is still large and thriving, even in the Reddit/Facebook/Twitter era, I'd say they're doing a good job.

Re: Twitter tests Reddit-style upvote and downvote buttons

#160

Post by stared »

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…

Reddit is diverse. I hear a lot of “Reddit is toxic”. Or that “Reddit is the best place”. Both are correct. It is not only about the majority view. It is mainly about which subreddits you pick. I am not a massive Redditor. Yet, for some time, I opened r/MachineLearning daily.

Some subreddits are/were highly toxic (e.g. the infamous r/incels). Some other are full of vulnerable life stories you won’t find anywhere else. People won’t post them on their public FB feeds; not everyone writes anonymous blogs. Any coverage of such topics by journalists (if the topic gets ever covered) is likely to focus on a handful of cases, be biased and heavily edited.

For an example from Reddit, see “Trans people of Reddit, what was something you weren’t expecting to be told, find out, or experience when going through your transition?” (https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/4g1pgu/serious_t...).

Another subreddit with not so much majority view is CMV: https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/. It is heart-warming (and mind-stimulating) to see people open to changing their minds. Compare and contrast with Twitter, where there are no enough characters to express a more nuanced argument. And views are usually pushed down one’s throat (if they ever leave a bubble).

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