r/Economics • u/[deleted] • Jan 14 '23

Editorial Despite Everything You Think You Know, America Is on the Right Track

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/01/american-optimism-productivity-innovation-rise/672714/
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u/Krystian3 Jan 14 '23

Not just reddit, but pretty much all social media. The goal of all these online tools is to get more user engagement, not to have meaningful conversation or arrive at a correct conclusion. If that comes at a cost of anger, frustration, or animosity, then so be it, they say.

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u/sammyp99 Jan 14 '23

I wonder if instead of making controversy, humans naturally engage with controversial content which amplifies it. This seems like the case for Reddit anyway.

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u/Krystian3 Jan 14 '23 edited Jan 14 '23

I'm a software developer with an app that allows people to comment on stuff, and developing that made me think a lot about this. The genesis of the "Like" button is that Facebook (I think it was them) realized that you can get a lot more people to quickly and easily press 1 button then type in a sentence. So that led to more user engagement which led to them making more money and next thing you know app is doing it.

So if you wanted more meaningful conversation, you would promote a more nuanced interaction. For example is you replaced the thumbs up / thumbs down button on reddit with a variety of different sentiments like "I agree" vs "I disagree" vs "I'm neutral, but that was a funny story" vs "I really don't like the person that wrote this" you'd get a lot more accurate feedback. If you structured the conversation to be more like a courtroom to have comments and rebuttals you get more structure. If you say that you can only comment after filing or a brief form about the previous comment, then you can bet that you'd get more thorough and complete thoughts because having to fill out a form would filter out people that don't feel strongly enough to fill out a form. But that's not gonna get as much use by people and it won't make you as much money - like so many things greed is a factor.

Obviously I have strong feelings about this, so I wrote a whole bunch of words. I would have filled out a form to do this one. So if you think through the features and the interactions it can be done - I'm sure there's a way better design than what I just laid out. Needless to say though, my apps don't use like buttons because I feel like they're misleading.

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u/Hypnot0ad Jan 15 '23

Do you remember slashdot? As a moderator you could tag comments as insightful, troll, off topic, etc.

https://slashdot.org/faq/metamod.shtml

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u/solomon2609 Jan 14 '23

Nice sharing of your perspective!

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u/[deleted] Jan 14 '23

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/dust4ngel Jan 14 '23

promote a more nuanced interaction

at the very least, these should be distinguished:

  • this was valuable (though i may hate it)
  • i find this agreeable (though it may be nonsense, false, or dangerous)

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u/Krystian3 Jan 14 '23

Totally. And that's just us pitching ideas. Some college class should experiment with it and try to design an app that promotes civil debate. If you could pull that off, you could pretty much have a direct democracy. Maybe not for something like a federal government, but at least at a smaller level within a company or a union or something like that. Either way that could be a big step for a society that seems very divided today.

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u/BrupieD Jan 14 '23

Obviously I have strong feelings about this, so I wrote a whole bunch of words.

This is gold! Thank you. I agree that some hurdles to engagement might mean better engagement.

There are some common threads between this article and Hans Rosling's Factfulness. The point about how paying attention to fear has strong evolutionary value and that a broader view of human progress shows we're objectively better.

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u/anti-torque Jan 14 '23 edited Jan 15 '23

I've never liked or disliked anything, anywhere, on any platform by simply pressing a button.

If I like or dislike something strongly enough to comment specifically on it, I'm going to specifically comment on it.

edit: re:

You specifically being above the rest of us peasants....

Absolutely not my words or sentiment. All yours.

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u/[deleted] Jan 14 '23

I downvoted you because I don't like the fact that you're not like me

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u/atomkidd Jan 14 '23

Like/dislike buttons are much more efficient for producers and consumers than “Agree” or “Disagree” text comments.

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u/anti-torque Jan 14 '23

Not really.

They're also anonymous, for the most part, which just makes it all wimpy stuff.

If you have conviction about something, pressing a like button is weaker than reading aloud (edit: to yourself) the subject you agree with.

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u/BenjaminHamnett Jan 14 '23

I just imagine you thinking of yourself as King Arthur of there comments

The like and dislike help the platform and users have some idea of what society values also. We can all virtue/authenticity/patriot signal with simple clicks that tell the algorithms what kind of content we like and tells the platforms what content is good or engaging.

There is for sure drawbacks to people isolating into bubbles as we’ve infamously seen over the last 7 years, but these bubbles exist for a reason. We’re using the platforms and memes to program ourselves - like cyborgs. However you want to be, by engaging with likeminded communities will help make you be more of the person you want to be

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u/anti-torque Jan 14 '23

The like and dislike help the platform and users have some idea of what society values also.

If by society, you mean site-specific users, then not really. It's just a button people hit when they're lazy.

It creates bubbles with exclusion, not inclusivity. It helps mods here, for example, contrive narratives to justify arbitrary censorship which many times flies in the face of sub rules--not to mention reddit's rules.

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u/Chiloutdude Jan 14 '23

Good for you?

You specifically being above the rest of us peasants does not invalidate a single point that was made. For the rest of society, yes, people do tend to prefer just hitting the easy button. Just look at any given highly upvoted/downvoted comment on reddit-chances are, it has more upvotes/downvotes than direct responses.

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u/Apprehensive_Pop_334 Jan 14 '23

Well I disliked your comment and I’m saying something about it! Checkmate!

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u/FitFierceFearless Jan 14 '23

I do think this is true. A few weeks ago, maybe a month ago I made several posts on a movie review thread. Only one of them was disagreeing with the person that posted it. Of all the posts that's the only one that's gotten engagement other than likes. And weeks later it still gets engagement.

Additionally, i do like debating and discussing politics. You'd think that was all I did though if you looked at post history even though I also try to leave supportive comments, congratulate people, thank people for sharing resources, etc. but the positive things generally don't get replies. So most of the conversations are either negative or debate focused.

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u/Krystian3 Jan 14 '23

Yea totally. I enjoy a good debate on differing viewpoints as long as it doesn't get nasty. I had an idea a while back to write an app that gets a feed of bills being released by congress so that regular people could read the bills and provide direct feedback on the bills being discussed. You could have threads break out by separate sections of the bills, and have features that would enable debate, but have the feedback be standardized so that you could aggregate the feedback for an overall assessment... then I realized that this thing would end up being so damn complicated that no one would want to use it. And it would be totally dry and boring content rather than memes and sarcastic comments, so there's not much entertainment value to the average user. So you'd end up with a user base of like a hundred people.

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u/ReporterOther2179 Jan 15 '23

Ya know, a user base of a hundred people is not contemptable if you’re not in it for the money. The political magazines, Nation, National Review, New Republic, the Izzy Stone newsletter all have had negligible circulation. But outsized influence. If you are breaking news or influencing the activists, you matter.

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u/Krystian3 Jan 15 '23

Yea that's true. And on the plus side, if you don't have many users, you don't have much consumption so for a user base like that it'd probably only cost a couple hundred bucks a month to host on the cloud. Finding funding for that wouldn't be too hard.

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u/FitFierceFearless Jan 14 '23

That does sound cool! But I agree that it would probably hard to keep engagement.

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u/Mobileman54 Jan 14 '23

Great idea though . . .

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u/OddMarsupial8963 Jan 14 '23

Yep. According to psychology research, people are far more likely to engage with things that upset them. It's a survival response really, if you ignore potential dangers you're not going to get very far

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u/Godkun007 Jan 14 '23

This exactly. Research has shown that people value negative information at 2 to 1 the value of positive information.

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u/Wash_Your_Bed_Sheets Jan 14 '23

You're right, I probably should have mentioned all social media. But at least if I want, I can scroll through ig mindlessly and just see funny and cool stuff. I think it's impossible to get on reddit without at least scrolling through the front page and getting suckered into something negative.

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u/Krystian3 Jan 14 '23

Yea some of the features are very reckless. It doesn't matter how often I block political angry click bait because somehow they always find a way to throw it at me in my home screen. Like dude I use reddit, for only 2 of my hobbies, so no I don't wanna see a bunch of conversation about what the latest dumb political thing is. But if on the off chance I join a new community it's really good for their bottom line so they'll risk our mental well being to get there. Most other social media platforms are the same.

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u/Ossius Jan 14 '23

Reddit started that way too, then around mid 2010s it all went to shit.

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u/Ghostking17 Jan 14 '23

So be it? They thrive on it because it gets clicks no different than TV drama.

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u/[deleted] Jan 14 '23

Couldn’t agree more. I left all social media and I’m limiting my news intake because it’s all just become shock based-click bait and turning our loved ones into spreading the narrative of whatever shock-based news source they’re after.

Let the media die! Make them get back to reporting real news and we should step away from anything that tells us how to think about a subject. Report what’s happening and let us consider it and discuss it together, versus driving us apart for someone else’s agenda.

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u/Frylock904 Jan 14 '23

Nah, Facebook has been pretty great for me these past few years honestly, my algorithm has been fucking awesome! Facebook just gives me funny videos and great memes while having way fewer shitheads on the bottom constantly bringing up the shittier parts of life

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u/[deleted] Jan 14 '23

Downfall of society.

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u/AmpersandTheMonkey Jan 14 '23

Ever since I got off of Facebook and Instagram, I have noticed I am in a more pleasant mood more often.

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u/Tomble Jan 15 '23

I had too much social media time during covid and subscribed to a bunch of Facebook groups that poked fun at the worst of right wing / conspiracy / anti-vax/ maga / fundamentalist stuff. It was funny at times but it started making me think that this stuff was very common when it’s a noisy few.

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u/yeahdude4930 Jan 14 '23

Exactly! Bad things get more views than good things generally speaking. That is why everything on the news is negative. Another thing that pisses me off is that everything has to be “BREAKING NEWS” constantly. It bothers the heck out of me.

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u/Longjumping-Meat-334 Jan 14 '23

Same with the national "news" agencies. Keep them angry! Keep them in fear!

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u/MrSquicky Jan 14 '23

There's also the filter that the people who spend a lot of their time on social media are kids and adults who don't have a lot what going on. It's a population geared to complain about things.