I always thought there was a space for a social media that has upvotes and followers and all that, with the intention of creating echo chambers and segregating users into their own groups and that sort of thing, but with the ability for anyone to go on a 'holiday' into the other echo chambers, to see what those other users experience.
Likes are not one dimensional. Likes flow from one person to another. If you like someones posts, you're more likely to enjoy the things they like. A network of endorsement emerges and the subgroups can become clear.
The important thing would be for moderators to be able to police "what is liked/disliked". Hear me out.
If you've got this space where dozens or hundreds of people all have a high overlap of favorable content, but there's this one turd who comes in and downvotes everything, always... he's not just a little different, and he's not assimilating. He's trying to sabotage. If this was visible to a moderator, that moderator could decide he doesn't belong to the group. I don't advocate that he no longer be able to view the content, but maybe his votes just stop counting. Maybe he's no longer able to post content of his own (would be up to the moderator, I think, perhaps his content was always good enough, but his voting is counterproductive).
I think that on places like reddit they avoided this functionality because it would give moderators too much control over their communities, and outsiders would be unable to come in and eventually take over and force the original group out. Being admins, they could of course have done this anyway, but it would require them to be heavy-handed and obvious.
I think, if you have a saboteur, they're probably not part of your 'network'. The people you've endorsed probably won't have endorsed the saboteur, so the saboteurs activity should not effect your feed in any meaningful way. This is how trust works in real social circles.
Moderators clearly work but it's a shame it relies on single people doing a good thing. It's a shame the moderation can't be done by everyone all the time, unconsciously.
That's not the important part. My point is that moderators should be able to see or at least set policies on what people vote... if these 3 posts are good and fit with the community, maybe someone is still permitted to downvote 1 of them. Just personal preference after all. But if they're downvoting those (and all the other good fits), then they're simply not compatible with the community. So a "people who constantly downvote good fits" (or upvote bad fits) are punished/removed/whatever.
On the other hand, the UK is one of the safest countries in the world, is full of kind people, has a general abundance of food, gives workers a relatively large number of days off in a year, has a functioning police force and takes care of sick people and those who can't work for whatever reason.
Of course it is not perfect.
The people of Britain may not have huge bank accounts, but this is partly because they collectively spend their earnings on the worthwhile things mentioned above.
If you compare it to the rest of Europe for those criteria I think it would be pretty far down the list.
I'm from the UK but have been living in Europe (EU) for half a decade, and I'd say where I live now is much better than the UK for almost all of those things.
The only thing we don't give such high benefits (relative to cost of living) for those who can't work. But in the UK a lot of people abuse that, so maybe it's a good thing.
I don’t know about the UK as a whole, but London is not safe at all.
I wouldn’t call it inherently dangerous for the average person either, like some places in the world. But it was strange to go home last year and talk to the teenagers on my estate, who were now selling hard drugs, had stab/bullet wounds, easy access to guns and considered this the norm. All 16 years old or under.
It was never this bad previously. I hear from friends petty crime is rife, people riding scooters and bikes snatching phones with impunity.
I am curious what the UK was like 20 years ago, can't say I was very aware around that time. Would love to hear your thoughts on how and why its gotten worse.
I think its easy to shit on the UK at the moment because we're in this period of relative decline. The point I was trying to make was that in absolute terms, it's still a great place with a lot of upsides, it just takes more work to realise it and even more work to be grateful despite of it all.
Going from 5 to 4 hurts, going from 3 to 4 feels good. Either way, you're still at 4. It's on the people of Britain to recognise that 4 is still OK, better than the 2 that many countries experience, and better than the 1 of fighting lions and being murdered by your fellow tribesman because he's bigger than you.
