> Instead, I'd like comments to be sorted based on my "network of influencers", or users who I've rated positively...
This would in essence create your personal echo chamber.
This would in essence create your personal echo chamber.
My favourite system has been Slashdot because you could promote your view of (moderated, and meta-moderated) content voted to be insightful, say, whilst reducing viewing pure joke posts, and such. You could also boost/nerf particular voices.
Reddit is too much "cutesy animal" content, I wish I could filter all of that, it just doesn't amuse me.
I'm not saying there's no such thing as echo chambers, but there's so much else going in when you engage with sources you select that doesn't have anything to do with whether a pre-existing belief is being echoed back to you.
People tend to consider content that appeals to and reinforces their biases and desires to be more interesting, of higher quality and more trustworthy than content that doesn't.
Even self-described "free thinkers" tend not to want their beliefs challenged or to be moved from their comfort zone too much.
I’m very open to other ideas and I actively manipulate the mechanisms on sites like Facebook to prevent being put in an echo chamber. But I am difficult to convince using emotional arguments and I also don’t have time to read a 900 page dissertation on my lunch break. Long form journalism is amazing though, but unfortunately rare and often now corrupted by bias.
Most people in my circle are in the same boat. We are all welcoming of total mental shifts if warranted by the data. We’re happy to entertain an idea long enough to get through a lengthy article even if we’re not sure of it. But if you start with trying to gut wrench you’ve lost us.
Unfortunately the majority of people respond more strongly to pithy memes and emotional appeals, so that’s most of what I see both from those who putatively agree with me and those who don’t. It takes extraordinary effort to find good arguments about anything being written/presented by anyone.
This is why I want the described system. I can make it work for me by being selective about who or what I upvote.
(It wouldn't be just upvotes though. I'd like to apply all kinds of ratings. The whole point is that I'd be in control.)
If you don't want to put in the time then fine, but maybe you shouldn't hold a strong opinion one way or the other. Your own echo chamber is likely no better than any other.
I mean real research, e.g., quanifiable fact, scientific research. This is not your opinion, it's data, and data tells us things we didn't know before.
They could make it so that the more time you spend on Reddit, the less control you get over your feed. I know it's a complete non-starter for business reasons, but it's an interesting thing to think about.
We already build our own echo chambers with personalized multi-reddits (which I use to great effect, since the defaults are trash-tier) as well as the main sub-reddit subscription list. I quite like this idea.
Groups that try to pull you into their echo chamber almost always have dubious or selfish intentions, ranging from blatant advertising to astroturfing. This puts power back into the hands of users.