That's a good point, and seems like a nice compromise.  Wrt 'opt-out' option, it would be really interesting to see the effects in toggle mode -- e.g., what does the world (I guess, the front page / feed) look like with downzap effects in place, vs without?  You'd get a sense of your local perceptual biases whatever they were.

elvismercury

The echo chamber scenario is definitely a concern. I think its mostly a concern when you have absolute ranking though which is why we don't currently allow downzaps.

Once we have personalized feeds, your downzaps will only affect the pov of people who  have demonstrated they trust you. We could also provide opt-outs of downzap effects.

Either way, it would be interesting to keep track of how changes like this alter interaction patterns on the site, so in two months, or whatever, you'd be able to make data-driven statements about how the nature of SN participation changed with changes to these foundational incentive models

Feature request: Zap to reduce visibility of a post/er

l0k18

The echo chamber scenario is definitely a concern. I think its mostly a concern when you have absolute ranking though which is why we don't currently allow downzaps.

Once we have personalized feeds, your downzaps will only affect the pov of people who  have demonstrated they trust you. We could also provide opt-outs of downzap effects.

> Either way, it would be interesting to keep track of how changes like this alter interaction patterns on the site, so in two months, or whatever, you'd be able to make data-driven statements about how the nature of SN participation changed with changes to these foundational incentive models

For sure. It seems a worthy experiment.