• Whirlygirl9
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    278 days ago

    If I remember the ancient days correctly, you were supposed to downvote incorrect info so it wouldn’t appear at the top? You weren’t supposed to downvote if you disagreed but if it was wrong info? Am I hallucinating that?

    • @Even_Adder@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      278 days ago

      Those were still the rules when I left last year. People will upvote misinformation in the face of proof on there and here on lemmy.

      • The Snark Urge
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        138 days ago

        If a platform puts arrow buttons on everything people say, and tell you that up means you get “points”, it’s a social metric. At this point if you’re trying to create a consensus metric, you’ll have to think of something else. It’s too ingrained in us.

        • Codex
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          78 days ago

          This kind of information is all suppressed now, but early on when Facebook only had likes, there was a lot of discussion on how downvotes weren’t really needed. It was believed that people engaged more with content they enjoyed, and ignored unfavorable content.

          This is wildly wrong. People obsessively engage with content they hate, to the extent that it probably makes more sense to only have a down vote button. Everyone knows that now, and the big sites uses psychological studies funded by casinos to gamify engagement, entirely in the pursuit of click-pennies.

          What do votes mean? On lemmy it seems nothing. On other sites they mean revenue for the owners.

          • The Snark Urge
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            48 days ago

            I have never cared for human nature. It’s tedious at best and often ghastly. We should all concern ourselves much more with human nurture.

            To put it plainly, we should not be letting corporations do research on how to manipulate our most base instincts on social media. That would have been a moderate solution a century ago. Now we would need a more radical approach, such as outlawing most forms of advertising content and social media manipulation. And even raising the topic probably makes me sound insane.

          • Tlaloc_Temporal
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            27 days ago

            Except youtube, because dislikes were only used to call out scams and ads. The ad people got mad and now misinformation is easier to spread.

              • Tlaloc_Temporal
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                17 days ago

                Yes, there were, and for the most part YT promoted those dislikes the same as likes. I think they still do. The dislikes they actually removed were the visible ones, the ones people could use to steer clear of ads and scams.

        • @SomeGuy69@lemmy.world
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          68 days ago

          Lemmy has no total score anymore, so the up and down votes only matter in the topic layer. I think that’s the best solution rn. There’s no big incentive any longer to point farm.

    • ESC
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      168 days ago

      I believe you were “supposed” to upvote/downvote by whether the comment contributes to the discussion and community.

    • @Aria@lemmygrad.ml
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      18 days ago

      You were supposed to upvote the best version of each argument/position or additional info and downvote the rest. Instead the site is the most popular opinion presented 6 different ways.