Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by mvdtnz 1100 days ago
The internet I came from (in the days of discussion forums) didn't suffer this problem because there were no internet points attached to posts, and posts were ordered oldest to newest. Incorrect information was called out. On Reddit, the "right kind" of incorrect information is upvoted and boosted to the top, and anyone calling out this misinformation is downvoted.
2 comments

The worst part to me is the binary nature of internet points. Up or down. No difference between something one simply doesn't agree with vs utter and complete bullshit.

On the other hand I am not sure what the old internet forums I loved would look like if you scaled up the users 100X and then linked all these random forums together so one username interacted across message boards. That would have basically been a disaster and internet points would not have been the major problem.

Internet points are fine but the sort by votes order messes up any interesting discussion if people use downvotes as disagree buttons.