Why is the boost button so underused? (kbin.social)

submitted 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) by Hank@kbin.social to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world

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I mean that's a cool feature Reddit didn't have. There are so many tech savvy people here yet I feel the boost button is mostly ignored even though it can be so much more powerful in how it changes the exposure of a link/comment.
If I can't see the actual amount of boosts due to some fuckery with being on kbin instead Lemmy or whatever lmk.

Edit because I immediately got plenty of confused comments. I enter the lemmyverse through kbin and this federation offers to not just upvote but boost a comment as well. For me this means I can give a comment more exposure.
But I'm really not good with computers plz to halp. There's a very good chance that I entirely misunderstood what I'm clicking on all the time.

Edit 2: I just wanted to let everyone know that this post was boosted eight times 48 minutes after posting which is a lot. Kbin represent!

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[-] GeekFTW@kbin.social 70 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Boost, to my understanding, is only a thing on Kbin. Ernest coded Kbin to have better connectivity with Mastodon (Boost was originally our analogue for a retweet) then Lemmy does, and that's one of the options he made (the Microblog section being another. The non-Kbin instances (so all of lemmy, and thus most of the people who can read this thread) just don't have a Boost button.

That being said Boost has changed a bit in terms of how it works since it was created, and it's gonna keep being changed (literally they have said they are working on it lol). For me I basically Boost anything I upvote as a force of habit at this point.

Edit: And to those even from Kbin who don't know since I see some of you in the comments - It's currently like a super upvote. Boost something and it'll make the comment rise higher in the thread, like higher upvoted comments on a reddit thread would go up to the top. (Less if it's changed since the time I learned that from some other fediverse schmuck lmao).

[-] Hank@kbin.social 8 points 2 years ago

Thanks for the insight. So if I boost something it's only relevant for kbin-users? I actually like it a lot. I can upvote something but still make a distinction to what I consider a quality contribution or something that requires more exposure.

[-] sab@kbin.social 8 points 2 years ago

One thing I try to keep in mind when boosting content is that if (hypothetically) someone is following me from a microblogging platform, what they will get from me in their feed is a) my original posts and b) whatever content I boost. So it has the potential of affecting visibility of content beyond the original threads or community it belongs to. This is especially true if you make use of the microblogging function in kbin to interact with the broader Fediverse, in which case people might follow you from there.

In consequence, I try to boost content that I think has a general interest beyond the specific thread it is located in, and that I think calls for extra attention. If I merely agree with something or find it valuable in context I stick to just upvoting.

There is of course no problem with following a different philosophy - there's no real reason to worry about whether your profile lends itself to being followed by Mastodon users. But it's something to be aware of when figuring out how to use the function. :)

[-] Hank@kbin.social 1 points 2 years ago

I'm not a person with a qualified opinion by any means but that sounds like it can be abused to streamline shady stuff like astroturfing or brigading.

[-] sab@kbin.social 3 points 2 years ago

It's rather the opposite, as it is the alternative to an algorithm choosing which content will be visible. Algorithms are easily abused - a curated list of real people you follow and trust to share interesting content less so.

On kbin it's a little different thhough, as content widely boosted across the fediverse is given improved visibility by default. In this system we rely more on servers full of bad actors being defederated.

[-] Hank@kbin.social 0 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Oh I hope it won't cause a ruckus on kbin. But I bet you can easily switch it off it it gets blatantly abused.

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this post was submitted on 06 Aug 2023

44 points (78.9% liked)

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