Muting, blocking, downvoting? \ stacker news ~meta

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3540 sats \ 34 comments \ @elvismercury 19 Sep 2023 meta

Hey @k00b, another feature question. A very small number of users are (in my opinion, obviously -- this is all relative) 100% noise, and one user who is 100% noise plus also an abusive asshole. For a long time I thought, okay, this is an opportunity for personal growth on my part to not be affected by this. But, after a couple months, I regret to inform that development of my personal state of zen has not been up to the task. It's like getting stabbed in the eyeballs every time I read these guys.

There are a few obvious ways to deal with this.

Idea 0: live with the friction, it's good for you.
Idea 1 (milder): a mute feature where you don't see anything someone said. Their posts and the sub-tree are rolled up by default. This is really just a convenience. It's like spraying Poo Be Gone -- the shit is still there, but at least you're not smelling it as much. It prevents moments of weakness where you wade in and exacerbate everything.
Idea 2 (harsher): something like Twitter blocking: you don't see them, they don't see you, neither can vote on the other.

Until very recently I didn't like idea #2, but when I saw that downzaps are coming, it made me re-evaluate. The appeal of downzaps is clear; but I'm worried that in practice minority voices will get censored into oblivion, and discussion that doesn't conform to the dominant orthodoxy will never emerge. This seems a wide and well-maintained road to an echo chamber.

These forces are hard to balance, so I'm curious about where your mind is on this topic now. There was an extensive discussion a year ago, and you referenced muting a few months ago but I haven't seen a more decisive position statement / proposal / spec.

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923 sats \ 9 replies \ @k00b 19 Sep 2023

I'm hoping to have (1) done within the next few weeks along with personalized ranking.

I've always found (2) weird but maybe I don't understand the motivation very well.

The effect of any person's upzaps and downzaps will depend on the viewer, ie if I trust you a lot then you have a big impact on what I see. You will only experience the "censoring" you want (hopefully).

0 sats \ 4 replies \ @quark 19 Sep 2023

I am thinking there should also be transparency about the zaps and unzaps. A way to see each post or comment zaps with a list of users that zapped and how many sats in total for each user. Apologies if this is already possible. I couldn't find it.

18 sats \ 3 replies \ @k00b 19 Sep 2023

No you're right, we don't show the list.

Can you help me understand why you want to see who is zapping?

349 sats \ 1 reply \ @quark 21 Sep 2023

I was thinking this after the introduction of the concept of unzaps. If the list of unzaps is public, then maybe people would think it twice before doing the unzap if it is not totally justified. I've been thinking about this more and it could prevent some autozapping spam if we can see some users always receiving zaps from certain accounts that are not active commenting for example. This is specially important when you receive rewards for zapping early. The whole idea needs to be discussed at least.

279 sats \ 0 replies \ @elvismercury OP 21 Sep 2023

It's an interesting point in general -- in real communities, these sorts of reputational things do a lot of work: if you're a dick to my friend, I will take note of that, and treat you differently as a result. The list you're describing could enable things like that, although at scale those sorts of forces tend to not work, or get weird.

So many interesting SN experiments that could be run!

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @BBitcoinUSA 19 Sep 2023

my opinion is it'd be better to keep the zap list private, but I don't have a sense for the business angle of the decision.

I didn't know there was an un-zap feature but I'd never use that anyway :)

0 sats \ 3 replies \ @elvismercury OP 19 Sep 2023

Cool, thanks. Wrt motivation of #2: I used to find it weird too (on Twitter) but I came around.

The idea that I like is that it shouldn't be free to "turn someone off." If you are such an asshole that I want to knock you out of my personal universe, then I should pay a price too. If you really are that bad, then fine, nothing lost in not seeing anything that you're involved with. But if you're like 10% thoughtful in the midst of being a 90% aggressive asshole, or if other people think you're full of insight for some reason, then I should think carefully about losing access to that 10% of action and the follow-on action that ensues. It is culturally consequential to cut someone off.

I think blocking achieves something like that. Imperfectly, of course.

0 sats \ 2 replies \ @k00b 19 Sep 2023

I think I may be a bit confused. Are you saying blocking has costs for the blocker or the blockee?

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @elvismercury OP 19 Sep 2023

Btw, I think maybe I should have said explicitly: by "a cost" I mean like "a deadweight loss of life experience", not that people should literally pay in sats to block, or be fined if they're blocked by others.

A danger to talk about "costs" on a site that's experimenting with economics and incentives ;)

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @elvismercury OP 19 Sep 2023

Yup. If I block you, esp with the algorithm I described, you suffer because you get less distribution for your thoughts (I don't see them and won't interact with them) and I suffer bc I don't see your stuff or the interactions that result from them.

If you are literally worthless and produce nothing but noise (which is true of one of the people I have in mind), then my "suffering" is nearly at zero for blocking you -- the only loss to me is that some non-worthless person might reply to you, and I'd lose out on that, which would be unfortunate, but maybe a price worth paying.

396 sats \ 3 replies \ @Undisciplined 19 Sep 2023

I also struggle with Idea 0, but I think it is the path that leads to the most personal growth and most reduces the risk of SN turning into an echo chamber.

However, it's not great if one or two toxic users can seriously undermine everyone else's enjoyment of SN. I'm curious how the downzap experiment will play out. My expectation is that it won't be used to silence alternative takes, but rather will mostly be used to deal with the flood of unwanted link posts.

210 sats \ 2 replies \ @elvismercury OP 19 Sep 2023

That was the road I walked as well. I think that's well-articulated. Hopefully your intuitions are close to how it plays out.

100 sats \ 1 reply \ @Undisciplined 19 Sep 2023

I was trying to think about what would lead me to downzap someone. My inclination is to start up a conversation when someone posts content I disagree with. I don't think I would downzap anything if the poster (or even other SN users) were willing to engage.

If someone's just linking to outlets that are regularly caught knowingly lying to their readers/viewers, I might be tempted to downzap.

210 sats \ 0 replies \ @elvismercury OP 19 Sep 2023

For me it's the combo of cliche + abuse. Useless to anyone (cliches contain zero information), and actively harmful to any community I'd want to be a part of (abuse drives quality away like a stink bomb. I already know what crypto twitter looks like, don't need a second one.)

I would really struggle over someone who was insightful but also abusive. Case by case, I guess.

300 sats \ 1 reply \ @nullcount 19 Sep 2023

You can also "block" users client side using custom CSS to hide their posts and comments.

Using a modified version of this: #227410

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @elvismercury OP 19 Sep 2023

Oh awesome -- I had considered writing a browser extension or something, and perhaps eventually will do that. Thanks for the pointer!

EDIT: that's really simple and elegant. Would be easier than I thought, it seems. Practical sovereignty :)

121 sats \ 5 replies \ @m00ninite 19 Sep 2023

I regret to inform that development of my personal state of zen has not been up to the task.

Fuckin tell me about it, man. There are some threads I just simply avoid reading or replying to because I just know it's gonna attract some bullshit I don't want taking up space in my head rent free for the afternoon

120 sats \ 2 replies \ @orthwyrm 20 Sep 2023

lmao agreed

Jimmy's birthrate thread was a real eye opener.

50 sats \ 1 reply \ @elvismercury OP 20 Sep 2023

Should be required reading. Will be my new context whenever some bitcoiner acts like being interesting in bitcoin automatically means they have integrity and high character; or when someone wonders why there aren't more women in the space.

10 sats \ 0 replies \ @m00ninite 20 Sep 2023

There's some major dunning-Kruger effect going on in bitcoin. It's mad

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @elvismercury OP 19 Sep 2023

Well, at least we're not alone :)

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @nemo 19 Sep 2023

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110 sats \ 0 replies \ @scottathan 19 Sep 2023

I like (1), don't see a ton of reason for (2)

21 sats \ 0 replies \ @TheBTCManual 19 Sep 2023

Lol can we call mutes hogties?

100 sats \ 1 reply \ @WeAreAllSatoshi 19 Sep 2023

It's fun because as you described your use case, everyone reading this post probably has someone in their mind that fits the description, though it's likely not the same for everyone!

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @elvismercury OP 19 Sep 2023

I'm sure you're right. I would also bet 50k sats that many of us are thinking of at least one common culprit :)

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @kosmos 20 Sep 2023

Earn and Lose Sats on Stacker News - A new economic equilibrium

#236887

I still like to punish those posts.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @phygit 19 Sep 2023

A simple "mute" would do, making the unwanted posts invisible to the muter. No need to associate any zap mechanism to it, IMHO.

Curious about "downzap". Would that mean that a post which got zaps can lose them? Would you have to pay to downzap? Where would the sats go?

0 sats \ 4 replies \ @Zepasta 19 Sep 2023

Idea 4: Make profile & posts private.

0 sats \ 3 replies \ @Zepasta 19 Sep 2023

@k00b

0 sats \ 2 replies \ @k00b 19 Sep 2023

Private to who? It seems like you’re maybe using different words to describe a block.

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @Zepasta 19 Sep 2023

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4 sats \ 0 replies \ @k00b 19 Sep 2023

This is unrelated to the post but it sounds like there's a there there. I'll think about this more

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @nemo 19 Sep 2023

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