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Keep in mind HN junkies: We're debating this on a site that allows downvotes. It seems many think this will be a terrible decision yet, here we are. I find do

Keep in mind HN junkies: We're debating this on a site that allows downvotes. It seems many think this will be a terrible decision yet, here we are. I find downvotes on HN to be very effective at guiding the discussion, maybe it's because the culture here is still homogeneous.

gnicholas 5y ago
On HN, downvotes are reflected by greyed out comments. The main thing people are complaining about in this thread is that the Twitter downvotes will be opaque.
- caddemon 5y ago
  Also an account can only downvote once it has amassed a certain level of upvotes. It sounds like the Twitter downvote will be open to everyone when it is fully released, which would make it a lot easier to abuse.
  - gnicholas 5y ago
    Yes, although it would be trivial for Twitter to ignore or downweight downvotes from new accounts. It would be interesting if one of the main reasons for adding opaque downvotes is to give users the feeling that they had expressed an opinion without giving that expression any weight whatsoever. I guess this would be called 'downvote shadow-banning'.
kzrdude 5y ago
In what way does it guide discussion? I think the discussion climate is pretty good here, but in some other communities I see that downvotes only allow one kind of opinion to be heard - and this is not about politics or something controversial, it's anything, including sports. People upvote what they want to hear.
- bnralt 5y ago
  They still drown out opposing opinions here for specific issues. I think it's more the case that those topics don't come up as often. One of the issues is that places like Hacker News and Reddit use an aggregate vote count. You can't tell if a comment that has a score of -10 is a comment where ten people saw it and decided to downvote it, or where 100 people saw it, 55 downvoted it and 45 upvoted it. This leads to situations where it can seem like a community rejects a point of view, even whe the point of view is shared by almost half the community. Further exacerbating this is that, with an infinite number of votes allowed, someone who is less restrained about their votes is going to have a greater impact than someone who reserves them for only exceptional comments. For example, say 60% of the community likes Coke and 40% likes Pepsi. However, the Coke supporters are relatively calm and only occasionally vote for comments about soda, while Pepsi supporters are zealots who will downvote any comment that's supportive of Coke and upvote any comment supportive of Pepsi. A user is just going to see a lot of highly downvoted/greyed out Coke posts and a lot of highly upvoted Pepsi posts, and assume that the community is highly supportive of Pepsi while hating Coke. That's more of a problem with voting in general (and a larger problem with how time = speech on the internet), but downvoting can certainly exacerbate the problem.
astrea 5y ago
HN downvotes are very measured. Comments can still be seen, the number isn't shown, and you have to have a matured account to even have the ability to downvote.
drawkbox 5y ago
I never downvote, it focuses on the negativity and is a waste of life. Upvote only, it rewards the best opinions and analysis. The problem is, botnets and astroturfing use downvotes to manipulate conversations, perceived word of mouth and ultimately the algorithms. For instance, since Youtube has removed downvotes from visibility, my recommended videos are more in line with what I want. I think the downvote was a massive tool for shaping the algorithms and recommended videos that becomes something that isn't organic. I downvote only the downvote. Down with the downvote!

gnicholas 5y ago

On HN, downvotes are reflected by greyed out comments. The main thing people are complaining about in this thread is that the Twitter downvotes will be opaque.

caddemon 5y ago
Also an account can only downvote once it has amassed a certain level of upvotes. It sounds like the Twitter downvote will be open to everyone when it is fully released, which would make it a lot easier to abuse.
- gnicholas 5y ago
  Yes, although it would be trivial for Twitter to ignore or downweight downvotes from new accounts. It would be interesting if one of the main reasons for adding opaque downvotes is to give users the feeling that they had expressed an opinion without giving that expression any weight whatsoever. I guess this would be called 'downvote shadow-banning'.

kzrdude 5y ago

In what way does it guide discussion? I think the discussion climate is pretty good here, but in some other communities I see that downvotes only allow one kind of opinion to be heard - and this is not about politics or something controversial, it's anything, including sports. People upvote what they want to hear.

bnralt 5y ago
They still drown out opposing opinions here for specific issues. I think it's more the case that those topics don't come up as often. One of the issues is that places like Hacker News and Reddit use an aggregate vote count. You can't tell if a comment that has a score of -10 is a comment where ten people saw it and decided to downvote it, or where 100 people saw it, 55 downvoted it and 45 upvoted it. This leads to situations where it can seem like a community rejects a point of view, even whe the point of view is shared by almost half the community. Further exacerbating this is that, with an infinite number of votes allowed, someone who is less restrained about their votes is going to have a greater impact than someone who reserves them for only exceptional comments. For example, say 60% of the community likes Coke and 40% likes Pepsi. However, the Coke supporters are relatively calm and only occasionally vote for comments about soda, while Pepsi supporters are zealots who will downvote any comment that's supportive of Coke and upvote any comment supportive of Pepsi. A user is just going to see a lot of highly downvoted/greyed out Coke posts and a lot of highly upvoted Pepsi posts, and assume that the community is highly supportive of Pepsi while hating Coke. That's more of a problem with voting in general (and a larger problem with how time = speech on the internet), but downvoting can certainly exacerbate the problem.

astrea 5y ago

HN downvotes are very measured. Comments can still be seen, the number isn't shown, and you have to have a matured account to even have the ability to downvote.

drawkbox 5y ago

I never downvote, it focuses on the negativity and is a waste of life. Upvote only, it rewards the best opinions and analysis. The problem is, botnets and astroturfing use downvotes to manipulate conversations, perceived word of mouth and ultimately the algorithms. For instance, since Youtube has removed downvotes from visibility, my recommended videos are more in line with what I want. I think the downvote was a massive tool for shaping the algorithms and recommended videos that becomes something that isn't organic. I downvote only the downvote. Down with the downvote!