The upvote dilemma

A couple of weeks ago I quietly removed the upvote count from the discovery feed on Bear. The upvote button is still there on every post, and upvotes still decide what ends up on Trending. You just can’t see the numbers next to each post anymore. I made the change for two reasons. The first is that visible counts make the popular posts more popular. A post with a lot of upvotes looks like it’s worth reading, so it gets read and upvoted more, and the quiet posts with no audience stay quiet. One of the things I love about Bear, and actively curate, is that someone with no audience can still be discovered. Hiding the count means people judge a post by its title and writing, not by how many people liked it first, especially on the Newest page. The second is that upvote numbers don't make people feel good. Someone puts sincere effort into a post, publishes it, and then sees a little “1” next to it, sitting right below someone else’s “214”. Writing shouldn’t feel like a popularity contest,…