>>12587985No.
The only measure of consensus on 4chan is the sum of the individual opinions of the users. There is nothing else, no systematic measure. Therefore that consensus can only emerge by being the true viewpoint of the userbase. That doesn't mean the consensus is truth, only that consensus is what they truly believe.
Reddit's karma system is vulnerable to groupthink, echo-chambering, and over-socialization. Conformity is rewarded. The algorithm that decides what order to show things introduces bias through the design of that algorithm and how it weighs popularity and age.
One might argue that pol is just as much of an echo-chamber. There's conformity, outliers get chased away, and there's an algorithm to decide when's on top (as simple as that algorithm may be, i.e. "latest"). But it's not the same. Opinion doesn't feed back into the system directly the way it does on Reddit. The only systematic bias you can point to is the "Latest post" decision, which introduces bias towards activity. Which really is a bias towards controversy. Anything uninteresting or uncontroversial doesn't provoke an active response, and therefore is buried quickly, no matter how "popular" it may be.
The best argument against 4chan is
>the tolerance of assholes scares away non-assholes>so you end up with a community of only assholesBut that assumes that the presence of assholes is a detriment. But a platform of only assholes is more capable of grappling with truth than a platform with none. Assholes are unafraid to rock the boat. Non-assholes will censor themselves, or participate in the censorship of others, based on etiquette, feelings, consensus, and fear, even when those things have no bearing on the truth of a matter.
A system that allows empathy to take priority over truth will not seek truth.
If you prefer empathy and civility to truth, so be it, but you can't pretend that makes it's a better debate environment.
