How would you feel if Warpcast replaced likes (the heart icon) with reddit / HN style upvote and added a downvote on every cast?

1 - strongly against this, would stop using the app
10 - hell yes, would greatly improve the experience

Working on Farcaster and Warpcast. Longer thoughts at https://dwr.email

8 for me, but I imagine that some people would probably take downvoting very personally and post less

Design and software at Apple. Also into AI, philosophy of mind, ethics.

Can you point out a specific case or scenario where downvotes contributed productively to a discussion?

I think that’s kind of a strong evidentiary standard, as I don’t have access to data. Seems to work ok on HN and Reddit.

The underlying question is this: does it do more for you, or for the conversation / community?

Even better: what possible value could a generic, faceless negative reaction have?

How is it different from yelling "boo"?

I agree with you in principle

The problem for me is that "should"

Unspoken community rules aren't perfect nor enforceable; there may also be value in engaging with some of those bad faith commenters (even just to expose them)

This, to me, falls is in the same category as banning books that had references to racism

If the community understands the standard for using the downvote—which should be about discouraging glib remarks, bad faith, and personal attacks, not disagreement—then in theory it should increase the quality of discourse and maybe serve as a useful signal for algos.

But as I think about it, the quality of discourse right now is pretty good so maybe the measure isn’t necessary at this point.