Facebook's 'Downvote' System Begins Rolling Out Wider In US (arstechnica.com)

Facebook is reportedly rolling out its "downvote" button to a wider group of users in the United States. "The feature began appearing on the service's mobile app without a formal company announcement -- and we only found out about it by browsing on our phones," reports Ars Technica. From the report: The feature appears to currently be limited to "public" posts. Should your account be flagged for this week's test, every comment in a thread will include a numeric value and small up- and down-arrows connected to that number. Upon the first display of this Reddit-like change, the Facebook app will offer guidance: "Support comments that are thoughtful, and demote ones that are uncivil or irrelevant."

This is in addition to the site's long-running "emotion" interface, which lets users tap "like" or emoji-styled buttons. These icons and numbers still attach to posts as they've done for years. Now an additional value based on up- and down-votes, appears as well, and these values are separate. Meaning, if you tap the "like" button and down-vote on the same comment, those actions don't cancel each other out. As of press time, these up- and down-vote numbers are not visible if your account is not flagged for the test. We have not yet seen this feature go live on any versions of the Facebook Android app.

Comments

Wait a second...

[Kohath]

Do people still use Facebook?

one site to rule them all

[thoughtlover]

Slashdot's moderating system is still, IMHO, the best example of a way for a community to not only moderate discussion, but use tags to clarify why a person voted for a post... I love the Funny and Troll mod options, but Under/Overrated are hugely important, too.

All the big networks need to die

[Karmashock]

The great dream of the internet was that we would be free of the centralized information control systems. A break from the centralized newspapers and centralized television networks.

And we got it for a time but as the internet became more mainstream in its use and appeal so to did many people flock to reincarnations of the very same systems in meatspace.

Youtube, facebook, twitter, Google Search, etc need to be deemphaized. We need to use a plethora of services that are so widely distributed that nothing can really be controlled in any kind of organized way across the systems.

My main problem with facebook is that it is too big. Same issue with Twitter etc. Second issue is that for its size it is under one corporation's dictatorial and arbitrary control. Any platform that is that popular should be an OPEN platform. Something where anyone can set up their space on it to do whatever and it is literally impossible to silence them... outside of court orders etc. But when its all hosted by some company that owns all the IP... there's no freedom. The instant that company feels it wants to nuke someone for any reason they they do it. Which is why such services are bad if they become primary means of information distribution. Its the same problem we had with newspapers and news networks. Bias. Agendas. Prejudice. If the local paper hates politician X and the paper is the primary news source of the region then that is a huge disadvantage to that politician. He could have good ideas or bad ideas... it doesn't matter. He's not going to get a fair try at office.

You see this all over the place in a million different ways.

Facebook and Twitter are "fine"... if small. The problem is that they're too prominent to wield the power over collective information that they do. And they've demonstrated repeatedly to be bad shepherds of what little trust has been put in them.

Solutions? Its already happening. The networks are already tearing themselves apart. They had an ability earlier to save themselves and they arrogantly refused to see the genius of it. What they had to do was democratize their platforms. Give up some control to the user base whilst also permitting healthy balkenization of social groups that don't interact productively with each other.

They demanded total control and demanded that the population be kept together. A million angry rats in one bag... held by a single hand.

What could possibly go wrong? :)

Re:Who wants social media

[serviscope_minor]

The internet was fun as it protected and expected US freedoms. Freedom of the press. Freedom of speech. Freedom after speech. Remove that and social media becomes any other failed nations "internet". With extra censorship, reporting, bans.

The US constitution never guarateed the right to not have people say "piss off we don't want you in this private club any more". In fact the constitution protects that freedom.

Forcing internet forums to host people they don't want is strongly anti-freedom.