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Comment by aantix | Hacker News Reader

Oh man, have you ever tried to have a political discussion on Facebook? Even citing sources, trying to be diligent... And then, the only response you get is... "that's not right!". And that response is somehow given equal weighting?

I actually wish Facebook, the place where a majority of Internet discussion probably occurs, WOULD institute a dislike button and suppress those comments that get down voted too much (like Hackers News or Reddit).

Right now, it's either a "thumbs up" or a neutral stance, and that's just not enough to accurately describe the level of discourse occurring.

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The problem with services like Facebook is they give everyone equal footing on any topic no matter the person's expertise on the subject, their relationship to the matter at hand, or their overall attitude towards discussions in general.

This means a black person who's been repeatedly victimized by police has no more credibility than some white dude who thinks everyone's making it up and it's a bunch of cry-babies going on about nothing.

It means a cryptography expert can get shouted down by some idiot that's just parroting something they read on CNN that's dangerously misinformed.

There's a lot of factors in play here but the "like" button skews the conversations towards things that earn votes which are not necessarily things that are true, accurate, or meaningful.

Sometimes the truth is ugly and painful and that's hard to like.

I mean, I can hop on the gripe-train about Facebook, but the only way I've found to have meaningful political conversations is over a very narrow topic with the expectation that parties come well-researched and willing to continue researching. Politics is excruciatingly complicated, trying to have a cogent conversation about it on Facebook is like trying to have a deep talk about religion while riding bumper cars.

The problem with downvotes is they are susceptible to brigading and in political discussions, there are essentially 2 hivemind brigades. In the end, any point that doesn't agree with the majority hivemind on the platform gets buried. /r/politics is a case study in this.

Political discussions with general public have always been like that, in every country and every age. It's not Facebook's problem, that's just how people are.

Any topic that indiscriminately concerns almost any person (e.g. politics, religion, weight loss and bodybuilding, how to parent and educate children, cooking, healing common pains/sicknesses), when discussed with random people, is automatically doomed to turn into a mess of uninformed opinions, misinformation, trivial logical slips and ordinary quarrel.

Tech/science discussions are usually constructive because they imply harsh entrance filter on education and intelligence, because most of those who upvote "that is not right!" can not join a public discussion of pharmacokinetics of a certain organic molecule no matter how welcome they are. When filters are absent, you get what you have described.

The real problem is that over 95% of people do not even value being constructive, checking facts, citing sources, etc. That is not a technical problem, you can't solve it by tweaking voting buttons.

Political discussions in any forum have rarely been productive, and no number of tools designed to build echo chambers will change that.

"And then, the only response you get is... "that's not right!". And that response is somehow given equal weighting?"

I noticed this long before the internet became this popular. Its more about the anti intellectualism than it is technology.

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