I have experienced it myself, and anyone else can theorize all they want, but they can't invalidate my experience.
As an example, I can no longer use YouTube for tutorials, because they have no dislike signal visible to me, and as such, I can't judge whether they are worth watching.
I can not stand Reddit's new UI. But even with the old UI, the massive amount of users attract a lot of heavy-handed moderation, which also turn me off. I use it for "entertainment" and not "research" or "speech".
Even though HN has much fewer users, it is among the few platforms where I can use it for real speech, like deep insight.
Many platforms have such a low signal-to-noise ratio that I am wasting my time on them, and don't find them useful for neither entertainment nor speech. I don't care what Stratechery says I like, when clearly I know myself better.
So true, 100% on the tutorial videos. I found myself watching this super basic tutorial video the other day that had a lot of polish and shine but lacked a huge amount of substance. I wondered how such videos would operate if the downvotes were still visible. Yes downvotes played a strong role in signaling tutorial quality.
I have experienced it myself, and anyone else can theorize all they want, but they can't invalidate my experience.
As an example, I can no longer use YouTube for tutorials, because they have no dislike signal visible to me, and as such, I can't judge whether they are worth watching.
I can not stand Reddit's new UI. But even with the old UI, the massive amount of users attract a lot of heavy-handed moderation, which also turn me off. I use it for "entertainment" and not "research" or "speech".
Even though HN has much fewer users, it is among the few platforms where I can use it for real speech, like deep insight.
Many platforms have such a low signal-to-noise ratio that I am wasting my time on them, and don't find them useful for neither entertainment nor speech. I don't care what Stratechery says I like, when clearly I know myself better.