Originally published at: Twitter will experiment with Reddit style up/down buttons to replace the "like" heart | Boing Boing
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Every little bit helps, I guess…
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Ug, I really don’t want to see how many people dislike/downvote my (pretty tame geek-oriented) tweets. The few hearts I was getting was enough!
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Sounds like they’re not only theorizing that voting may ultimately work as a way to curate content like Reddit but also discourage the barrage of comments used to ratio tweets. That’s optimistic, but at this point the user problem that already exists isn’t going away. While Reddit is fine, the voting system has led to brigading and maybe some other practices that could be reproduced successfully on Twitter. What they need to do is stop being lenient with reported users and kick notably toxic people off. Don’t be afraid of shedding users if they make it a point to be terrible.
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Reddit’s users are generally supportive, well-informed, and nice to each other
What? You must have a very curated front page then, because I’ve not found this to be very true on many sub-reddits. Generally they are poorly informed, prone to shit posting, and overall relatively negative unless you’re one of the “good replies.” Try and say something that may be true but the subreddit doesn’t agree with, and you’re downvoted and berated into the ground.
Reddit can be generally just as toxic as twitter. And they allowed that ridiculous t_d forum to exist far, far beyond its lifespan despite repeated mass violations of Reddit’s own rules. And don’t even get me started on the existence of criminally problematic and ethically disgusting subreddits like jailbait, which was only removed after it got into the news.
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There are already brigades and harassment campaigns on Twitter, and the company’s moderation response hasn’t been great. There’s plenty of worry that the like/dislike system proposed is going to make the problem even worse, especially among some of the LGBTQ+ activists I follow.
I’ve been fairly careful curating my feed, so my Timeline’s pretty decent, but the comments can be a real mess. My rep is one of the Squad, so I can expect that any Tweet of hers on my timeline will have a significant percentage of insulting, offensive responses. Likewise, if I click on any statement about J. K. Rowling’s transphobic nonsense, I can expect at least 80% of the replies to be negative, accusing the OP of lying, slander, mental illness (or worse), and demanding “evidence” they clearly wouldn’t listen to anyway.
Some days I don’t have the energy to deal with comments, so I avoid them; other days, I spend a lot of time blocking and/or reporting the worst of it. Twitter used to let me know sometimes if an account I reported got suspended, but I haven’t heard back from them in months.
I think Twitter’s time would be far better spent beefing up their moderation system and kicking trollies off the platform, instead of developing cutesy features like this that don’t really solve the platform’s harassment problems.
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As I understand it, this experiment won’t be reflected in the user experience. It’s mainly being done for analytical data gathering at first.
If Twitter really wants to improve the platform it should drop the freeze peach absolutism that tolerates racist, misogynist, anti-vaxx, and fascist speech.
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Absolutely. This will do nothing but make the online experiences of marginalised people on Twitter even worse.
And it’s already really, really fucking bad.
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How marvellous. Thousands of assholes can Downvote my queer positive content, I never see that happen, and then its deemed that my voice isn’t necessary…?
Yeah. They couldn’t really have come up with a shittier plan. Although, just maybe, it’s to spot Nazis and remove them from the platform… 
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I think this is a great move on Twitters part.
Their current design has a low-friction user action to “like” something. If you don’t like it, your only options are ignore or comment. Leaving a comment is the only way to disapprove of something.
…which is probably why most responses to most tweets are negative. The platform actively encourages negative comments through this design decision.
It seems counter-intuitive, but I think a social platform that had a “Dislike” button, and instead required users to comment if they “Liked” something would have a much more positive engagement.
I feel like FB did the entire world many disservices, but this one has probably been the worst of the wildly copied ones.
(*of course the absolute best thing a social media platform could do would be to get rid of “The Algorithm” and show you posts as they happen.)
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Agreed. This concerns me as well as–unless it was some sort of geek crafting group like painting wargame miniatures–the subs I’ve seen turn on people pretty quickly.
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Downvote buttons tend to be mistaken for “I politely disagree” buttons at the best of times, so this isn’t going to encourage useful discussion at all even if it was only used in good faith.
So does this mean that it’s possible to have negative likes shown, or will they be rounded up to zero for display purposes? Because trollies actively chase that shit.
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Glad to see the social media conglomerates are adopting the traditional corporate strategy of making themselves more like all the others. That will fix the destruction they purposely cause to get a sliver of ad money.
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Case in point: Chuck Tingle’s been suspended.
I don’t know what he said to draw the ban, but I’ve followed hin for a while, and his Tweets are generally wholesome and uplifting. Yet he gets suspended while transphobes and rabidly-partisan harassers spew garbage freely?
Edit to add: it’s a DMCA issue. The point still stands: wholesome accounts get smacked, scoundrels flourish.
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Every time.
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