How to avoid echo chambers: Stop sorting comments by popularity.

submitted by uwubunny from self.SaidIt

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[–]philosopher 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

I do take your point, although I find sorting by popularity to be useful. I also kind of want low upvoted posts to be occasionally thrown up into the mix of highly upvoted posts so people see them and get a chance to vote them up too. I know this maybe isn't the same point that you're making.

[–]uwubunny[S] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

We can do that with a HN-type algorithm that weights new posts up to determine their value ("multi armed bandit").

But I also want to point out that I don't want to just show people posts that they like and agree with. It seems to me that leads to an unhealthy political climate. It's about what we think the function of a forum ought to be. We ought to be exposed to opposing views. That's why the image board structure can be more democratic and reflects public opinion better. Public opinion does have racism, extreme nationalism, hatred, and lots of other things we find unpleasant in it. That's life.