Facebook's 'Downvote' System Begins Rolling Out Wider In US (arstechnica.com) 103
Facebook is reportedly rolling out its "downvote" button to a wider group of users in the United States. "The feature began appearing on the service's mobile app without a formal company announcement -- and we only found out about it by browsing on our phones," reports Ars Technica. From the report: The feature appears to currently be limited to "public" posts. Should your account be flagged for this week's test, every comment in a thread will include a numeric value and small up- and down-arrows connected to that number. Upon the first display of this Reddit-like change, the Facebook app will offer guidance: "Support comments that are thoughtful, and demote ones that are uncivil or irrelevant."
This is in addition to the site's long-running "emotion" interface, which lets users tap "like" or emoji-styled buttons. These icons and numbers still attach to posts as they've done for years. Now an additional value based on up- and down-votes, appears as well, and these values are separate. Meaning, if you tap the "like" button and down-vote on the same comment, those actions don't cancel each other out. As of press time, these up- and down-vote numbers are not visible if your account is not flagged for the test. We have not yet seen this feature go live on any versions of the Facebook Android app.
This is in addition to the site's long-running "emotion" interface, which lets users tap "like" or emoji-styled buttons. These icons and numbers still attach to posts as they've done for years. Now an additional value based on up- and down-votes, appears as well, and these values are separate. Meaning, if you tap the "like" button and down-vote on the same comment, those actions don't cancel each other out. As of press time, these up- and down-vote numbers are not visible if your account is not flagged for the test. We have not yet seen this feature go live on any versions of the Facebook Android app.
Wait a second... (Score:4, Interesting)
Do people still use Facebook?
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In fact, there is. FB has this "memories" feature that comes up once in a while, in-line in your feed, where you get the option to immediately re-share an old post of yours. Usually it suggests a particular photo, or at least something that got a bit of attention the first time around. Sometimes one post, sometimes it offers a selection (or maybe always, I forget).
What's offered can be anywhere from several months to several years old; I see such re-shares from others frequently in my feed, and I've used
Half-assed solution? Of course! It's Facebook. (Score:2)
As for this vote-up/vote-down feature, I've seen it on a few threads, and it's about fucking time FB got it. Welcome to two decades ago, guys. :-P
We do have the technology to do much better now, but it really is sad to watch Facebook in inaction. Kind of a humpbacked version of the Chinese idea. I think the underlying problem is the sick financial model beloved of corporate cancers, but...
A REAL solution approach would involve multiple dimensions. My label is EPR for Earned Public Reputation. Obviously the dimensions should mostly be orthogonal, though there can be some hierarchical grouping of traits. I think the best dimensions would be polar, with
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Do people still use Facebook?
Don't be silly. Wishful thinking doesn't make problems go away.
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I deleted my account earlier this month. Feel much better for it,
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Yes, too many too. :(
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It's one thing to be downvoted by faceless strangers who mean zilch to you. But to be downvoted by a Facebook friend is a personal affront. Friends will unfriend friends and people will become disgusted and leave. This is probably a good thing for those still using Facebook since they can re-engage with more meaningful activities. But it will be bad for Facebook stockholders. This is a dumb move by Facebook.
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one site to rule them all (Score:5, Insightful)
Slashdot's moderating system is still, IMHO, the best example of a way for a community to not only moderate discussion, but use tags to clarify why a person voted for a post... I love the Funny and Troll mod options, but Under/Overrated are hugely important, too.
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It is too bad they allow all these anonymous cowards on here. Sheesh what is that about. Get a life. Open an account already.
Cucks.
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Agreed! Knowing WHY something was moderating is extremely handy. /. blows reddit out of the water. You know reddit has jumped the shark when redditards down-vote you just for asking a question! WTF? *facepalm*
It has gotten so bad that there are mini-banners "Please don't downvote comments based on opinion.", Gee, no shit, Sherlock.
Worse, some sub-reddits like /r/minecraft censor mentioning a server name. While I can understand the intent of trying to minimize spam/advertising, it ALSO has the shitty si
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Slashdot's moderating system is still, IMHO, the best example of a way for a community to not only moderate discussion
It really isn't because you will have young generations downvoting older generations. As someone who lived through the great MMO scam of the 90's, where companies rebadged RPG PC games as mmo's to fleece a gullibly videogame public to get them to pay for the same RPG game monthly. They proved that the average person is an idiot. I saw dedicated servers paired back and videogame software stolen and taken hostage by videogame companies like valve and that greedy prick Gabe newell and kids worship this guy
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https://www.gog.com/ [gog.com]
Good Old Games dot Com.
Just putting it out there.
Lots of DRM free gold old games for cheap, some for free (if you sign up to newsletter, I think).
Worth a look, I'd suggest.
I'm signed up, and (as far as I know) get no benefit apart from a warm feeling of satisfaction if other people visit and sign up).
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Lots of DRM free gold old games for cheap, some for free (if you sign up to newsletter, I think).
The problem is all new AAA games have server locks that most won't be able to reverse engineer with any kind of intelligence and will remain mostly broken while developers hold hostage the exe's.
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Well, ok, sure.
They do NOW.
But in the long run they are likely to relax those rules and allow people to pay a pittance to get them, and tick off extra sales, extra revenue, extra royalties and extra bonuses for the Execs.
The emphasis of GOG being the O, for OLD...
DethLok
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But in the long run they are likely to relax those rules
DethLok
You're gullible if you believe this, the trend has been the exact opposite - in order for games to have lootboxes and microtransactions they need drm, do you really think EPIC is going to stop after having made billions on skins in fortnite? You're completely naive.
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/... [gamesindustry.biz]
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It's not just video games too. Look at the newer Windows and others. :(
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Insightful Troll (Score:2)
The In
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'Anon' posting for example, should probably just go away at this point, as the number of insightful posts by whistle-blowers and people who need discretion -- The Internet is full of awful people with terrible ideas, and they all want to share them with you. Good luck moderating that....
The comment filter is a fantastic way to cut through all the trolls' chaff... truly a great addition I didn't even mention earlier.
And regarding 'awful people' (lol! that reminds me of John Cleese as Robin Hood in Time Bandits), I like to reword a lyric from Bob Marley -- "You can please some people some of the time, but you can't please all the people all the time."
Slashdot is only 3/4-assed (Score:2)
I actually agree with you that Slashdot has some goodness, but it has NOT evolved and improved significantly over the years. Many of the features of EPR (see my half-assed and humpbacked comment above) are actually based on the problems of Slashdot and the obvious (AKA IOttMCO) solutions. In other words, EPR would be a kind of symmetrical karma on multidimensional steroids.
it will work as good as reddit (Score:1, Troll)
where the truth gets down voted all the time by the mobs
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I always wonder if there are geographic tendencies (Score:3, Interesting)
I wonder if areas of the country that have more of a "politeness" culture use down votes less.
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Who wants social media (Score:1)
The internet was fun as it protected and expected US freedoms. Freedom of the press. Freedom of speech. Freedom after speech.
Remove that and social media becomes any other failed nations "internet". With extra censorship, reporting, bans.
Re:Who wants social media (Score:5, Insightful)
The internet was fun as it protected and expected US freedoms. Freedom of the press. Freedom of speech. Freedom after speech. Remove that and social media becomes any other failed nations "internet". With extra censorship, reporting, bans.
The US constitution never guarateed the right to not have people say "piss off we don't want you in this private club any more". In fact the constitution protects that freedom.
Forcing internet forums to host people they don't want is strongly anti-freedom.
What beast hath been wrought? (Score:2)
So, I'm sitting here wondering what kind of commentary will be engendered by posts with 1000 likes and -1000 downvotes. Each social network design choice tends to compel different types of conversation.
FINALLY! (Score:2)
It's been too long, too long I tell ya! All those stupid baby pictures you love to share? DOWNVOTE! You wanna show me that awesome meal that you had? DOWNVOTE! You have that 89023rd picture of your dog that I just have to see? Upvote. I mean, he is a really good dog: 14/10. You need to tell everyone about how your boyfriend doesn't hold the door for you and you think he's a monster for it? DOWNVOTE!
Facebook: UNLEASH THE FURY! ;)
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Damnit, I posted so can't upmod this... oddly amusing comment! :(
And your stock will take another beating. (Score:2)
When it becomes an echo chamber of the largest group of "downvoters" and people get tired of it..
Hopefully the newsfeed algorithm will improve. (Score:1)
"demote ones that are uncivil or irrelevant." sigh (Score:1)
"Support comments that are thoughtful, and demote ones that are uncivil or irrelevant."
Yeah, right. Like people have ever behaved like that. We will, like everywhere else with similar systems, downvote as a sign of disagreement with the content. Or worse, downvote all comments of a person we do not like regardless of the content.
All the big networks need to die (Score:5, Interesting)
The great dream of the internet was that we would be free of the centralized information control systems. A break from the centralized newspapers and centralized television networks.
And we got it for a time but as the internet became more mainstream in its use and appeal so to did many people flock to reincarnations of the very same systems in meatspace.
Youtube, facebook, twitter, Google Search, etc need to be deemphaized. We need to use a plethora of services that are so widely distributed that nothing can really be controlled in any kind of organized way across the systems.
My main problem with facebook is that it is too big. Same issue with Twitter etc. Second issue is that for its size it is under one corporation's dictatorial and arbitrary control. Any platform that is that popular should be an OPEN platform. Something where anyone can set up their space on it to do whatever and it is literally impossible to silence them... outside of court orders etc. But when its all hosted by some company that owns all the IP... there's no freedom. The instant that company feels it wants to nuke someone for any reason they they do it. Which is why such services are bad if they become primary means of information distribution. Its the same problem we had with newspapers and news networks. Bias. Agendas. Prejudice. If the local paper hates politician X and the paper is the primary news source of the region then that is a huge disadvantage to that politician. He could have good ideas or bad ideas... it doesn't matter. He's not going to get a fair try at office.
You see this all over the place in a million different ways.
Facebook and Twitter are "fine"... if small. The problem is that they're too prominent to wield the power over collective information that they do. And they've demonstrated repeatedly to be bad shepherds of what little trust has been put in them.
Solutions? Its already happening. The networks are already tearing themselves apart. They had an ability earlier to save themselves and they arrogantly refused to see the genius of it. What they had to do was democratize their platforms. Give up some control to the user base whilst also permitting healthy balkenization of social groups that don't interact productively with each other.
They demanded total control and demanded that the population be kept together. A million angry rats in one bag... held by a single hand.
What could possibly go wrong? :)
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Their profits are down big... why their stock dropped 20 percent.
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Wiki:
SCL Group (formerly Strategic Communication Laboratories) was a private British behavioural research and strategic communication company. In the United States, SCL has gained public recognition mainly through its affiliated corporation Cambridge Analytica. It performs data mining and data analysis on its audience. Based on results, communications will be specifically targeted to key audience groups to modify behaviour in accordance with the goal of SCL's client. The company describes itself as a "globa
Re: All the big networks need to die (Score:2)
I wish I wasn't on mobile to respond to this but the fact of the matter is that we,as humans, DO NOT function this way. Centralization keeps happening again, and again, and again throughout history because our brains don't deal with a plethora of choices too well. Put more than five choices in front of us and bulk. Put too many choices, then we force industry standards, effectively reducing the choices. Find an organization that will centralize things for us, we flock to it like insects to artificial sun/mo
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So does Babel. ;)
Large centralized systems have issues with scalability. They have issues in efficiency, issues in "buy in", and issues in sustaining themselves generation after generation.
As I said before, the big networks are already going into a death spiral.
We get this pretty much every time with monopolies... this notion of things being "forever" but the thing that keeps getting forgotten is that the death of the organization typically happens relatively shortly around the point people think it is "for
Re: All the big networks need to die (Score:2)
I think k you've just proved my point. All of these monopolies had the same model: one stop shop. All were taken to task by new innovation, but in the end we just hopped from one master to the next. What's new is how quickly this is happening vs. years of yonder, it's still happening. I'm not knocking your premise and would agree that a plethora of choices is great, especially for competition and prices, but we need to evolve first. That's one thing I can give credit to the newer generations' lower attenti
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Every day is not like the day before from the beginning of time to the end of time.
Things change. Gods die. Entire socio-economic paradigms fade into obscurity.
Why did democracy work? Why did the corporation work
We change the way we do things and have done so many times.
As to my examples proving your point...
What unstoppable tech titan replaced IBM? There was nothing... they were ripped apart by a dozen competitors and to this day not a one of them reigns supreme.
In regards to General Motors... there's no c
Re: All the big networks need to die (Score:2)
Just to make a point about IBM and GM:
IBM-->Microsoft-->Apple(US),Google(World)
Ford-->GM(US)-->Toyota/VW(World)
In example number one, we got industry standards in PCs and now moving that direction with mobile (ARM/LCD/Flash,etc).
#2) industry standards for decades with new standards likely going in for both autonomy and electric.
What we've done is limit real new innovation with standards and created the illusion of choice when the choices all source from the same people (e.g. Samsung, LG, Foxconn
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As to IBM to Microsoft, it fails right there. Microsoft never had the dominance that IBM had in the 40s ~ 70s when it was thought to be unstoppable.
As to GM to Toyoda, you're not even arguing in good faith with that one as GM is one company and your transition infers either Toyota which doesn't have that same presence or you're attempting to cite the entire global auto market which doesn't support your position. Toyota in the US has a 15 percent market share today. GM at its peak was about 50% of the US car
Re: All the big networks need to die (Score:2)
Microsoft has and still has over 90% of the US and Global market share for desktop operating systems and is only being usurped by mobile devices from both Apple and Android, with the latter truly dominating the world. IBM's dominance was prominent until Microsoft came along and gutted them. The difference is the length of time the dominance is shorter than before as technology has been the sole disruptor.
If you look at the GM stat, GM had dominance in the US and still is King here, albeit not by much, but w
Best News Evaaaar! (Score:2)
Thank god there aren't a zillion Russian trolls drooling over the opportunity to game this system while Facebook's board of corporate scumbags nearly dislocate their necks looking the other way.
The problem (Score:3)
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Ideally those who disagree should state that, and explain why they disagree, to further the discussion.
I'm curious as to how this FB 'innovation' will pan out over time, if it's actually released broadly.
My mod points can't be used since I've already posted on this thread.
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And just like on Slashdot the result will be mixed views as people generally agree on different things.
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Is that a problem in this case, though? Slashdot votes have descriptions. That kind of moderation is abuse specifically because none of them are "I disagree", although one of them is "overrated" which arguably means the same thing. Yet most people who mean overrated use "troll" or "flamebait" instead, even though those words have specific meanings, because they are trying to manipulate the audience (and meta moderators.)
But on some sites, there are explicit up and down votes, and on those sites, simply clic
Nope (Score:2)
Nope. Sorry. Fail. You can't wait for the share value to plummet, panic, and then introduce something that everyone has been crying out for, and, in reality, should have been there from the start.
SAD.
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I don't think it should be there any more than all the other emojis they've made available. I think the very best solution is on the very least popular social network, G+. There you can either plus something or not. The end. Either you want it to have greater visibility or you don't. It doesn't prevent gaming the system to achieve that goal, but it also doesn't allow gaming the system to bury something you don't like using sock puppets, and meanwhile it also doesn't require that you show approval as a thumb
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It's not about burying something. Why not display all posts and let people see whether people do or do not like them?
Showing you all posts is not what Facebook does, and it never has been. Even G+ doesn't show you all posts, although it gets a hell of a lot closer.
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But what about Sadness? (Score:1)
Judging by ... (Score:3)
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