The Lemon Fool

Came across this elsewhere on t’internet

“My gas utility wanted me to fill out an online survey.

Q What do we do well as a company that keeps you a customer?

Be a monopoly.

Q What could we do to better serve you?

Be acquired by a public entity (municipality, etc.) via eminent domain to be operated solely in the public interest by publicly-accountable individuals.”

stevensfo wrote:PS How did I do? Please rate my post.

There's no thumbs-down option here!




Fortunately, since the question clearly wasn't in earnest, your post doesn't demand one.

UncleEbenezer wrote:

stevensfo wrote:PS How did I do? Please rate my post.

There's no thumbs-down option here!

O/T, I suppose, but it happens that this weekend's Financial Times ran an opinion piece entitled "The case for the dislike button", in which the author talked about how social media sites with only a facility for positive feedback (eg, with no "hate button") could distort the shape of an online argument and lead to false assessments. And worse, about how the lack of negative votes could be bending the social media bubble toward extremism.

Equally to the point, how its omission could give anyone who supported the notion (such as PR people or advertisers ) an over-optimistic view of a proposer's argument, precisely because the lack of a downvote button effectively filtered out dissent. (At least, from the numerical tally of things like recs, which are often the first thing a reader looks at.) Naturally, it wouldn't stop people making negative verbal comments, but that's not the point that's being made.

It's at https://www.ft.com/content/ff262755-011 ... 10874727b4, and it might be available to non-subscribers. Or try the author's name, Elizaveta Konovalova, and an extract such as "social media doesn't have to be so polarising but the options to dissent are limited".

Warning: She's an academic, and an associate professor of behavioural science at Warwick University, so expect a certain amount of liberal flim-flam. But an interesting point of view, nonetheless. All the more valuable now that Daniel Kahneman's dead.

BJ