[intended]

I disagree - reddit has a downvote button and it has zero Impact on the outcome.

This isn’t Facebook making this happen.

This is human beings being human beings in an alien environment exposing the difference between their stated preferences and unstated preferences.

It happened with forums, it likely happened with geocities.

You don’t need a like or dislike button, you just need the internet and text.

Anti Semitic forums were attacking Jewish forums before Facebook even showed up.

Facebook is just absorbing the entire internet in that all the “forums” are now just groups on Facebook. So it owns all the ad revenue everywhere - as long as people stay on Facebook.

But there’s no special incentive for divisiveness - that’s just what happens when people interact in a feature deficient, always on, text first, persistent environment.

[jparse]

Reddit is a different beast. It is confined to a sub-reddit and the people who judge it are the people who are part of that sub-reddit. Mods included.

Also, reddit doesn't spread the content if there is any uptick. It is all pretty confined. Facebook does the exact reverse. It goes out of its way to spread the content that is driving engagement.

[intended]

The thesis holds that a dislike button’s absence emboldens negative behavior.

This is not true, because if so Reddit’s and their subreddits would have a very different history.

And as another user pointed out, the research shows that a dislike button actually creates MORE engagement and content, not less.

My point is that this is the human mind on the internet; most human beings have no clue about how they work, what their hidden biases are, and what assumptions and fantasies they carry to deal with the world.

When those heuristics are treated to a system that assumes their best behavior, it will fail to our more regular, normal behavior.

[jparse]

Referencing one research article isn't proof. There are several others that argue otherwise.[1] On Reddit, a dislike button isn't meaningless. If your post and comment karma go down endlessly, you start to lose privileges. So it really does encourage behavior that is acceptable in the context of the subreddit. The research paper, for example, talks more about rating scales in context.

As I have mentioned, Facebook's problem is that a) There is endless spread for bad content, like fake news. b) There is no way to have the crowd give definitive negative feedback to the user where not only is a dislike recorded, but the impact of the dislike is weighted based on the standing of the user giving it. c) and even if there was, there is no way to degrade privileges.

[1] http://www.rangevoting.org/sen-recsys2011.pdf