In this post #1473572 I raised an issue that I find concerning. Why should a stacker spend so many sats to downzap a post?
My post wasn’t specifically about this post #1464032 by @Solomonsatoshi, but about the idea of downzapping a viewpoint that differs from your own. I still don’t understand why a stacker should downzap a post simply because they disagree with the opinions expressed in it. If you disagree, write a counter-comment, publish another post with counterarguments, but let the other person express their opinion freely. The idea of downzapping a post so that it disappears, so others don’t get to read a stacker’s thoughts, strikes me as cowardly, spineless, and lacking in dignity on the part of whoever does it. I’m not talking only about posts related to the war, but about any post here on Stacker News.
In one of the comments, @Scoresby says:
In the case of the post you list above, I think it is entirely personal. @Solomonsatoshi acted like an ass by downzapping everyone on the site who he didnt think was a "real" bitcoiner back in January and February and now others are angry at him. I find it humorous that he's complaining about it. Short memory, I guess.
Yes, that may be true. Some people might have a personal issue with him, but I’m talking about downzapping posts in general, not just one post or only @Solomonsatoshi’s posts. I used that post merely as an example. Here are some posts that have been downzapped, which were not written by @Solomonsatoshi:
#1462060 (2200 sats downzapped)
#1473014 (5000 sats downzapped)
#1473177 (12908 sats downzapped)
#1431829 (127290 sats downzapped)
So, @Scoresby, it’s not just a personal issue with @Solomonsatoshi (though it might be); posts that criticize Israel’s attack on Iran are being downzapped. That means some people don’t want to hear a different opinion about the war. So what do they do? Instead of offering counterarguments, they go and downzap, so the post disappears and doesn’t get visibility. If this isn’t censorship, Mr. @398ja
#1473703 then what is it?
So why are you afraid of opposing views and trying to silence those who think differently from you?
The amount of downzapping continues to surprise me. For years, stackers have talked about encouraging people to zap, otherwise how else will money be the moderator? It turns out that the kind of zapping stackers enjoy is downzapping. Go figure.
It is worth asking why downzapping even exists. I believe the reason is this: when the front page ranking was turned to LIT and money was truly the only means of ranking posts, it was obvious that a weakness was that the system might turn into
rich-rankwhere people who had lots of sats just boosted their own content and dominated the front page.Rather than solely relying on stackers to zap all the other content they enjoy (which has never seemed to be something stackers do with gusto), it seemed like it would be good to give the stackers a tool to counteract one user boosting their own content. This is the role downzapping could play.
(Downzapping existed before this, but it used to be tied to trust, and was honestly much more powerful: if high trust users downzapped a post, no one saw it and there really wasn't a way to reverse that in the trust-regime).
Now, some people may treat downzap like a way of moving posts up and down the rankings. Others may treat downzapping like a way of hiding content they really don't like. I don't know which one is more common.
I think it is clear that downzapping is encouraging more downzapping which is just ugly and nobody likes it.
But I also think that trust-based systems aren't necessarily better. The users who don't get seen in those kinds of systems have no recourse. The reason we are talking about all of this right now is that using money as the moderator allows users who maybe otherwise would have been hidden to bring their posts back into the conversation.
analytics
check the downzaps for each month in the top right graph... or wait, let me type you a table:
So there was one real outlier and that was Feb '26, which was the emoji war. Also note that back then, 1 downsat counted as 3 upsats, so there was in terms of signal almost as much down as upzap. Also notable, March '26 - the aftermath of that war - was the worst month in terms of zaps since Aug '23.
I personally feel that the January stats were reasonable. I also started downzapping more in Jan, but not excessively. Mostly to counter things that were never popping up on the front page but started to get boosted 1-2x the amount of sats such a post would usually see in total, and back then, I didn't want to mute anyone but trolls.
The increase in amount of downsats comes from the novel developed suppression tactic 2 months post release: you just throw sats at whom you hate and then it goes away, for everyone. This is common now, there are multiple stackers doing this.
I suppressed 4 posts myself: the first was a 100k boost in October by what I believed (and still believe) to be a scammer, under the trust and "top boost" model. The 2nd and 3rd were also under that model, they were boosts on ~AI. The fourth was Boog's one day after the new rules and that was accidental and due to a bug.
And then in Feb, "the rich" decided to spend almost a million sats to downzap everyone that didn't have a gun emoji, or hid it, or undermined them despite gun emoji, or just disagreed with them... exactly the outcome you say it was to prevent except the concept was applied in inverse.
But to come back to your first assertion, I don't think stackers like downzapping more than upzapping. Maybe some do. But the majority doesn't.
Thank you for the data check and the nice table.
Why do you think it is, then, that downzaps -- at 1/10th or 1/20th the quantity as zaps -- lead to such turmoil? Clearly, they are not merely downvotes but have a much higher emotional value than zaps.
It does feel like this. But the reverse is also true: throw sats at what you like and everyone else will see it (unless they mute it). The difference is that downzapping is a negative emotion. This seems to cause a lot of strife. Perhaps there should be no downzap at all, and only mute.
I wonder if you could mute a downzapper (so that their downzaps don't affect your rankings), but then this would lead to attaching identity to zaps which is not a good road.
There is something about boosting and its negative twin downzapping that strikes a chord in people. I don't think it is good the way it is playing out now, but it makes me wonder if there isn't someway to channel these energies into a good purpose.
Because:
I think that if you did the work and you were hoping to maybe reach some stackers, and then that gets taken from you with a steep downzap, it'll be emotional.
Yeah I tried that. It's the 4th entry in the OP's list. There was a sympathetic stacker that joined in at scale to upzap a censored post and our joint effort bought @SimpleStacker a territory. It didn't buy justice. It didn't buy victory. It didn't even make the post visible for more than a few minutes all the way until the downsat weight change. And although this was under 3x rule, I'd still lose to a rich stacker with a grudge today at 1x. It is that simple: I don't have the coin to spend.
What I was testing at that time was to see who would join in. Stackers that would say "fuck it, here's a 100k sats to defend freedom of speech against a tyrant millionaire". I know who did that. I also know it was only 1 stacker. The experiment didn't fail on it's own, just the outcome was extremely disappointing. I do know the single stacker I can trust tho, lol.
So no. People won't upzap that much because it's not worth it for them. SN isn't their life, their family. They can leave at any time. And maybe they will. That's my fear.
Ah, sorry, I didn't know you felt that strongly about it. My intention isn't to take advantage of your principled stance, nor to make light of it. I'd be happy to zap you back the amount you spent fighting SS on my joke post, or to send it via lightning.
I appreciate what you're trying to do. I think the main reason I don't join in isn't because I'm trying to save sats, it's because I don't feel like I have the attention bandwidth to really engage or stay on top of this battle. Attention is a scarcer resource than the typical amount of sats we play with on SN, though to be fair some of the zap/downzap battles have been dealing with objectively large sums.
No, no, you're welcome to it. That's not the point. I was simply expecting that for something like your post that I don't expect many people would dislike - it was a good post - that literally got downzapped because you undermined a single person, the reaction to be more principled too. After all, we hear a lot of principled takes here on SN. People with morals that lament the lack of morals in others. So the test was how much of that was true. It's just money after all. Not like we're throwing ourselves in front of a tank.
The test was good, because it also shows that stackers will complain about downzaps before fighting it. And I get it. It's a steep wall. It's not in proportion to what a normal post gets in zaps except those written by stackers most likely to help get higher rewards.
So this is not criticism of you. It's basically of everyone except you.
I keep thinking that some of the issue with this is that we are all trying to make a front page that looks like what we ourselves think it ought to look like...and there's no way to produce such a page.
Some people clearly want to talk about Iran/Israel, other people really don't want to talk about Iran/Israel. The result is zap tug-of-wars.
One might think that territories are a solution to this: just view the territory that matches the subject you are interested in. But because there is a front page, there is something to fight over.
Maybe we should be rid of the front page and default to a specific territory, and if stackers want to have discussions about other topics, they have to switch to viewing the territory suitable for such topics.
Wait didn't you want stackers to say "stop it Scoresby"? Not gonna say it. haha.
I don't think the solution to the frontpage not reflecting what we individually want to see is to kill the front page. There must be a way to dampen the
rich-rank. It'll be hard without a second dimension to sat bean-counting. But... (re-)introduction of a second dimension is likely superior to a kill switch.Markets aren't holy because there is more to life than money. If there weren't then why the heck would people with a lot of it spend it on suppressing speech of others on a platform with 1k MAU? So, the SN content ranking game must be intrinsically wider than exclusively money. The Msat question is: what is it?
Exactly. That’s my point.
I believe the SN will soon head back to something that is closer to how it used to be.
Having often had the experience of being a low-trust or low-karma user of platforms, I worry that such systems achieve less toxicity by effectively banishing troublesome people.
While it may be a good thing, it creates the problem of how to decide who the troublesome people are.
I wonder what SN would be like if there was no such thing as downzaps, but it still used money as the only moderator. Do you think such a system would be less toxic?
I think so. But only if “boost” didn’t exist either. Without downzaps and boosts, no one could manipulate the algorithm or push posts up or down. As a result, a bad post wouldn’t survive in the rankings, because no one would zap it, and the person who posted it wouldn’t be able to boost it to the top.
This would create a balance. I guess.
Ah, but this is the problem: what stops a stacker from self-zapping? If there is no boost, why not just create a second account and zap your own post with it?
How would we make sure that bad posts aren't zapped by their own authors?
This is the main reason there is a sybil fee on SN. So that when such self-zapping happens, it is at least costly to the self-zapper.
Boost being a thing is just SN making that flow more convenient so that it's not only available to power users.
I think also that this is why most social media uses trust tools like karma or merit or they use an algorithm which is basically the platform telling people what they should look at...or they kyc.
Money is a moderator is an experiment in something different, but it certainly hasn't solved the problem. I appreciate your insights and patience.
isn't self zapping more efficient than boost?
self zapping you get 70% of your sats back, relative to boost, if I understand correctly. and 91% back if you're the territory owner
yes, you are correct
Then there is no hope of this system becoming less toxic.
Isn't self-zapping the same as boosting now? I thought that was part of the recent changes...
Im fairly new around here, and dont do much downzapping myself, but I wouldn't assume why someone is downzapping a post. While it could be for the reason described. I feal as though from the downzappers perspective they may just view the post as low quality, lacking in nuance, or just straight up propaganda from one side or the other. While an exaggeration, if someone asserted the earth is a inside out polydodecahedron (wouldnt suprise me in this company :p), my reaction would be to think "this person is too far gone" and to not interact with them. Some people may just use downzapping as a way to commicate that feedback without putting effort into arguing with someone they see as too far gone.
And I dont think this always manifests itself with outlier opinions like @Solomonsatoshi. Here, like any internet forum, I will occasionally scratch my head and wonder how on earth the majority of people dont even slightly understand a specific topic, without realizing that I have spent minimum hundreds of hours studying that specific topic, while they have spent their time studying others. I could easily see someone in that situation think that discussion is futile and just downzapp, and I cant really blame them given humans natural resistance to changing opinions.
With all that said, I can understand how frustrating it is to have someone state they disagree with you, and not elaborate further. Maybe it would be better to not hide heavily downzapped posts/comments, but I personally still like having some kind if indicator telling me a post is unpopular before I spend 5 minutes reading an entire slop post. Sort by controversial was always a fun feature on reddit that sorta fixed this problem, not sure if we have something similar.
The downzapper has concealed their identity and never given any reason for their downzapping.
Agree that a 'most controversial' category could be useful.
I've been here a while and come to both hear different viewpoints and to debate them...to test the validity of my views and beliefs against those of others.
Have spend 40 years keenly studying economics and politics and believe that if someone holds a contrary view then I should be able to contest that viewpoint - thereby testing both my beliefs, and theirs, in an open and transparent way.
Heavily downzapping posts because they voice opinions different to your own and doing so from behind a veil of concealed identity and without explaining why you are downzapping is both cowardice and censorship.
It also casts aspersions on all who share your viewpoint but have openly and in good faith shared their opinions and debated the topic.
Freedom of speech and the contest of ideas is foundational to science, knowledge, capitalism and democracy - someone is trying to undermine its operation here on Stacker news.
I’m not.
I like opposing views.
If they’re well constructed, then I must sharpen my mind to overcome them.
If they’re not well constructed, then they’re like a fly buzzing around my head annoying me.
I would much rather be able to paywall views/opinions that I don’t like so that the pesky flies have to pay me for my attention.
Downzaps come with the cost, but I think the game theory might be a little skewed.
Where do the sats from the Downzaps go?
Downzap sats go 100% to the reward pool.
Did not even have noticed my post has been downzapped. There's probably a good incentive to downzap, are the sats/ccs going 100% to the rewards pool?
I mean, just look at today/now
It become pretty obvious who is downzapping... instead of promoting good content this reward system is becoming a well working
umbrella-handle-as-dildosystemI believe so
You conceal your nym on TOP stats- why?
Are you the downzapper?
'It become pretty obvious who is downzapping'
I do not see it as obvious and that is a big part of the problem.
Whoever is doing the bulk of the downzapping of anti war posts is concealing their identity- therefore everyone who has expressed support for the war comes under suspicion of being the downzapper.
The downzapper is deliberately concealing both their identity and their motives.
This prevents us from having a fair contest of ideas on the topic- it is obstructing freedom of speech and a contest of ideas.
I dunno how much of it is _scared of; more like, don't approve of... wanna fight the good fight online etc:
Someone does not approve of stackers discussing the war?
So they hide their nym and downzap any anti war post into obscurity?
Is it you?
I find that since these changes, SN has become toxic. User against user, witch hunts... Personally I don't want to engage nor up vote, because what's the point of being at war?
The owners are probably collecting more money from the down votes, but I don't think it's healthy in the long term.
This is an important discussion to have, but the downzappers aren't going to add to it. They don't want open discussion and debate. They just want certain viewpoints to disappear.
If you post about the US/Israel war of aggression against Iran, and your post gets any traction, it'll be downzapped enough to completely disappear.
I really think there needs to be a structural fix. Something like - by DEFAULT, downzaps are not included in the ranking, unless you choose to include them.
For now - you should regularly check these links, which show the most downzapped posts. You should know what you're being prevented from seeing.
Daily downzaps: https://stacker.news/top/posts/day?by=downsats
Weekly downzaps: https://stacker.news/top/posts/week?by=downsats
You install an browser extension that makes downzaps more visible: #1473885.
It shows a link, right on the main header bar, with the most downzapped posts. AND it shows the downzapped amount, in red, right next to the post title, like this:
So the "Israeli Soldiers Reportedly Torture Gaza Toddler has been downzapped 8634 sats. And somebody has spent a LOT Of sats boosting it again.
oh no, SS is on to me... HE'S STARTED ACCUSING ME OF DOWNZAPPING!
#1474067
I have also offered you 10,000 sats if you will show that you are not the person downzapping anti war posts while hiding their identity.
All you need do is show your recent SN sats spending graph with your nym visible.
This would verify you are not the clandestine downzapper.