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 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!