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Comment by WA | Hacker News Reader

tl;dr: Reddit's "secret" to fix Facebook is the ability to downvote stuff. Because Facebook only measures engagement and doesn't care if users like it or not. Reddit (or downvoting in general) provides a better filter.

The article ends awkwardly with something that makes no sense at all:

> On the same day that Mr Huffman appeared at SXSW, the web's inventor - Sir Tim Berners-Lee - published a letter.

> "What was once a rich selection of blogs and websites has been compressed under the powerful weight of a few dominant platforms," he wrote.

> Reddit has the power to help reverse this trend.

By centralizing discussions on a single website? Odd.

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Even with the downvoting option of Reddit, I found implementations like StackOverflow’s to be more interesting (at S.O., “down” doesn’t remove as many points as “up” adds, and it costs the downvoter personal points to do it).

The SO model seems tricky to generalize. I like that downvoting has a cost but for political topics that’s vulnerable to sock puppets & trolls unless there’s a very healthy karma threshold.

Do we really need to put an idiotic comment at -150 points to make a point though ?

I was thinking more about the situation where a bunch of accounts are registered and upvote each other into prominence or coordinate downvotes. That can have a pronounced effect on community norms and many communities don’t have enough genuine participants with spare time to stay on top of even minor troll infestations much less a GamerGate, Russian political operation, etc.

>"What was once a rich selection of blogs and websites has been compressed under the powerful weight of a few dominant platforms," he wrote.

>Reddit has the power to help reverse this trend.

Odd that they completely missed the point of this, Reddit is a major part of the consolidation of the internet. Reddit pretty much killed independent forum and community websites.

In my experience, Facebook has replaced more independent online communities than reddit.

The problem with downvoting is you then wind up with one-minded users where diversity of opinions and interests aren't allowed.

Down voting on a real name network is going to be problematic, unless Facebook keeps down votes secret and uses them to decide where in the news feed to place posts...

As the author points out that at least Reddit shunts you out of the website when yoU find an interesting link.

Facebook wants you to react as long as you react within its walled garden.

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