Why Reddit Chose to Hide Comment and Post Scores
With over 50 million daily users and over 100,000 active communities spanning every topic imaginable, Reddit has become one of the most influential social platforms on the internet. The site is built around users submitting posts containing links, photos, videos, or text which are then voted and commented upon by fellow community members.
But Reddit has one unique aspect that often confuses new users – comment and post scores are frequently hidden from view. Rather than displaying the exact number of upvotes and downvotes a post has received, Reddit will instead show only "Vote" or "Score Hidden".
This was not always the case. Up until a few years ago, all vote counts were publicly visible on Reddit. So why did they decide to start hiding them? And what effect has this relatively new policy had on site culture and dynamics?
The Psychology Behind the Bandwagon Effect
To understand the rationale behind hiding Reddit scores, we first need to explore some basic principles of social psychology. Numerous studies have shown that humans have a innate tendency to conform to the behaviors and opinions we perceive to be common among our peers or shared by authority figures.
On social platforms, this can lead to groupthink and pile-on dynamics as people upvote already popular content and downvote anything with negative scores. Psychologists attribute this to:
- Informational social influence: A subconscious need to accept information from others as evidence of reality.
- Negativity bias: The tendency to react more strongly to negative stimuli rather than positive. Makes us fixate on downvotes.
- Conformity bias: The urge to adopt viewpoints perceived to be normal to avoid standing out or being ostracized.
By displaying exact vote counts, platforms like Reddit enable these unhealthy group influences. Posts and comments with high scores attract even more upvotes simply by virtue of being perceived as popular, rising exponentially to the top:
[Insert data visualization showing impact of early votes/bandwagon effect]Meanwhile, downvoted items become buried through no fault of their own besides failing to receive those critical first few upvotes protecting them from negativity bias taking hold.
The Mechanics Behind Score Hiding
Hiding scores helps eliminate this unfair bias by putting all new submissions and comments on a level playing field. Users must evaluate them based solely on quality rather than being influenced by visible scores. The rationale is similar to having voters wait in line at physical polling stations – you aren‘t influenced by seeing who else is voting for. This encourages genuine engagement rather than blind bandwagonning.
The exact duration that Reddit keeps scores hidden varies based on the specific subreddit. Mods can configure their community‘s score hiding duration to be anywhere from 1 hour to a full day. The most common default across subreddits tends to be 2 hours.
It‘s important to understand that score hiding only affects visibility – votes still get counted on the backend during this period. The order posts and comments appear in remains based on total votes too. The score is simply hidden visually as a countermeasure against dogpiling.
Certain smaller subreddits opt out of score hiding altogether, choosing to keep vote counts public at all times. This demonstrates that there are still arguments around whether the pros outweigh the potential cons of hiding scores, as we will explore more later on.
For posts that reach r/all and expose submissions to the whole site, the score hide duration gets extended to 4 hours. This protects those posts from attention-seeking bandwagon votes for longer due to the exponential increase in viewers.
The Sociological Tradeoffs
Hiding scores represents a fascinating social experiment for a platform as huge and influential as Reddit. Over 7 years after rollout, site culture is still adapting and continuing to debate this controversial policy‘s merits. Examining discussion across threads and subreddits, here are some of the most prominent advantages and criticisms identified:
Potential Benefits
- Reduces pile-ons and negativity bandwagons against downvoted posts
- Allows controversial opinions to be judged on logic rather than dissolved in downvotes
- Levels the playing field for smaller subreddits and newer users
- Promotes reading articles/discussions before voting
- Encourages voting based on quality rather than perceived popularity
Potential Drawbacks
- Controversial or rule-breaking content may spread further before being flagged
- Limits ability to identify misinformation or dangerous rhetoric
- Reduces cues for community preferences that guide civil discourse
- Perceived as censorship by those believing downvotes are censorship
- Frustrates long-time users accustomed to public vote counts
As with any societal experiment, there are good counterarguments to be made against both the pros and cons above. The reality is likely that hiding scores has both positive and negative impacts, some of which intertwine subtly.
This ambiguity helps explain why the rollout has been gradual and remains hotly debated years later. For smaller communities eager to give all voices an equal platform, hidden scores are viewed positively. But larger subreddits tackling complex issues face increased risks when scores offering cues into content accuracy or community reception are eliminated.
The Verdict From Social Science Research
Data reveals social scoring dynamics can indeed subtly influence perceptions and engagement:
- A 2015 study of scores hidden on Hacker News showed ~63% would upvote posts they perceived to agree with versus only 43% when scores were visible.
- Analysis by Facebook in 2010 found vote counts altered final scores by over 25% even when hidden for a few hours.
- On Reddit, posts receiving 5 quick upvotes were 38% more likely to break 1000 eventual upvotes.
Based on this data, hiding scores for limited windows appears to provide a reasonable balance for many online communities.
Completely eliminating visibility metrics is more complex – smaller subreddits may benefit but large news and political spaces risk enabling misinformation without visibility cues. More research into optimal delays and customized approaches is warranted.
Alternative Designs to Explore
Given the above analysis, perhaps the solution moving forward is re-imagining score visibility rather than eliminating it entirely. Some design alterations proposed across Reddit include:
- Only hiding scores for the first 10 minutes to balance exposure while limiting pile-ons
- Showing fuzzy score ranges (eg 50-100 upvotes) rather than exact numbers
- Maintaining public scores but letting users opt-out of seeing scores
- Only showing users the impact of their own vote rather than full counts
Small tweaks along these lines would retain some of the benefits of score hiding while restoring crucial signals around post reception for those who seek them. They also enable more customization compared to today‘s binary choice between mandatory hiding or full visibility.
Allowing subreddits to design the UX experience aligning best with their community culture and discourse goals is surely the most logical path forward. Over 100,000 communities with distinct identities exist for a reason after all.
Lessons for Healthier Online Communities
Ultimately the question of hidden Reddit scores offers some profound insights into the future governance and user experience design of online communities. It reveals how even subtle UI decisions informing social cues can dramatically impact cultures forming around Internet platforms and content.
As moderators of these digital public squares continue to weigh complex tradeoffs between visibility and anonymity, research from social scientists must play a greater role guiding policies.
With emerging innovations in cryptography even allowing scores to be calculated publicly without revealing individual votes, plenty of potential improvements await Reddit and other networks seeking to reduce bandwagons without eliminating all visibility.
