Ask HN: Do you think comments algorithms on social media platforms are bad? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Do you think comments algorithms on social media platforms are bad?

They constantly seem to priorities hate comments.

Whether you think the algorithms are bad or not depends on whether you see the algorithm as separate to the outcome of the algorithm. Algorithms are designed to surface content for maximum engagement, and the fact that they do this very well means they're objectively 'good'. The content they promote is (subjectively) pretty horrible, which means while the goal of the algorithm is might be fine, the outcome is bad.

Hate comments provoke a reaction that leads to more comments and more activity, which the company will like. The company wants to make the company happy, not you

I noticed that for a while, YouTube heavily prioritized positive comments. This seemed like an excellent thing for everyone. It seems to have changed recently but I could be wrong.

LinkedIn also sorts comments by a nebulous "Most relevant" that never makes sense. It won't even list the subcomments in order.

In my opinion, reddit does it best by sorting one way and letting you change it.

Yes, reddit is much better and having more mod controls for comments would be great.

Reddit has no community, unlike forums. It's strangers among strangers. It invites bullying, dunking, humiliating. Whoever drops the joke the fastest gets the most karma.

Instagram is quite similar and will recycle the same material for weeks. Take an old top comment burn from one reel and drop into a fresh new one, instant upvotes.

Twitter/X is just very public. Take a celebrity, say Paul Graham. Dude posts something random about rich people. Ha, let's eat the rich in public. Call Sam Altman a sociopath. Hate on Elon Musk on his own website.

Facebook has no downvote. You can say whatever you like and nobody will counter it. Controversial opinions thrive here. Fertile ground for anti-vax, anti-maskers, flat Earthers.

HN is well, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40725329 It creates little containers around these kinds of topics. There's no way to downvote a topic either, and this one survived and rocketed after 14 or so flagged repostings.

tl;dr carrot and stick

Welcome to Attention Economy 101. Social media are engines that run on attention, and will prioritize anything that maximize it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com