Twitter Expands Downvote Button Test Worldwide

[mjs916]

I suspect that a lot of threads on Twitter are between chatbots and humans. Like one of those matrix-esque scripts where a character is “caught in a simulation” and the friends have to break them out before they fully believe the fake world is real and become a vegetable.

Downvotes could actually reduce toxic conversations if (real) people choose not to comment so that could be a positive impact.

 

[Reggaenald]

What IS the point of a tweet? I’ve been trying to figure out its point for years. Doesn’t add anything of value from what I can tell, and has actually made society less tolerable.

Voicing opinions and statements, and sharing information. That’s the point, obviously. It’s not done in a great way, obviously, too, but that’s the point.
It can be valuable if you’re in right circles, like, Apple leakers…
The concept of a global, interactive and easily accessible platform to instantly share information with short texts isn’ta bad one by default. Only if it’s done the way it’s done.

 

[JimmyHook]

They keep rolling out these "tests" and "upgrades", but you still can't edit a tweet once it's posted. Get the basics right, will you Twitter?

That’s a bad idea. People should suffer the consequences of their speech. Delete should be the only option… just in case a post was an error. But edit? If they do that, it should only be like 60 seconds to edit then it’s permanent

 

[JimmyHook]

Downvote is a good idea. It should be a public metric tho.

A better idea would be to get rid of verified checkmarks entirely. Make everyone, regardless of fame or status, compete equally for attention. They should also randomly pick tweets for promotion. No review, no bias towards “what’s popular”, just random draws from every tweet that hour/day etc. That way everyone has an equal chance to “trend” or whatnot. It could be a tweet about a dog, their lunch, or anything. Just purely random.

 

[JM]

Downvote is a good idea. It should be a public metric tho.

A better idea would be to get rid of verified checkmarks entirely. Make everyone, regardless of fame or status, compete equally for attention. They should also randomly pick tweets for promotion. No review, no bias towards “what’s popular”, just random draws from every tweet that hour/day etc. That way everyone has an equal chance to “trend” or whatnot. It could be a tweet about a dog, their lunch, or anything. Just purely random.

sorry to laugh, but I can only imagine what inane and/or bat-**** crazy tweet would be featured at random. ?

 

[Lemon Mac]

?

 

[dysamoria]

Time to dislike some YouTube Tweets I suppose.

But what’s the point if no one, including the author of the tweet, sees how many dislikes their tweet has? That’s even more brain dead than on YouTube, how’s that even possible.

Capitalism has managed to find levels of brain death that were previously inconceivable.

 

[turbineseaplane]

Capitalism has managed to find levels of brain death that were previously inconceivable.

I'm screenshooting this as an NFT so I can go hawk it to plebes on TikTok

 

[dysamoria]

They still do.

Yes. We get a small number of downvotes.

 

[dysamoria]

So the millions of bots used by scammers and dictators can simply downvote anyone who criticises scams and extremists.

No platform is good as long as bots exist.

I despise bots (and trolls). I’d love to see a proposal to eliminate them that doesn’t kill anonymity and/or privacy.

 

[turbineseaplane]

Bots and trolls don't just "downvote"

It's a way more complicated problem than worry about up/down voting

 

[dysamoria]

as long as it's not like Reddit it might OK. you downvote there then it pushes the content out of view. I do think Twitter needs a way of calling people's ******** out but then some poor souls might get offended and we can't be having that! (*cough*youtube*cough*)

imo all social media needs a you're talking **** button. depends how it's done though.

I actually find the reddit method sensible. It lets a community regulate the visibility of content within it, but does not remove said down-voted content. Deletion still requires moderators and violations of terms.

 

[dysamoria]

Downvote will replace argument on Twitter. This can train the algorithm to only show you things you want to see and people you agree with. If you believe, for example, all women should stay at home and be housewives, you will get great satisfaction living in your confirmation bias facilitated by Twitter. Echo chamber effect will be significantly greater, similar to Reddit. Most people are not there to listen to different opinions or have their views challenged and consequently descend into the chaos and the unknown. They are there to be comfortable and hear what they want to hear.

Most people don't change their minds, they just die and be replaced.

I want to disagree, because this doesn’t describe me... but it really does describe a lot of people.

 

[dysamoria]

You’re dismal prediction for the future I fear is spot on.

Twitter is indeed ? if they’re just creating a bunch of echo chambers.

Show me “social media” that exists to sell advertising that doesn’t.

 

[dysamoria]

Reddit is a strange place.. people there like to downvote for no good reason. I've seen people reply to questions with a good answer and yet get down voted it's crazy.

I hate YouTube stopped showing dislikes though. Sometimes I would look at how to do something and before watching the video I would look at the dislikes because often if the dislike way out numbered the likes there, you could pretty much bank on the video just being spam

They have no advertising usage for the feature. It can only hurt the pushing of content. They can still quietly measure dislikes for the use of pushing controversial content to sell more ads.

Users of “free” services are cattle. They don’t care about the preferences of the cattle while being bled.

 

[dysamoria]

I'm late to Reddit, and I've come to really appreciate it because it's the one place the comment section is actually worth reading. I'd attribute that to the downvote button.

Same.

Except for the fact that reddit ALSO houses cults, as well as deep echo-pits of hate, sexism, conspiracy theorists... But that’s executive management’s fault, not the tool itself.

 

[dysamoria]

Of course they wouldn’t want to hurt the money stream, Twitter has difficulty monetizing their platform already. If enough big players left they’d go down the drain quickly.

I have been muting almost every advertiser that puts an ad in my face. I continue to be surprised this is possible.

 

[dysamoria]

I like this idea. It means that a "thumbs down" is a "I don't want to see this anymore". This will help their algorithms deliver you more relevant tweets.

It’s only for replies.

 

[dysamoria]

Those with different opinions get banned.

Further develop the algorithm to show you what Twitter wants you to see, instead of a simple chronological feed where you can choose what you want and don't want.

Sign up for Gab.

Sometimes people have garbage opinions. If a community can’t push them away, then they have no agency and are forced to continue to deal with garbage. They’ll possibly even leave the community. It’s in these companies’ best interest to not drive away the majority of the population.

Also: Sometimes garbage opinions are literally harmful to society. Racism, sexism, antiscience, fake news/propaganda, etc...

 

[dysamoria]

Reddit is the only thing I'm on. I look at any of the other free-for-all medias and it's like 20 posts saying the same thing over and over. Huh, I've never noticed the disappearing act. I'll have to pay more attention. What I'd like to see is you have to make a post and give an explanation as to why you are downvoting. That might smartin' things up a bit.

Twitter also has “Birdwatch”. You can rate tweets with explanations for what might be problematic with them, and include references. Then others vote on your feedback; whether it’s helpful or not.

 

[dysamoria]

It's been stated a number of times why allowing someone to edit a tweet would be a bad idea.

Person tweets something that gets a lot of likes / supportive comments. An hour/day/week later, the person edits the tweet to something that's negative and would normally get down votes, but now there are a lot of likes and supportives comments attached to it.

Which people do on Facebook.

 

[dysamoria]

The person/tweet the bots are downvoting won't know the tweet is being downvoted though. So what would be the point?

Did you not see this?

It's worth noting that the dislike button is only visible to the person who is viewing tweets – it is not a publicly available metric or visible to the author of the tweet. Twitter says that it is an internal tool that is designed to help Twitter understand what people think is valuable to a conversation.

Which suggests twitter might do something with the content in response to the downvotes.

 

[dysamoria]

I understand and support that viewpoint, but allowing editing for say, the first 10 minutes after posting could be easily programmed into the service and make it a bit less clumsy to use.

As well as including an edit history that all can view.

 

[dysamoria]

Do you know how many likes, comments and retweets a post can get in the first 10 minutes?

Why not proof read what's written or think about what was written and be sure you want the world to see it before hitting the tweet button?

Yeah, ten minutes is way too long.

 

[dysamoria]

Twitter is whatever you want it to be ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ You decide what appears on your feed.

Sort of. My feed is starting to get slightly toxic against my wishes because I’ve liked a few posts by people that are actually more extreme than the liked posts presented.

It’s especially problematic in regard to liking tech people’s or gamers’ posts, because there’s a huge correlation between “libertarian authoritarianism” and “tech geek/gamers”. I don’t want “freedom = being horrible to people” BS in my feed, just because I liked some retro computer fun or a gamer post.

Sadly, there’s a similar overlap with people who hate the US political duopoly; I have no desire to have “don’t vote”, “both sides are the same”, and related BS rhetoric in my feed. It’s like I am not allowed to be outside the political duopoly without being associated with extremists by the algorithms.