
Facebook’s “downvote” system begins rolling out wider in US - shawndumas
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/07/facebooks-downvote-system-begins-rolling-out-wider-in-us-heres-how-it-works/
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0x00000000
Looks like they've accepted they can't censor people to suppress "problematic"
ideas without criticism, so instead they will let the hivemind do it for them.
"Downvote things that are uncivil or irrelevant" is the biggest joke.

I don't think it will make any comment section better and such mechanisms
usually tend to push communities to one extreme or the other. Imagine if
twitter had voting...

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DaiPlusPlus
Twitter does have voting - so I’m not sure what your point is.

~~~
0x00000000
It isn't voting any more than Facebook likes are voting. You can't activately
suppress things you don't like to make it harder for other people to see them.

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rixrax
They don't need downvote system. They 'just' need to make it so that I can
only see comments posted by people that I'm actually friends with. That way I
don't have to care about 10000 Russian troll bots and others writing stuff in
comments section when NPR or WaPo or Al Jazeera or Fox news or someone else
that I am following posts something.

Actually - now that I am thinking about this, yes, please, give me this
option. Even as an opt-in option. I still want to follow news and other
organizations. And maybe even comment, but I only want organization itself,
and my friends to see my comments. And I only want to see what my friends
comment. I am ok with my small echo chamber.

Currently it's soul crushing to look at the comments section on almost any
news postings. Vitriol and ignorance run strong there.

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pirocks
I'm curious to see how this will turn out particularly on controversial news
articles. Most news site comment sections have a majority liberal/conservative
audience, which curses minority viewpoints to be heavily downvoted. But she if
this is true on Facebook.

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ravenstine
It has more to do with judging posts as incivil or irrelevant, kind of like
HN's downvote system, as opposed to an "unlike" feature, so I don't think they
would apply this feature to posts for news articles. But who knows! I think
the results would be hilariously disastrous if thousands of people get to
downvote news stories on a regular basis.

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mehrdadn
> It has more to do with judging posts as incivil or irrelevant, kind of like
> HN's downvote system

I have definitely witnessed HN's downvote system used frequently for other
reasons, so if we're comparing against HN, I don't see how they can keep it to
those reasons either...

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toasterlovin
Just want to second this. I regularly have comments downvoted with no
substantive pushback in comment form.

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dragonwriter
The whole point of downvotes is to improve S/N ratio by reducing the
visibility of noise by both deemphasizing the comments that are noise _and_
channeling pushback to such comments into the voting system rather than
additional comments.

So, no, not getting pushback in comments is not supporting evidence for
improper use of downvotes, it is the intent of downvotes.

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toasterlovin
I get it. The instances I’m talking about are, IMO, pretty clearly just
irrational disagreement.

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jameslk
> Meaning, if you tap the "like" button and down-vote on the same comment,
> those actions don't cancel each other out.

This sounds like a really confusing user experience. Also, showing the vote
number in addition to reactions complicates the social signaling.

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techsin101
didnt fb had dislike btn at some point and then removed it

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techsin101
so they're readding it back now

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ravenstine
I can't wait to experience the incivility of HN downvotes multiplied by 100 on
a regular basis.

I know that's kind of snarky, but in all seriousness, I don't trust the
average person to know what's civil or irrelevant. Everyone talks about
information and conversation bubbles, yet Big Tech continues to cause the
problem that everyone and their grandma knows that they create, and we accept
it because it's framed as a new toy.

It's as if Facebook isn't as unfun as it gets at this point. The only people
who I know that are active on it are old people, and my friends in my age
range are decreasingly online and even less active. The more that it exists to
satisfy perpetual malcontents, the less useful it seems to be.

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ProfessorLayton
Perhaps, but what seems to work better in HN is that the "score" is private to
the OP (Until a certain downvote threshold).

IMO showing a score is unproductive for all parties involved — it encourages
up/down brigades, and conflates popular opinion with useful discussion.

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mieseratte
I, for one, love asking an honest-to-god question on a potentially contentious
topic and then watching my score bounce up and down as folks ascribe intent to
the question.

Perfect example, a few weeks ago someone wrote something along the lines of
"Harassing Trump's cabinet is getting results" \- now I don't particularly
follow the news so I have no idea if anything genuinely came about of the
harassment - so I asked "What outcomes have there been?" and I watched that
question get downvoted and upvoted oscillating back and forth until several
hours later someone replied that Scott Pruit had resigned, stating the
harassment as the reason why at which point I thanked the replier for actually
taking the time to provide a constructive response.

Too often folks just assume intent for every little comment or question and
use a downvote to say "I don't like your opinion" regardless of how valid or
invalid it may be. I've been own Hacker News for many years, and it's
definitely gotten worse, but this has always been a bit of a bastion of
maturity. Not always, but it's better than discussing on Reddit and watching
the Dunning-Kruger effect in real-time.

I can only imagine Facebook with downvotes will be another rehash of Reddit
comments. The beauty of Facebook not having a fire-and-forget downvote system
is that it actually requires one to write out their displeasure so it at least
forces some semblance of dialogue.

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djdjxjxndjxjxj
How about: No comments on shared content. Only comments on content you
generate yourself. ?

Full

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mieseratte
> How about: No comments on shared content. Only comments on content you
> generate yourself. ?

> Full

I understand all of the words but I can't figure out how to read this.

What are you getting at here?

