Why social media design makes it hard to have constructive disagreements online

This article is interesting but they are probably overthinking it. I think it's 80% or more due to the "road rage" effect. That is, people who aren't face-to-face don't humanize the other they are interacting with. There's also the "alcohol" effect, which is to say that someone speaks recklessly when they aren't afraid of getting punched for it.

The freedom to downvote. A downvote should force the downvotee to give a reason why.<p>A reason seperates the signal from the noise. The original poster can dispute the downvote given; which Reddit and HN, slashdot are all prone to. Karma points only encouragesusers to vote negative without thought if the output is already negative. As the same with positive.<p>-- Edit: My current downvote is a good example. I&#x27;m at 0.<p>I have been downvoted. I do not know why. Has some brigade decided to target my post? Downvoted because of my username? Unhappy with the idea? Does someone a personal vendetta agaisn&#x27;t me?<p>An explanation to why would provide civil discussion and seperate the bots&#x2F;power-trippers from those who do want to contrbute civily. The conversation was on point, contributing civily. Nothing unconstructive was within my text, yet it leaves me baffled to why I was downvoted. Was it soley because I clash with someones view and they don&#x27;t want to challenge it? I like to earn my &quot;internet points&quot; in a solitude fashion but it only takes one bad actor to screw the show.<p>Forcing the user to give a reason to why, well that would be a different story. Users further down the line could then decide if that downvote was the worth. If that user is a being a bad actor. For now, it&#x27;s marked as 0 and you can watch the trend.

Most humans act pretty decently when they encounter other humans in real life.<p>However, this changes rapidly when they are using technology. Many people who are pretty decent otherwise can say horrible things on the phone or email. I have seen this a lot of times. So it is pretty important to think about ways for people to disagree without descending into some stupid flame-war.

I haven&#x27;t seen many (any?) online systems that seem particularly well-suited to arguments.<p>Nevertheless I like it when sites try to call out clear statements of position, supporting and opposing arguments, citations for evidence for claims, and rebuttals, while trying to reduce logical fallacies such as ad hominem arguments, guilt by association, etc..<p>It also seems hard to have a productive discussion of controversial ideas without some degree of third-party oversight and moderation, but moderation usually favors the biases of the moderators and usually generates animosity among those whose comments are suppressed.

&gt;block users who derail conversations and use emoji to convey emotions in text<p>Blocking people who use emojis seems extreme. In fact, an emoji-based rating system could improve conversation by replacing the urge to comment lightly with a &quot;thoughtful&quot; or &quot;informative&quot; label. They needn&#x27;t have any weight other than their visibility.<p>Some old-style forums implemented this to cut down on noisy &quot;I agree&quot; posts, and it worked. Maybe reducing conversation surface area reduces chances for conflict.