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Facebook rolls out trial of 'dislike' button for downvoting comments

theguardian.com

21–23 of 23 posts

Re: Facebook rolls out trial of 'dislike' button for downvoting comments

#21

Disheartening to see that Facebook is unabashedly aping the cornerstones of various sites (reddit) and apps (Snap). That said, a downvote, or a "dislike" button, is almost always a double-edged sword - although it can be used to tune out hateful comments, it can also turn potentially meaningful comment sections into echo chambers extremely fast. I do not see this turning out well.

I always thought the only way downvotes buttons should be implemented is that they're non-functional, in that they do nothing other than let a user take an action; you could perhaps then influence what that specific user sees in the future, to help get an idea of their tastes, or instead not actually affecting where a comment or post shows up in an order.

Re: Facebook rolls out trial of 'dislike' button for downvoting comments

#22
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, some sites have proper reaction systems that let you rate a post on multiple basises. Slashdot's an obvious example, but quite a few forums have such systems too, with the XenForo version having options for: Like Dislike Agree Disagree Happy Funny Surprised Sad Angry Winner Friendly Informative Creative Useful Optimistic Boring Old Bad Spelling As well as whatever other options the site owner may have added. So…

> So there are systems out there which differentiate between a post someone disagrees with and one that's low quality, ...which don't actually mean anything in practice because (1) disagreement effects perception of quality, so even honest voters in a system which distinguished the two will still be likely to mark a post that they disagree with as low wuality, and (2) people in practice, given the option, will mark a…

Dunno, never seen this happen myself on most sites with reaction/rating systems. Okay, the list of examples I can remember off the top of my head is only two (Wario Forums, The Admin Zone), but neither seems to have issues with people abusing the ratings system to dislike posts they merely disagree with.

Maybe it stops holding up on Reddit scale though.

Re: Facebook rolls out trial of 'dislike' button for downvoting comments

#23
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry to break it to you but HN is exactly the same. The difference is that the hive mind here doesn't like memes. Groupthink still exists.

Hive mind exists everywhere, the goal is to not encourage it.

Voting on comments encourages it.
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