4 ms·

It works on Hacker news since the vast majority of people here share the same interests. The same is true in theory on reddit, where the voters on a single sub

It works on Hacker news since the vast majority of people here share the same interests. The same is true in theory on reddit, where the voters on a single subreddit share the same interests, and importantly reddit has rules against brigading to at least try to enforce that limitation. The basic problem is whether a downvote on a cat juggling video means "this is a bad example of juggling cats" or does it mean "I don't like cat juggling"? On YouTube, it's much more likely to mean the latter, but it's the former that's actually useful.

yesenadam 5y ago
> the vast majority of people here share the same interests What are those interests that the vast majority of people here share?
- pixl97 5y ago
  Pendatry:D
- adrianN 5y ago
  HN is a self-selecting echo chamber for people who like the content that is posted to HN.
  - yesenadam 5y ago
    Ok well, you didn't answer the question, you just repeated something generic you've heard here, I guess. Whether it's true or not, who knows. I'm not sure what it means exactly. How would you go about testing whether that's actually true? I dislike a fair percentage of the topics posted here regularly, or have no interest in them, and I suspect that's not uncommon. A survey on that subject would be fascinating.
    - austinthetaco 5y ago
      That makes me wonder why you choose to stop by HN. Surely there are a large number of other tech-based feeds that would suit you better.
    - bennyp101 5y ago
      I wouldn't say there is anything here that I personally 'dislike', stuff that doesn't interest me, sure, but then I just don't read about it. I don't feel the need to down vote it though. That's the difference I think
mitigating 5y ago
This is an excellent point. A dislike value is a single number but represents a large variety of reasons, only some might relevant to if you would think the video is good, and you don't know the breakdown.
Dylan16807 5y ago
> On YouTube, it's much more likely to mean the latter, but it's the former that's actually useful. What makes you say that? Why is the person that doesn't like cat juggling even clicking on the video?
- techdragon 5y ago
  Because Google steered users this way via their auto-play next video feature. I’ve avoided it like the plague it is so I’m not precisely sure where I saw it, but I’m absolutely sure there was language to the effect of “we pick the next videos automatically based on your likes and dislikes” which translates to “dislike means give me less of this” which means they’ve skewed the usefulness of the metric. It’s no longer clearly indicative of bad content, it’s now indicative of bad content or content users don’t want to see more out automatically.

yesenadam 5y ago

> the vast majority of people here share the same interests What are those interests that the vast majority of people here share?

pixl97 5y ago
Pendatry:D
adrianN 5y ago
HN is a self-selecting echo chamber for people who like the content that is posted to HN.
- yesenadam 5y ago
  Ok well, you didn't answer the question, you just repeated something generic you've heard here, I guess. Whether it's true or not, who knows. I'm not sure what it means exactly. How would you go about testing whether that's actually true? I dislike a fair percentage of the topics posted here regularly, or have no interest in them, and I suspect that's not uncommon. A survey on that subject would be fascinating.
  - austinthetaco 5y ago
    That makes me wonder why you choose to stop by HN. Surely there are a large number of other tech-based feeds that would suit you better.
  - bennyp101 5y ago
    I wouldn't say there is anything here that I personally 'dislike', stuff that doesn't interest me, sure, but then I just don't read about it. I don't feel the need to down vote it though. That's the difference I think

mitigating 5y ago

This is an excellent point. A dislike value is a single number but represents a large variety of reasons, only some might relevant to if you would think the video is good, and you don't know the breakdown.

Dylan16807 5y ago

> On YouTube, it's much more likely to mean the latter, but it's the former that's actually useful. What makes you say that? Why is the person that doesn't like cat juggling even clicking on the video?

techdragon 5y ago
Because Google steered users this way via their auto-play next video feature. I’ve avoided it like the plague it is so I’m not precisely sure where I saw it, but I’m absolutely sure there was language to the effect of “we pick the next videos automatically based on your likes and dislikes” which translates to “dislike means give me less of this” which means they’ve skewed the usefulness of the metric. It’s no longer clearly indicative of bad content, it’s now indicative of bad content or content users don’t want to see more out automatically.