like or not to like

forking from @jolyon's suggestion on the dislike thead change "like" to "sweet" because that thread was big enough with just discussing negative expressions.

Some history on the like/dig/yup button: originally @paul just chose "dig". It's 60s slang, actually it was pulled from jazz before that I think. Later I made patchbay, and I didn't really like Dig that much, so I made it "Yup". What I liked about Yup is that it literally means "yes", but can be taken as like or approve too. But I feel, often "like" "favorite" buttons are really used as just acknowledgements, it could just be letting them know that you had read that.

We also experimented with selectable "reactions" at some point, but I think paul removed it because it cluttered the interface.

Underneath, it was still a vote message: {type: 'vote', value: 1}. -1 would be a downvote, which is how flag messages worked. Since I changed the button, I also added a expression: 'yup' field, because i figured there should be some record of whether they clicked a different button.

@ev
felt it was confusing to have two different button labels, and made a PR to change it to "dig" in patchbay, which I reluctantly merged. We also changed the expression value.

Anyway, then at patchwork@3, @matt changed it to "like" to be more mainstream compatible. But, he didn't change the expression, so it still looks like "dig" from the database. (we should fix this, but have been too busy, wouldn't be a very hard PR, hint hint nudge nudge)

@juul currently there is no "amplification" effect currently. It's not used to rank or bubble up anywhere. All that happens is some ticks are shown at the top of the message and if you hover over the ticks, who hit dug is shown. Also, the author of the message gets a notification, and even then, "notifications" are not very in your face. In all, it's a pretty subdued system currently. But I think I like that.

@juul I'd click "vibe" though!

Please keep in mind that not everyone is a native English speaker. If I saw a "vibe" button, I'd simply be confused, whereas pretty much everyone with some knowledge of the language knows verbs like "like".

How about free-form reaction tagging, but with a bandwagon collection of existing reactions to jump onto? That way each thread could have it's own unique things going on, or each cluster of people

++ free-form reactions

either as emojis (as we see in Slack, Facebook, GitHub, etc) or text (as in the original Patchwork back in the day). probably emojis, then we'll probably want blob urls as emojis.

also, and this is more for the negative reactions, i wonder if we might want use codes to determine what a given reaction means to the interface, like error codes.

maybe we copy what the brain does and have a memory and emotion?

eg: appreciated with fear

1. what i'm saying
2. what i mean

@dinosaur but if I knew what I meant I would have just said it!

May I propose something unorthodox?

Ditch the "like" button altogether.

I've been thinking about this for years, and I believe it's the right thing to do. I think pre-canned interactions should be reserved for emergency cases, like spam, or to very special ones, like polls.

Downsides of "like" or similar buttons:

• They constrain communication.

• Constrained messages can be easily aggregated (e.g. "like" count). Doing that implicitly attributes more value to the "most popular" posts. (That's good for special purpose platforms, like Stackoverflow where the solution that worked for most people will probably work for you, but not in general).

• Showing the "like" count is bound to create a positive feedback loop.

Upsides of a "like"-free social network:

• People will be more active. The 1% rule is not a law of nature, it's a consequence of how online interaction was designed.

• People will be less likely to develop a "feedback anxiety". They won't post to be "liked", they'll post to give a real contribution, and be replied.

• Different networks (because on SSB there are many social networks, right?) will develop their own social rules, e.g. always reply to "good" posts with an approving message and never to bad ones, or conversely always stigmatize the "bad" ones but never approve the good ones, or just reply when there's something substantial to contribute, etc.. Although I'd surely prefer a kiwi-cultured social network ( %huPiuUK... ) to Facebook, I think culture should emerge from society and not be spoon-fed by the app.

function to view the "most digged" posts in the circle of friends

i experimented with making some UI for this in #patchfoo: %xfm0ViS...

without thinking I liked @keks's post to show agreement because I use the likes as bookmarks too

What about if we treat each post like a lifeform which you can feed so it becomes stronger

@tiago

I think emotional contagion effects should be optional, allowing reactions to public posts to be private.

we could do this! you could encrypt your acknowledgement so only the author of that message knew you felt that.

It's really interesting to see the diversity of opinions on this simple thing, ranging from removing it all together as @Lenny Abramov
and @serapath to using it sincerely, as I feel @Zach! expresses:

I appreciate seeing likes simply because I know that my post was read by other people.

Personally, I'm with Zach here. I often use the button just to let someone know I have read it. It's similar to nodding when someone talks. I also use them in private messages when I don't need to add any more content, but want them to know I did read it. It's funny, because now that pw is my primary means of communication, I feel my self wanting a "nod" button in other places, like twitter DMs or emails.

I can also symphasize with the toxic-like-syndrome. I disabled them on twitter (by switching to tweetdeck, where they can be disabled) but I don't feel this way about patchwork. It would be easy to disable likes, for filter likes so you only see from people you directly follow.

There is obviously a wide range of ways people want to express themselves.
It there a common ground?

You don't have to use the button, but a significant proportion of the total ssb messages created are created with this button. (trying to avoid using the word ;)

i've sometimes thought "ack" could be a good dig/vote expression

Thought Experiment: What if we implemented emoji reactions for the people who wanted one, but everyone else switched it off, so they just got a "reaction counter". What would happen?

@Soggypretzels it's interesting that several people have mentioned amplification or discovery. I feel this may be the root of some of the more toxic feedback in centralized systems, but I think if it edged towards curation - adding useful information, rather than virality - it could be great.

Current uses of the "like" button that could be implemented otherwise

It's clear that the "like" button is being used for several different purposes. I think the current mechanism is not generic enough to fit them all. Below are some humble proposals on how to address some of those needs.

Recommend to others

(This was raised by @Zach!). We can devise a separate mechanism for that. Recommendations should be shown on your profile, not on the post you're recommending: if someone is already seeing the post, what's the point in recommending it? (The advantage of attracting the attention of someone skimming through posts must be weighed against the danger of triggering a positive feedback loop).

Remember, bookmark

As suggested by @grammolan, there's currently no "bookmark" feature. I agree we need one, but it should be a separate mechanism. Bookmarks are for yourself, so they should be private. For instance I may bookmark an offensive post not because I want others to see it but because I want to reply properly another day.

Don't waste screen real-estate

@tiago and others pointed out that a post as short as a single would take up a lot of space for so little information. This could be addressed by a UI that compresses very short messages and stacks them side by side. Also relevant for this issue is @tiago's proposal of

allowing reactions to public posts to be private.

The author of a funny joke would see a grid of laughing emojis and LOLs, while everybody else would just see the joke and the public replies to it.

This could be extended to longer replies. Sometimes I want to give feedback that's relevant for the author, but not so much for other people. Or maybe I just want to make sure I understood the post properly, so that I can give a public reply that makes sense. Of course I can already send private messages, but it would be nicer to keep the context of the discussion.

[BTW, @tiago, thanks for the "partial" reply of yesterday, that's so much better than a "like"! And I think I understood your position.]

Nod, acknoledge, communicate you've read the post

This could be addressed in the same way as the previous point. A grid of "ack", "read", "seen", ... would be quick to scan. In any case, acknoledgements are only relevant for the author, so they should be private.

Proposed features that are too special-purpose

@Vendan:

I've seen the transition of a community from '+1' posts to emoji feedback(github), and it was a very very good thing

I totally agree, but Github is an example of a special-purpose social network: it's for making software, thus often you need to upvote/downvote proposals. However SSB is (primarily) general-purpose. We can't just assume everything can be voted. That might fit with some twisted notion of democracy, but it's hardly justifiable in a rational way.

What's going to happen when you allow to vote, say, a selfie? What used to be a dystopia has unfortunately become a tragic reality. People literally die for this sort of stuff. I know I sound melodramatic, but we should carefully consider these choices, and ask ourselves questions like: Are we willing to trade vulnerable kids' lives for an uncluttered UI?

@tiago:

this dichotomy [click a button vs actually writing something] doesn't feel ideal to me. at least in order to facilitate the kind of discussion/brainstorms this particular community leans to. maybe an annotate inspired feature e.g. https://genius.com/4232847 could turn these ux decisions into more of a gradient.

Annotations are neat, but again, this proposal is admittedly aimed at a special purpose ("the kind of discussion/brainstorms this particular community leans to").

This issue can't be addressed in isolation

I'm really enjoying this discussion, and I think it's very useful and even necessary. I obviously resonate more with some positions than others, but it's so interesting to see all those different opinions and proposals emerge! That said, this feature can't be isolated from all the others. As much as we try to limit the scope of the discussion (this thread originated from a thread on "dislike"), the question whether or how to implement constrained feedback mechanisms depends on the whole design of the UX. I'm now convinced that simply removing the "like" button wouldn't improve things, unless we replace it with a consistent set of features that serve the purposes discussed above, and probably more.

All this means that we can discuss features one at a time, but we can't really decide on them in isolation. In addition to this sort of discussions, I believe we also need to discuss at a higher level, one that integrates the separate evalutions into consistent designs. I'm talking about a consistent project, written by one person, that is founded upon some assumptions about reality, that follows some guiding principles, and defines the UX accordingly. I'm not proposing that SSB be designed this way, only that we invest some time in detailing several such "ideal" social networks. It would be a useful exercise, that would provide a different kind of insights compared to discussions on specific issues.

Since I raised the issue, I promise I'll write down my own ideal social network design (and probably post it on Medium or something like that, where I can edit it). I can't promise it'll be good, but at least it'll be consistent.

I also think it's far more important what the button does than what it says.
For example, on twitter, the "like" button was labled "favorite", which suggests a behaviour akin to a bookmark. But, because the effect was to notify the author of the message it serves as an acknowledgement. And because it also puts your avatar on the message, it serves as an endorsement.

You could remove the name, and just use a meaningless symbol, say, a banana and if it had the intended effect, people would figure that out and use it that way.

So if you wanted a bookmark it should remember that for yourself, but not show an effect on the message, or notify the author.

@robin thanks for the clarification - would you make a proposal for how you think blocking should work? (prehaps in another thread?)

@Vendan @robin we already have arbitration. At least, that is what I've been trying to do, at the cultural level, not at a technical level. I don't really know how to get people to see things from each others perspectives, I mean, you certainly can't make them. I guess they need to agree to arbitration? Should arbitration have a technical manifestitation? what would it look like? But we have private messages with multiple recipients, so if your friends are having a fight, you can say something to them.

But so far, the couple of trolls that have turned up, have generally left on their own, after a bit of, what you might call, friendly arbitration.

@Vendan is right, he's writing his own version of ssb from scratch. If anyone can reinterpret ssb, it's him. There is only fairly low level requirements to the protocol, and a lot of "behaviour" on top of that which can be changed without breaking the network. In bitcoin world they call it a soft-fork.

The respect in which it is not a contest though, is that it's not necessary for any particular interpretation to "win". Already, we have multiple interpretations (via multiple clients) and if this thread shows us anything, it's that there is a need for more interpretations, not less. Because they can't be "right" or "wrong", it's too subjective.

@Vendan

But blocking support for custom/emoti voting does nothing to make this harder. All it means is people post hate messages as replies rather then votes. Trying to technologically censor (and that's what you are doing, essentially) just by making an action slightly harder is pointless.

I'm not technologically censoring, I'm just saying that voting makes sense in specific situations only, so it shouldn't be attached to every post as a standard feature. It's sort of like the "join" button: it makes sense next to an invitation to an event, but not in general. No one would say blocking support for a "join" button in every single post is technological censorship.

If voting is so important it should have it's own feature: polls, i.e. a special type of posts that admit a limited selection of replies.

Few words about voting. Are "reactions" (emojis) a form of voting? I think so. There's voting whenever you group and count replies. Even if the options are all positive, e.g. and , twenty as comments to a perfectly serious profile picture are effectively negative votes. An even when the only option is , three of them feel as ostracism when all your friends get always 50+.

Regarding bullying: I know this won't stop bullying, but it would provide one less chance. Let's just keep this in mind. Let's weigh this extreme negative consequence against the positive effects (if there are any) of enabling voting in every post.

@robin

we're in an age where reality is not fixed. premodernity it was, nature was everything. given the plasticity of culture now, firstly reality is a moving target, secondly it's shaped by the multiply recursive feedback loops between many, many individuals, and thirdly the very act of trying to design ssb or its interface effects the reality we are trying to measure.

These are also assumptions about reality! There's nothing wrong with that. Since we can't get reality in itself, we have to make assumptions. Let's make them explicit - just like you've done - and let's build upon those.

Private reactions and replies

I’ve thought about short replies and “reactions” – where the need for them comes from and how it can be adapted to SBB.

It’s interesting to note that in instant messaging there’s only one type of message, and that’s enough to convey complex thoughts, nods, uh-huhs, emotions, etc. Obviously face-to-face interaction is much richer, but it’s still possible to render many things through text and emojis, and no big dilemma arises. Instant messaging is a simple medium with big limits, but there isn’t much we can do about it.

On the other hand, online public discussion is very different from instant messaging. I wouldn’t compare it to face-to-face interaction among two or few people, but rather to a large gathering where people take turns to express complete thoughts to a quiet audience. In such physical gatherings, one can distinguish several types of interaction:

a. A spoken statement to everybody.

b. Collective feedback: applause, laugh, boo…

c. Direct feedback from listener to speaker, through gaze, nodding, smiling, yawning…

d. One-to-one talk (probably whispered and brief).

e. Direct questions to the public, likely answered by raising hands.

In SBB a clearly corresponds to a public post. “Likes” (and hypothetical closed-choice “reactions”) are perhaps a good translation of b, because they are constrained and contagious. There is no specific feature that matches c, while d is served by private messages, although the context is not automatically tracked. There’s also no specific feature for e.

As far as I understand from several comments in this thread, many of us want something like c. That is, a short feedback for the poster that doesn’t need to be replied, is possibly nuanced, and isn't relevant for the public. That’s completely different from, say, an applause, which is chiefly a collective behavior (how embarrassing to clap your hands alone!). So I think it deserves its own feature.

Private feedbacks that require a reply should also have their specific space, as I argued in a previous post.

So I made this ugly mock-up to show how I would display private reactions and private replies (this is what robin would see):

Reactions are presented as a grid of avatars. By hovering on the avatar the actual message is shown. Reactions are free-form: they can be emojis, a word, a short sentence like “Interesting! Reminds me of Shakespeare”. Just like a speaker scans faces in an audience to gather feedback, this system would allow you to see at a glance who's read your post, to know the reactions of people whose opinion you value most, and to simply disregard the superficial and the trolls. The rationale here is that faces are the first important piece of information, and the actual message is important only when the face is. Contrast this with the usual reaction-counter, where you first see quite meaningless numbers next to standardized messages, and only after hovering can you know who’s behind the numbers.

Private replies are easy. Since they’re private they’re like independent threads, and can be shown in separate tabs. The whole private replies section could be expanded/collapsed.

I’ve argued above that “likes” (and public, constrained “reactions”) have something in common with applauses and collective laughs. That makes sense, but there’s the crucial difference that “likes” get counted, and the count stays there forever. This makes them more akin to votes. Indeed, stripping those collective behaviors of their fleeting quality feels like a complete distortion of their nature. All in all, there seems to be no good translation of collective reactions in the online world.

Polls would be a totally legitimate feature. A post could define its own accepted public “reactions”, which would be counted and publicly displayed.

My issue is that this is still just a technological control to attempt to fix a social ill.

I think you misunderstood my goals. It's probably my fault, because I made that pathetic remark about kids dying because of bullying... but I'm not trying to fix a specific social ill. I'm just aware that UX design affects society, and I try to justify the design choices looking at real-life and digital interactions that I think are healthy and effective. You can call that "technological control" if you like, but there's no way out of it, everybody does it when they design a social network.

simply disregard the superficial and the trolls.

My point is that if you don't see the reactions until you hover on the avatars, it's much easier to disregard the trolls, or just people you don't know / don't care about.

Speeches are just as fleeting as applause

Yes, but if you freeze speeches you don't alter their nature, while if you freeze applause you do. That's my feeling, at least. Not a very solid argument, I admit.

I think attempting to create a direct 1:1 between real life and digital is a bad idea.

That's a good point. But it doesn't erase the need to justify each design decision. Why do we have a like button? Why do we count likes? Why do we show them publicly? Why do we want reactions? Why that set of emojis, and not a different one? That's what I'm trying to do. Not fixing specific social ills.

Also, my description of that real-life situation didn't come out of the blue. I included the nodding, for instance, because Dominic said he uses the like button for that purpose. So I asked myself "When do people nod?" and "Is there a better way to translate nodding into digital interactions?".

Here's my exercise in social network design: Focus, Diversity, Memory. How to Design a Better Social Network. The idea is actually a very old of mine, I've been thinking about it for some years. It's very simple, but the post is already long enough.

I'm also thinking of a more "social" social network, like an extension of the current SBB. I'll write another post about that.

Sorry, this should go in it's own thread.