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A better start would be to simply bring back downvotes. Tweak the algorithm to seriously hamper the visibility of posts with a high downvote ratio. While this

A better start would be to simply bring back downvotes. Tweak the algorithm to seriously hamper the visibility of posts with a high downvote ratio. While this might gain us "only" mediocrity, even mediocrity would be a huge step up to the current status quo that vastly overrepresents content that is actively harmful to society, meaning conspiracy theories, right wing propaganda and general fake news. The next step would be having enough professional and human(!) moderators that curate the content further. Of course these steps would go against the financial interest of the big tech monopolists because the controversial, radical content is what keeps people most engaged. Angry and negative content just generates way more revenue than friendly, positive and fact based one.

BitwiseFool 5y ago
>"vastly overrepresents content that is actively harmful to society, meaning conspiracy theories, right wing propaganda and general fake news" Your list seems lopsided.
- cardanome 5y ago
  Yeah, I am strongly siding with reason and progress. Thousands of people have senselessly died from a disease for which a vaccine exists that can effectively reduce the risk of such a death. Social media is very responsible for those deaths.
  - BitwiseFool 5y ago
    I place the responsibility on the individuals themselves. I also caution you about thinking that your own side is exclusively in the domain of both reason and progress. It's a cognitive trap that reinforces groupthink and bigotry.
er4hn 5y ago
> While this might gain us "only" mediocrity The general problem with downvotes is brigarding. If you post something controversial, ex: "The calling China 'West Taiwan' Meme is offensive" or "COVID-19 Vaccines are great" you risk organized groups sharing "take this person down" posts to find your content and downvote it. They may even go and downvote every post you've ever made on your account to try and punish you for your opinion.
- cardanome 5y ago
  While this is a valid point, there are some ways to deal with it. For example on reddit, if you go to the profile of an user and downvote every post, it does not count the downvotes. You would have to open up the post and then downvote. (We could probably also detect if it is a "natural" visit or not) So you can make the process very time consuming at least. Sure there are bots but these can also be detected. So yes, it can never be fully stopped but on the other hand you can do similar manipulation without downvotes so I feel it is more of an parallel issue. You can still have a group voting each others posts up or straight up buy votes.
LouisSayers 5y ago
The issue with downvotes as someone else mentioned is essentially that there are numerous meanings for why a post is downvoted. I imagine a better solution would be to use something like emojis (e.g. poo vs spam emojis) but to also combine that with the user's emoji history on other posts to determine the meaning of the emoji they've left. That way the system can differentiate someone that's let's say a radical or part of a group that wish to simply "bring something down" from those that are more legitimate.

BitwiseFool 5y ago

>"vastly overrepresents content that is actively harmful to society, meaning conspiracy theories, right wing propaganda and general fake news" Your list seems lopsided.

cardanome 5y ago
Yeah, I am strongly siding with reason and progress. Thousands of people have senselessly died from a disease for which a vaccine exists that can effectively reduce the risk of such a death. Social media is very responsible for those deaths.
- BitwiseFool 5y ago
  I place the responsibility on the individuals themselves. I also caution you about thinking that your own side is exclusively in the domain of both reason and progress. It's a cognitive trap that reinforces groupthink and bigotry.

er4hn 5y ago

> While this might gain us "only" mediocrity The general problem with downvotes is brigarding. If you post something controversial, ex: "The calling China 'West Taiwan' Meme is offensive" or "COVID-19 Vaccines are great" you risk organized groups sharing "take this person down" posts to find your content and downvote it. They may even go and downvote every post you've ever made on your account to try and punish you for your opinion.

cardanome 5y ago
While this is a valid point, there are some ways to deal with it. For example on reddit, if you go to the profile of an user and downvote every post, it does not count the downvotes. You would have to open up the post and then downvote. (We could probably also detect if it is a "natural" visit or not) So you can make the process very time consuming at least. Sure there are bots but these can also be detected. So yes, it can never be fully stopped but on the other hand you can do similar manipulation without downvotes so I feel it is more of an parallel issue. You can still have a group voting each others posts up or straight up buy votes.

LouisSayers 5y ago

The issue with downvotes as someone else mentioned is essentially that there are numerous meanings for why a post is downvoted. I imagine a better solution would be to use something like emojis (e.g. poo vs spam emojis) but to also combine that with the user's emoji history on other posts to determine the meaning of the emoji they've left. That way the system can differentiate someone that's let's say a radical or part of a group that wish to simply "bring something down" from those that are more legitimate.