Add a downvote button so the rabid folks of either extreme will downvote each other into oblivion.
Downvoting just adds fuel to the fire. It's a classic technical "solution" to a social problem. We've known it doesn't work since the early 2000s, but people keep trying it because it's cheap.
It's not perfect, but reddit threads sorted by "best" are a sight better than threads sorted by "new".
Upvotes-only wouldn't get you the same effect, since "best" is about the ratio.
Honestly twitter should implement downvotes and just copy reddit's thread-sorting system verbatim.
Finally, I swear I saw downvotes on the Twitter app some time in the last few months. Unless it was an April fools joke, it was briefly a real feature! What happened?
Reddit doesn't actually work that well, and it only works as well as it does because of human moderation outsourced to people volunteering for a for-profit company.
> Finally, I swear I saw downvotes on the Twitter app some time in the last few months. Unless it was an April fools joke, it was briefly a real feature! What happened?
They did some A/B tests. I don't use Twitter, but it was in the news.
If downvotes reduce visibility and Twitter is composed of 60% A's and 40% B's, I will expect to see vastly more A content than B content, since the like-to-dislike ratios will differ by a factor of more than 2 (over twice as much A content).
In my mind, Reddit is a prime demonstration that voting to say "I find this content objectionable" and voting to say "I disagree with this content" are often indistinguishable.