SvennoJ said:
Zkuq said:
That's a fair point about downvotes. However, at least here, it seemed that for every actually bad comment, there must've been like five decent enough comments that were downvoted, and I don't think that seems fair either. I guess 'self-moderation' is a tricky thing to do properly. I think I have/might be able to come up with some potential improvements, but it's not really ever going to be perfect - have to pick the upsides and the downsides that fit what you're trying to do with the community. |
True, down votes were just as much used for trolling as 'burying' that behavior.
Also thinking a bit more about it, the removal of dislikes is a reflection of 'modern' schooling where positive reinforcement outweighs all criticism. I can't really blame social media for that as the rise of participation awards started in the 80's and 90's. Boomers trying to fix low-self esteem by showering kids with praise no matter what.
So it seems the pendulum has swung to the other side now and we're dealing with inflated self-esteem. Schools made kids dependent on external praise, aka likes...
I get the reason why VGChartz added the agree button (we had way to many posts quoting a post with the only contribution being "This", just click agree instead) so it's not really a like button but the effect can be the same. Yet the site traffic is so low there's no 'farming for clicks' here.
Yet social media seems obsessed with 'going viral'. And with monetization tied to views and likes, the internet is teaching kids you can make money by playing into people's emotions, while logical, complex arguments are mostly a waste of time.
Of course it was no different in the age of tabloids and newspapers. Catchy headlines same as clickbait, Sun page 3 to sell the tabloid, next to saucy rumors and conspiracy nonsense. The only difference is you can now keep scrolling tabloid type nonsense any time, any place on your phone without it ever ending. At least with a newspaper you still got exposed to some in depth articles, nowadays that's all filtered out to keep your attention with low effort tidbits. No more picking up a Reader's digest or Time Magazine at the doctor, dentist etc while waiting. Just keep scrolling the clickbait. |
I think I partially agree about positive reinforcement, although that might also be getting a bit into cultural territory too. At least here in Finland, I don't think there's a strong tradition of providing positive feedback even when it's appropriate, so some corrective action might have been in order. I suspect it's the same in many other places as well, although possibly to a lesser extent. I also have a hunch we might have gone a bit too far with positive feedback and vibes in general, at least at times, but at this point it's really more of a vague hunch for me.
Not sure how I feel about your inflated self-esteem claim. I feel like it's probably true for some, but at the same time issues with mental health seem to be on the rise (I'm assuming in the West in general, but don't quote me on that). It feels like we're doing something really unhealthy to have such issues both at the same time. I'm guessing much of that can be attributed exactly to what we've been discussing here, probably alongside some other factors (I especially have some concerns about parenting, possibly largely but not necessarily entirely attributed to social media).
Feels like social media is so much worse than tabloids and whatnot, maybe because it's more engaging.
You again raise many interesting points, many of which seem like they would be pretty interesting to research in greater depth, if only I had infinite time.
