By having an upvote / downvote system it already has a censoring and ranking system.
If you look at most threads people downvote dissenting opinions regardless of the quality of their arguments, some instances become echo chambers that way.
You can easily control the narrative by upvoting someone that argues against you, most people will see your comment as
1 upvote 1 downvote
And the person arguing with you as
2 upvotes
Therefore they will be biased to downvote you further and upvote the other person as their social calibration defaults to thinking you are in the wrong as someone else said so already, it’s more economical that way as you won’t really have to do that assessment.
It’s a very interesting phenomenon and I’d like to do some formal testing with it across multiple social media with upvote/downvote functions, but I believe it does censor opinions that do not adhere to the usual feelings of the majority.
By having an upvote / downvote system it already has a censoring and ranking system.
If you look at most threads people downvote dissenting opinions regardless of the quality of their arguments, some instances become echo chambers that way.
You can easily control the narrative by upvoting someone that argues against you, most people will see your comment as
1 upvote 1 downvote
And the person arguing with you as
2 upvotes
Therefore they will be biased to downvote you further and upvote the other person as their social calibration defaults to thinking you are in the wrong as someone else said so already, it’s more economical that way as you won’t really have to do that assessment.
It’s a very interesting phenomenon and I’d like to do some formal testing with it across multiple social media with upvote/downvote functions, but I believe it does censor opinions that do not adhere to the usual feelings of the majority.
Just to point out that identities of upvoters / downvoters are visible on the fediverse. Though granted, you could use a proxy account for the voting