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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

#251

Post by mjburgess »

rolleiflex wrote: post #123
Y_Y wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've probably thought of this, but if you can associate votes to identities then a classic way to mitigate this behaviour is quadratic weighting, where e.g. your nth vote costs n^2, so a censor or propagandist needs to pay 1e4 counteract the single votes of 100 casual observers.

Yeah, quadratic voting is one of the potential solutions to this, but ultimately that removes the ‘fraud load’ by mostly moving it to another place, to number of accounts. That is arguably worse because it incentivises the malicious users to create as many accounts as there are votes so as to not be subject to quadratic voting (1 vote = 1 energy point equivalency only holding at one vote), and it’s substantially hard…

Adding other factors into this system might help.

What about:

    weighting a vote by the "degree of separation" of the voter? (ie., friends count more)

     hyperbolic discounting of karma acquisition 

     limiting the number of voters per item

    new accounts can't vote until achived a network & karam status (eg., shares, by friends, are upvoted). 

    accounts which primarily upvote/downvote outside of their network are ignored

    etc.
I think this adds up to saying, "small networks of voters" are the primary type of community; and big-network effects are largely discounted. Where things are popular, they are because many different active communities appreciate them.

Re: Twitter tests Reddit-style upvote and downvote buttons

#252

Post by codesections »

Tainnor wrote: post #237
BuyMyBitcoins wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>”if you just want to talk about knitting, you can avoid the people talking about politics.” I don’t find this to be the case at all. The amount of politics tolerated in each subreddit is almost entirely dependent on the personalities of the mods who run it. And for whatever reason, most Reddit mods tend to be activist friendly or at least look the other way when it comes to obvious soapbox accounts breaking the rule…

I'm not super active on reddit, but I do frequent (mostly as a lurker) some subreddits from time to time, such as r/math, r/learnjapanese, r/history etc. I don't remember running into any sort of heated political argument in any of these subreddits. Of course, for other subreddits it might be different, but this is my experience.

> I do frequent (mostly as a lurker) some subreddits from time to time, such as r/math, r/learnjapanese, r/history etc. I don't remember running into any sort of heated political argument in any of these subreddits.

I haven't spent any time there, so I'm genuinely curious: how does r/history avoid political arguments? Some people say that everything is inherently political, but history seems especially adjacent to politics

Re: Twitter tests Reddit-style upvote and downvote buttons

#253

Post by zthrowaway »

heurisko wrote: post #191

The problem is, is supposedly, upvote = adds to the conversation, downvote = detracts from conversation. In reality, upvote = I agree, downvote = I disagree. However I don't think anything can save twitter from being a toxic platform. What makes it especially toxic, I think, is its lack of separation of communities. Reddit is toxic sometimes, but at least there is some separation: if you just want to talk about knitt…

The knitting community has become very political in the past few years. And a lot of people feel left out. My point being that just about every facet of life has been invaded by political stances that nobody wanted to be involved in and some are left to conform or feel pushed out.

Re: Twitter tests Reddit-style upvote and downvote buttons

#254

Post by nkingsy »

CydeWeys wrote: post #223
BeFlatXIII wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair to the Reddit moderation staff, they’re also paid $0.00, so being strict about keeping the sub on-topic may not be high up on their list of daily priorities.

Other way around. They're not paid, so they want to keep the amount of unrelated contentious bullshit on their subreddit to a minimum. I've been a default sub mod and I know how much of a firehose that is. The simplest solution, and the smallest amount of work in total, is to nip unrelated discussions in the bud, delete entire comment trees, and lock the comment section entirely on a post that is (or is looking to) g…

Yes, it works and it sort of scales.

Why, then, does the outrage porn rise to the top of the Reddit home page?

Because it measurably increases sales in a huge way right now.

To use a baseball analogy, how do you tell a juiced to the gills superstar that steroids are actually hurting their long-term outlook?

There’s no way to show Barry Bonds a future in which he’s shadow banned from the hall of fame and unmentionable even on his own teams broadcasts.

The change will come either with regulation or when a new, better system comes along and steals their users.

Re: Twitter tests Reddit-style upvote and downvote buttons

#255

Post by EugeneOZ »

krapp wrote: post #238
EugeneOZ wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“well thought out comments” in this case means “well thought if your comment is aligned with the herd's opinion”.

More often than not the spicy contrarian hot takes of those who don't "follow the herd" are just the bleats of sheep following another herd.

Nice statistics, your source is reliable and the numbers are impressive and trustworthy.

And it doesn't change the fact I’ve posted.

Re: Twitter tests Reddit-style upvote and downvote buttons

#256

Post by Blikkentrekker »

lolinder wrote: post #248
bagacrap wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I disagree" and "detracts from the conversation" have a lot of overlap. A (subjectively) very wrong take on a subject distracts from where you think the conversation should be heading. On Reddit I see many comments, convincingly written, that are (imo) flatly wrong. These comments are potentially very harmful because they're persuading others of a falsehood. Am I supposed to upvote or downvote? (what I actually tend…

On HN, if a comment is well-written and appears to be made in good faith but is (in my opinion) wrong, I neither upvote nor downvote, I reply. Downvoting a good-faith comment because you disagree with it does no one any favors. It creates a sense of persecution among those who disagree with you, while not actually providing any counter-argument for the benefit of the undecided. Leave the vote counts alone, make your…

> On HN, if a comment is well-written and appears to be made in good faith but is (in my opinion) wrong, I neither upvote nor downvote, I reply.

And this is evil being done as good men stay silent.

There might indeed be many that are not so petulant that they would downvote an otherwise non rule-breaking comment they disagree with, but few of them will find themselves upvoting something they disagree with either, and there will still be some that downvote it.

Thus, an unpopular opinion that otherwise contributes will eventually be downvoted for not receiving enough upvotes.

Re: Twitter tests Reddit-style upvote and downvote buttons

#257

Post by blacktriangle »

heurisko wrote: post #191

The problem is, is supposedly, upvote = adds to the conversation, downvote = detracts from conversation. In reality, upvote = I agree, downvote = I disagree. However I don't think anything can save twitter from being a toxic platform. What makes it especially toxic, I think, is its lack of separation of communities. Reddit is toxic sometimes, but at least there is some separation: if you just want to talk about knitt…

Have you been to a knitting forum lately? Holy shit they were one of the first to get heavily politicizes. You'll be ostracized from r/knitting if you're not left of Stalin.

Re: Twitter tests Reddit-style upvote and downvote buttons

#258

Post by padastra »

captainmuon wrote: post #224
heurisko wrote: post #191

The problem is, is supposedly, upvote = adds to the conversation, downvote = detracts from conversation. In reality, upvote = I agree, downvote = I disagree. However I don't think anything can save twitter from being a toxic platform. What makes it especially toxic, I think, is its lack of separation of communities. Reddit is toxic sometimes, but at least there is some separation: if you just want to talk about knitt…

Up/downvotes always have multiple conflicting dimensions. - The post is factually right / wrong - Confirms to the site rules / breaks the rules - I agree / disagree - I want to promote / bury this post - Reward poster with XP / punish I am usually very pragmatic and upvote a post when I want other people to read it (because I want to see the discussion, or because I want to spread the idea). I also upvote to reward t…

These differences exist conceptually, but my guess is if you did a factor reduction on actual behavior they would all be correlated nearly 100%.

Re: Twitter tests Reddit-style upvote and downvote buttons

#259

Post by jimbilly22 »

heurisko wrote: post #191

The problem is, is supposedly, upvote = adds to the conversation, downvote = detracts from conversation. In reality, upvote = I agree, downvote = I disagree. However I don't think anything can save twitter from being a toxic platform. What makes it especially toxic, I think, is its lack of separation of communities. Reddit is toxic sometimes, but at least there is some separation: if you just want to talk about knitt…

This is spot on. The only wrinkle -- Twitter could actually do something to create separate communities if they wanted. Some large investors have asked them to. They've drafted up plans to create a separate space for financial discussion. Just haven't acted on it.

I really just think it comes down to Twitter being poorly run. I know Paul Singer made a run to have Dorsey replaced as CEO, but eventually backed off. They seem to lean into the divisiveness. It may be beneficial for short-term engagement but it essentially creates a negative emotional experience for customers. And that's going to come home to roost eventually.

Re: Twitter tests Reddit-style upvote and downvote buttons

#260

Post by dmurray »

captainmuon wrote: post #224
heurisko wrote: post #191

The problem is, is supposedly, upvote = adds to the conversation, downvote = detracts from conversation. In reality, upvote = I agree, downvote = I disagree. However I don't think anything can save twitter from being a toxic platform. What makes it especially toxic, I think, is its lack of separation of communities. Reddit is toxic sometimes, but at least there is some separation: if you just want to talk about knitt…

Up/downvotes always have multiple conflicting dimensions. - The post is factually right / wrong - Confirms to the site rules / breaks the rules - I agree / disagree - I want to promote / bury this post - Reward poster with XP / punish I am usually very pragmatic and upvote a post when I want other people to read it (because I want to see the discussion, or because I want to spread the idea). I also upvote to reward t…

Didn't Slashdot have multiple dimensions, a post could be "+5, insightful" or "-3, off topic".

If you squint you could say the same about emoji reactions on Facebook and probably other platforms, this post got 5 :heart and 2 :scary reactions. They don't have a visible one for relevance but presumably the reactions feed into one behind the scenes.

I'm not sure any of these have been shown to be clearly superior to the Reddit/HN approach of a single up/down vote.

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