Twitter's new hidden downvote could turbocharge echo chambers

One decision Neowin did good with was to not go with a downvoting system. It was something I thought I wanted some years back, but these days, I'd say the staff was smarter than I on this. Creating echo chambers isn't ideal, especially when the people with opposing views never learn or understand why their views are opposed. All it does is serve as a system for upvoting your friends and downvoting opposition, in absence of proper moderation.

Given that Twitter and sites like it don't do enough in terms of moderating content, it's easy to see why they'd go with such a system. Still, for those who like to learn or actually have a discussion, it doesn't create good conversation by any stretch, when lurkers have as much power as those who are actually intelligent and can carry themselves in a conversation.

I say this as someone who's learned a lot being a member of this site. I'd rather know why I'm wrong about something, to at least maybe temper a rant on a subject I may need more information on... than to just be downvoted and stuck in this binary mindset of team red or team blue, when it comes to politics anyway (or processor preference lol).

Anyway, I see this as just lazy behavior from Twitter, if it means less influx of reports on content that people find offensive (when it's just content people likely disagree with). Of course, I don't think Twitter is the space for intellectual thought anymore than Reddit or 4chan lol

On 04/02/2022 at 06:03 PM, dead.cell said:

One decision Neowin did good with was to not go with a downvoting system. It was something I thought I wanted some years back, but these days, I'd say the staff was smarter than I on this. Creating echo chambers isn't ideal, especially when the people with opposing views never learn or understand why their views are opposed. All it does is serve as a system for upvoting your friends and downvoting opposition, in absence of proper moderation.

Given that Twitter and sites like it don't do enough in terms of moderating content, it's easy to see why they'd go with such a system. Still, for those who like to learn or actually have a discussion, it doesn't create good conversation by any stretch, when lurkers have as much power as those who are actually intelligent and can carry themselves in a conversation.

I say this as someone who's learned a lot being a member of this site. I'd rather know why I'm wrong about something, to at least maybe temper a rant on a subject I may need more information on... than to just be downvoted and stuck in this binary mindset of team red or team blue, when it comes to politics anyway (or processor preference lol).

Anyway, I see this as just lazy behavior from Twitter, if it means less influx of reports on content that people find offensive (when it's just content people likely disagree with). Of course, I don't think Twitter is the space for intellectual thought anymore than Reddit or 4chan lol

To me it is just Twitter looking to automate as much of its moderation as possible. It's really sad that the largest companies are often the ones you can't actually speak to a human about an issue, or you end up getting canned responses from support staff out of India that does anything but help the issue.

Yesterday all ads were down on Google and there's no-one I can call or message, all I can do is "give feedback" which is about as useful as pissing in the wind.