Perspective API – An API that makes it easier to host better conversations

I think this is the answer to a lot of ills today.

Suppressing trolls/stupidity is hard... because naturally and organically, things easy to digest (as trolling text/stupid text usually is) rise to the top because they get more viewership and more upvotes.

I think if we employ NLP tools to distinguish stupid text from informed text (i.e. very simple statements, vs language with constructs that indicate a process of reasoning), and then use this methodology for sorting, we promote an environment of more considered communication.

Because really, a more fundamental problem is discovery of good content for everyone... we here at HN, for the most part, have good heuristics to distinguish superficial/well-substantiated. What about those who don't? Those who are young and never got a chance to discover and learn these abilities on their own?

By using this API to sort non-stupid language to be at the top to expose texts that are well-reasoned to more and more people, we have a populace more predisposed to thinking more legibly.

If you have a site that allows comments, consider using this API!

I've just asked a question on what could eliminate harassment, and this could help. If a tool like this monitored Fowler's chat with a manager in the recent case, maybe it could make the fact of toxicity inside the company more evident and helped to collect data on occurances and initiators.