Comment on X weighs adding a downvote button to replies — but it doesn't want to emulate Reddit
bolexforsoup@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 months ago
Half the content is screenshots from Reddit which in turn are half the time just screenshots from Twitter. May as well just keep the train going at this point.
On a more serious note, downvotes seem to be never any good for any forum. I’ve yet to see them used as a “not contributing“ button or whatever other idealistic definition sites come up with. It is almost universally a disagree button and every community I’ve seen that gets rid of it is better for it.
While it’s true that the downvote often gets abused as a way to stifle otherwise-good discussion, without it it’s hard to deal with discussion that truly should NOT be happening.
There’s a reason election denial is more common and looks more legitimate on Facebook and Twitter. It’s because they don’t have a mechanism for people to nuke that discussion out of the top of the thread.
Sure they can. Moderators/admins can remove comments.
I agree with you there is a problem of content moderation. But downvotes are not the solution and have never proven to be an effective deterrent. Removal/deplatforming is the only tool that has proven consistently effective. It’s why on a discord server i help run we have pretty much zero tolerance towards people who are sufficiently disruptive or have a chilling effect on conversations, even if they aren’t breaking the letter of the law. At some point you just have to get rid of these people or they cause a disproportionate amount of damage. It’s amazing what 5 people can do to a community of 500.
You don’t even need “power hungry mods” for that to go wrong, you just need mods who don’t care. That’s EXACTLY where Facebook and Twitter are right now. Getting content removed there is basically impossible, I’ve reported people for death threats and was told they never violated community standards.
If the platform isn’t going to moderate itself, the users should be able to.
But users can. They can block people, they can block communities, they have all kinds of autonomy.
I am not saying users should not be able to control what they see. I am saying that the downvote mechanism specifically is in effective. If you have other ideas I am super down to hear them because I find this subject fascinating and I am always in favor of everyone across-the-board having control over what is in front of them and not unfeeling algorithms that only prioritize engagement.
On Facebook I had a few death threats. One was a fucking doctor. He described in detail how he would murder me and it was disturbing as fuck. I posted screenshots of the conversation on his yelp page and reported him on Facebook. Yelp swiftly took those down and I don’t think Facebook ever did anything about his psychotic threats. Meanwhile I was banned from groups and temporarily from the platform several times for telling proud bigots they are pieces of shit.
They eventually permanently banned me from Facebook permanently for posting that image of supposedly naked Donald Trump. The kicker was they did it like a year after I posted it. That platform is absolutely horrific with moderation. Basically if you support violence and genocide you’re fine but if you curse at people who do you’re not fine at all.
that’s fine for a small discord group but it doesn’t scale. you can’t be that active in moderating millions of conversations.
downvotes (and hiding downvoted comments) is a community-driven way of signaling unacceptable behavior. it largely works, except in echo chambers.
But that isn’t how it’s used at all. It’s used as a disagree/crowd vibe button.
Moderators/admins can remove comments.
On Xitter? HA! They fired them first. It’s . . . mmmmm not a priority.
I prefer slashdot’s moderation system over any of the others.
Here, I’d like to see limitless upvoting, but downvotes bottom out at -3.
This may reduce dogpiling whilst allowing the downvoted parent a better chance to be engaged-with, and more opportunities to present their points.
I think a cap is a great idea. Or just don’t show vote counts and push down downvoted stuff at least. But showing them to people tends to produce dog piling and false consensus
One of the things I like about Slashdot’s system is that it requires a reason for a downvote. Of course that doesn’t prevent people from downvoting disingenuously, but it nudges users away from downvoting just because they disagree.
I think for most social systems, the UI I’d use is a report or flag button that pops up a second step with a list of reasons, and like Slashdot, show the most selected reason next to low-ranked posts.
Actually that's a golden idea, I haven't even thought about that, would love to see some software on here implementing a downvote cap
For evidence you’re right: see the downvotes on this comment. I’ve seen so many things downvoted that didn’t deserve it. People can misunderstand your comment and suddenly you’re at -20. Just a couple days ago this toxic fuck was telling me all sorts of weird things they claimed to know about me because I was downvoted for an opinion I wouldn’t have thought was unpopular at all. A couple people misunderstood, then a bunch more saw the downvotes and made false assumptions. It’s bizarre.
It is what it is! I don’t even see downvotes on my end but not surprised it happened. It’s magic internet points so whatever lol
Blåhaj doesnt have downvotes and I occasionally miss being able to down vote people replying to requests with something that someone specifically said they don’t want in the full-text. For other stuff, report tends to be applicable, particularly spam and racist trolls who just come to advertise or attempt to change the culture of Lemmy.
ccunning@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Downvotes were one of my favorite features of Reddit.
Some stupid shit doesn’t deserve discussion and is best off being shut down.
bolexforsoup@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 months ago
That’s not how it plays out though that’s my entire point.
ccunning@lemmy.world 4 months ago
For the most part it is how it plays out.
There may be exceptions but the benefits far outweigh the downsides.
Even just lurking on mastodon is frustrating because there is nothing to be done about trolls but engage or ignore and we all know folks can’t help but engage; it’s trolls raison d’être.
I generally assume those complaining about downvotes existing are frustrated trolls.
bolexforsoup@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 months ago
Source?