PoliticalAgitator @ PoliticalAgitator @lemmy.world

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2 yr. ago

After reading your exciting new definition of the placebo effect and being asked to "name some advantages" that have been in every comment I've made, I think I know everything I need to about the quality of your opinions.

Also, never said unranked.. I meant simply hide the rankings

Sounds trash to me. Fortunately it would be trivial for me to add them back in because again, all you're doing is making the information inconvenient.

It also means that people don't mindlessly upvote posts simply because there were a lot of upvotes

Is that how your mind works? I've never once done this and I'm extremely skeptical that anyone does. Sounds to me like you don't like the content and have decided that nobody really does, they're just upvoting it because it was upvoted.

Showing Upvotes/downvotes doesn't show whether they are bots are not. It just means they'll upvote/downvote more random shit and mess around wit the rest of the posts, so more crap rises to the top because they're interfering with the rankings.

A log of votes is the data you need to discover bots. It doesn't magically reveal them, nor did I claim it would.

Voting on random shit might make a slightly more plausible voting log for a bot but that's going to be far more obvious than you think, won't actually interfere with the rankings if it's truly random and once again, not having rankings shown doesn't address this problem either.

Votes and rankings are always knowable, even if you hide them from the UI. If there is a pressure to make bots plausible through random voting, that pressure exists regardless of it being shown on the default UI. All you're doing is misleading users about what information they're exposing.

There are easier ways to identify bots

Describe them.

And, it just aids abusive people

You've already claimed to be a victim of them and your solution does nothing to address it. You're just adding another value to the list of poorly obscured information, because it's what you personally want.

Thanks.

Problem is, it actually encourages a hive mind. I've already had 2 people try to bully me.

Then tell those people to get fucked.

I'd go one step further. Upvotes down votes and totals should be hidden entirely.

Unless you have an actual implementation of how that would work, telling us "what you'd do" is just a fantasy. You can't "hide" things from federation -- they're either included, removed or made inconvenient to access.

Does "posting without external influence" even have any value besides sounding cool? The entire concept of Lemmy and Reddit is that external influence floats and sinks content. If you want unranked, anonymous content, you want 4chan (which is of course riddled with extremists and good content is almost entirely drowned out with worthless shitposts).

Personally, I'd rather that "external influence" was as fair and open and accountable as possible, rather than "I wonder if 500 of those votes are just Russian bots".

It's not technically possible with any model. Votes on Reddit are only kept private from other users -- staff could look them up or reveal them to someone any time they wanted and you'd never know.

Even if you allowed voting without an account (which would be so easily manipulated that it would be worthless), you'd still be identifiable from your IP.

Yes, and there's no genuine argument otherwise.

If you want Lemmy to grow and not be completely overrun with bots posting propaganda and signal boosting extremism, showing votes is the only way forward. It's the only mechanism by which independent parties can discover and expose things like "every post and comment by this account is upvoted by these 20 other accounts that have never posted and whose names follow the same formula".

The privacy you're mourning never existed in the first place and it can't exist on any platform. For Lemmy, it's required for federation. On sites like Reddit, you have privacy from other users, but not from the company or anyone they sell that data to.

Since true privacy isn't an option, it would be far better to be open about that lack of privacy. This thread is already riddled with people who thought their votes were private, rather than just inconvient to look up. That's far more dangerous and deceptive.

This needs to happen, regardless of the ill-informed tantrums it may cause. If you want to upvote pornography without it being used against you, create accounts that are strictly for pornography and properly compartmentalize your accounts.

Oh yeah that's right. Sorry, I haven't put a game out for a long time.

I have mixed feelings on it.

When I was putting out games, publishing on Steam would mean a guaranteed 1 million impressions on the "New releases" list. That's incredible exposure for an indie title, which often succeed or fail on exposure alone.

But 30% can be a lot for those same indie teams, especially combined with taxes. You can put years of work into a title and lose half the money it earns to groups that didn't directly contribute at all. It can easily be enough money that long-term support or follow up games just aren't viable. It can be your entire outsourcing budget or a whole employee for a year.

And after that initial exposure, you're not getting much for your perputual 30%. The value of Steamworks can vary greatly game by game so you could end up paying $30k for $100 of bandwidth and minor marketing through things like sales and rich presence.

I would much prefer to see something like "30% after the first $X in sales". Their cut would kick in only after they've demonstrated their value as a platform and small teams wouldn't have to watch a company with billions of dollars take a very large bite out of their very small pie.

It would also perfectly fit to Nazism. Just another view they coincidentally share right?

Yeah, how is this a shock to people? If they can't have their own neoliberals in office, they would absolutely prefer to lose to another neoliberal than win with a progressive.

America desperately needs preferential voting.

They're not mutually exclusive.

Surely they fully support the shooter right? After all, pro-gun people have been telling us for decades that dogshit gun laws are needed so that if any politician becomes a tyrannical, they can be executed by some random civilian.

So I guess the shooter was just a responsible gun owner who thought Trump was a tyrant. They've never actually articulated what a tyrant was or at what point they should be killed, so I guess it was just up to whatever some unhinged gun owner thought.

Aww, don't start being coy, tell us what happens next. Explain how our problems are solved after following your advice. I've given you the best possible setup I could, assuming a level of success unquestionably beyond what you're able to achieve.

Unless you're willing to give us even a token explanation of the second half of your plan, it really does look like "Republicans win the election" is where your plan ends.

Okay sure, let's have this discussion.

The first massive favor I'll do is give you the benefit of the doubt and accept you're saying this in good faith and not as a right-wing sock puppet.

The next massive favor I'll do is accept your (ostensible) plan is wildly successful, far beyond what you could reasonably hope for. Everybody is so moved by your comment that you convince 80% of Democrat voters to vote independent and every single one votes for the same independent party. Hell, I'll even throw in 10% of Republican voters.

The only thing we won't give you is the ranked choice voting needed to stop your idea being dumb as fuck. We'll stick to reality for that one.

So tell us how the next 4 years play out in your head. Polls close, votes are counted. Democrats 9.8%, Toothfairy Party 44.1%, Republicans 45.9%.

Then what?

1000kg, depending on fitout. Going to block you now because you're clearly never going to shut the fuck up, no matter how links people give you or how many times you're embarrassingly wrong.

I'm not American but don't worry, we're all used to your opinions being ignorant of basic facts.

I'm not spoonfeeding you any more information.

Yep, lower capacity than cars half its size but a higher towing capacity that you're not actually using.

Yep, I was wrong and you did post a photo.

See how much easier that is than convoluted shit like "research about a cars blind spot is only valid in America, even when the car is exactly the same"?