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[ NNSquad ] The Thumbs Up, Thumbs Down Dilemma: When Hate Means Love or Love Means Hate
The Thumbs Up, Thumbs Down Dilemma:
When Hate Means Love or Love Means Hate
http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/000834.html
Greetings. Love and Hate are unarguably among the most basic of human
emotions, largely primal forces that guide our lives both consciously
and likely unconsciously as well.
Judging from the dictionary definitions alone one would assume that
these two sentiments are always polar opposites, "never the twain
shall meet."
And for most of us when young at least, when the world seems painted
in sharp "good vs. evil" black and white images, love and hate seem to
be deceptively simple concepts.
But as we age, and experience the world in more of its complexity, the
sometimes distressing truth emerges. The lines between hate and
love -- emotional, spiritual, and physical -- are often blurry and
indistinct, and sometimes entirely contradictory.
Like the psychotic character of Harry Powell from the terrifying 1955
film masterpiece "Night of the Hunter" -- with LOVE and HATE tattooed
on the knuckles of his right and left hands respectively -- the words
alone do not provide dependable clues to our true thoughts and
beliefs ( http://j.mp/hMBHDK [YouTube] ).
Yet the "social" aspects of the Web have increasingly been defined in
terms of "binary" ratings: Like or Dislike - Love or Hate - Thumbs Up
or Thumbs Down.
Such ratings, on videos, postings, comments, and myriad other Internet
items, are not necessarily inconsequential. The resulting rankings
and scores can affect visibility, monetization, and other aspects
potentially important to both posters and viewers alike.
When YouTube discovered that most video rankings tended to bunch
around the very "bottom" and "top" of their star-based rating system,
that system was replaced with a simple thumbs up vs. thumbs down
mechanism instead, further encouraging "binary" thinking in this
regard. This change wasn't necessarily positive or negative in and of
itself -- but to view it as a minor alteration would be a mistake,
since constraints on choices inevitably -- and by definition -- have
an impact on the choices that people will make.
Perhaps of even greater concern, it isn't always even clear as to
exactly what an individual rating is actually referring to.
In Google Buzz (which I use heavily and consider to be an invaluable
venue), you can "Like" a posting -- but not the later individual
comments that become part of any given posting's discussion thread.
This frequently creates a dilemma when controversial topics are under
discussion. If you agree with a particular comment, but perhaps not
with other comments or the original posting, is it appropriate to
"Like" the posting itself?
In practice, what tends to happen is that users will try to explain
the specifics of their feelings regarding particular comments rather
than use the ranking system itself, but this is not a substitute for
ranking signals that actually affect totals such as "10 people liked
this ..." In essence, if you don't use the formal "Like" or "Reshare"
systems, your opinion can't enter the calculus per se.
A different aspect of these dilemmas is also apparent on YouTube.
When rating a video -- thumbs up or thumbs down -- are you rating the
"value" of the video itself, or are you expressing agreement
(disagreement?) with the actual content of the video?
The same sort of concern can arise when rating other materials as
well. I'll bet you've had the experience of seeing a posting
containing some content with which you strongly disagreed, but that
you considered to be a posting that more people should be exposed
to -- as a negative example if nothing else.
So you hover over the "Like" or "Thumbs Up" button and say to
yourself -- are people going to think I'm agreeing with what this nut is
proclaiming, or will they understand that I just think that the item
itself is important to view?
And perhaps you decide that rather than risk that confusion, you won't
rate the item at all. Or you vote down the item to indicate your
disagreement with the content, even though (or perhaps not realizing)
that this may create a signal that actually tends to depress the rank
of the item, making it less likely to be seen by others -- perhaps the
exact opposite of your desired intention.
I've seen what appear to be exactly these scenarios with some of the
material I've posted on YouTube. Upsetting but important content
tends to be voted down, even as the associated comments' texts
indicate how viewers feel that the video is important to see! YouTube
does provide the capability for viewers to Thumbs Up or Thumbs Down
individual comments -- which is extremely useful, but is dependent on
the presence of comments in the first place for these additional
signals.
While I've primarily used specific examples related to Google above,
that's merely due to those services' wide visibility. In reality, the
sorts of rating conflicts I've described are endemic across the Web,
and have become very much "standard operating procedure" regardless of
vendor.
And while it's understandable why such ranking dilemmas exist, they do
seem to suggest that the binary Up/Down rating paradigm is
fundamentally too limiting, and that it is sometimes skewing potential
ranking signals in ways that may be exactly the opposite of many
users' actual sensibilities regarding associated materials.
How to best improve this situation is definitely not obvious. It
could be argued that the expansion of existing "Reshare" mechanisms
could well serve -- by emphasizing users' indications that specific
items are worthy of being more widely seen regardless of agreement or
disagreement with the content itself. But Resharing tends to be a
public activity where the party doing the sharing is identified in
some manner, and many users are likely to be concerned that sharing
still suggests agreement to one degree or another.
Certainly it would almost always be useful for users to be able to
rate comments as well as original postings in all venues where ratings
are available. Such capabilities are already present in a number of
popular Web platforms, including YouTube as noted above.
More fundamentally, being able to individually specify whether one
values a particular posting itself, separately and distinctly from
liking or disliking the actual content of a posting, could be
extremely useful.
How to functionally implement such a bifurcated ranking system in an
intuitive way -- that does not itself foster user confusion -- is also
very much a nontrivial question.
Overall, I believe it would behoove us to more intently explore the
entire area of user rankings, with an eye toward clearly delineating
the often marked differences between postings as "messengers" of
information, vs. their contained messages themselves.
Just as glancing at Harry Powell's tattooed knuckles would tell us
little about his true inner motivations, the user rankings on many Web
sites may tend to mislead us, in that complex realm of what we really
like, what we really dislike, and what we actually value on those
sites that make up such an important part of so many lives today.
--Lauren--
Lauren Weinstein (lauren@vortex.com): http://www.vortex.com/lauren
Co-Founder: People For Internet Responsibility: http://www.pfir.org
Founder:
- Network Neutrality Squad: http://www.nnsquad.org
- Global Coalition for Transparent Internet Performance: http://www.gctip.org
- PRIVACY Forum: http://www.vortex.com
Member: ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy
Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/laurenweinstein
Google Buzz: http://j.mp/laurenbuzz
Quora: http://www.quora.com/Lauren-Weinstein
Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800 / Skype: vortex.com