5 ms·
My idea for a quick fix is to remove likes/dislikes/emoji reactions. If people can't see how others feel about a post/article in an instant, they might have to
by john2x 9y ago
My idea for a quick fix is to remove likes/dislikes/emoji reactions. If people can't see how others feel about a post/article in an instant, they might have to read and decide for themselves how to feel.
- wybiral 9y agoI upvoted this comment and then immediately felt dirty.
- feikname 9y agoTo be fair, HN hides a comment score until the user decides to see it.
- frik 9y agoHow can one see the HN comment score? (except own comments) I think it was there some years ago, but vanished incl karma-ratio info when PG stept back.
- icebraining 9y agoYou can't. And they were hidden before pg stepped back; in fact, he made a poll asking what people thought of the change: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2595605 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2595605
- feikname 9y agoI was under the impression that you could see it when clicking the "[-]" at the right side of the comment metadata. But it seems it's just the number of child comments, my mistake.
- raverbashing 9y agoIt's clickbait, it doesn't matter if they click like it not
- FreakyT 9y agoUpvotes on HN/Reddit do essentially the same thing. I don't have the user statistics, but I'd imagine the typical HN reader only reads a sampling of the top-voted comments, which essentially allows them "to see how others feel about a post/article in an instant." If you want an example of the opposite approach, you can always look at 2009-era YouTube, when all comments shown were in a strict "newest" order. If you remember, YouTube had a bit of reputation for some of the lowest-quality comment sections anywhere. There simply is no "quick fix" for clickbait, aside from altering basic human psychology, or some type of (probably complex) regulation.
- have_faith 9y ago> YouTube had a bit of reputation for some of the lowest-quality comment sections anywhere Has this reputation changed much?
- jimmies 9y agoI found top Youtube comments to be more or less funny/enjoyable now. The shitty comments got downvoted so I no longer see them unless I delibrately try to see them, they don't appear. It's very different from youtube comments back then. But then they are still mostly unhelpful/uninformative.
- herbst 9y agoThis might be true for some videos. But there seems to be a first in approach behind the sorting. The first who says something remotely relevant is often the top comment for a long while. I can not see much quality in those posts usually. Newer posts Barely have a chance to get to the top if you aren't a youtube influencer in some way.
- dredmorbius 9y agoReputation and kill switches. Ultimately: editorial voice. If I've got tools to block sources of clickbait, and those feed into reputation systems, that's a start. On Google's properties, I can block G+ posters, but I cannot block a YouTube channel. Not even if I'm logged in -- that channel will still show up in searches and recommendations. I'm actually better of not logging in so that recommendations are keyed far more to current search and view history, and there is no long lag of "you watched this once three years ago so we'll cram it down your throat". For Web, I've taken to fairly ruthlessly blocking clickbait domains at the firewall. They pretty much completely disappear. (And, if I've got second thoughts or want to poke through: archive or simplified-view sites will generally show me the content. And it's almost never worth looking at.) I'm not saying that my individual tools will scale out, but if they're tied in to larger systems, and feed back to what's promoted, there's the possiblity of this. Ultimately, though, massive media channels have to take an active voice in what they do or don't permit, most especially where there are real and serious harms possible. That's the editorial voice option. It's not a popular opinion on much of the Web, and it's not one I would have advocated even just a few years ago, but I'm coming to feel it's increasingly proving necessary, and that the historical record, over the past 500 years of mass communications, starting with the printing press, bears this out repeatedly. Free speech is not a responsiblity-free zone.
- deletefb 9y agoMy idea for a permanent fix is for Facebook to go out of business. Completely. Forever.
- throwanem 9y agoIf there's a market for something like it, there will exist something like it. The interesting question is how to make something like it so uncompetitive that nothing like it can survive.
- nkozyra 9y agoPassive ranking is subject to the same bias, though. If I click - even if I dislike the content - it contributes positively. I don't think there's a quick fix for wanting autonomously produced graph-based timeline without the ability to exploit it for clicks, propaganda, etc.
- wslh 9y agoI think we need new signals to decide about content. This issue happens everywhere from top music charts to movie rankings.
- smichel17 9y agoI've been doing this using uBlock Origin's filtering on the social media sites I visit; anecdotally, it makes a significant difference in how much I engage with content that is not highly upvoted. I highly recommend it.
- heurist 9y agoI think they should remove the media content they add to external links and only show URLs. If people had to click a link to see the title, summary, images, or other clickbait meta content they'd be less likely to share links thoughtlessly. They might also see that the URL is untrusted and choose not to click through. Facebook could charge brands to show their content alongside click bait media. It would be a lot easier to verify the authenticity of ten thousand brands than every random link that's shared. Wouldn't solve all the issues but it would be a start.
- johnchristopher 9y agoThey'd just be less likely to click which isn't going to go well with marketing teams using facebook for their campaign.