It would be awesome if we could collectively get to the point where growth didn't have to trump everything else, so exploiting people's attention didn't have to dominate everything else, so more interesting and long-term satisfying things could flourish. It's unfortunately not clear what the path from here to there might look like.
I think about this a lot because Hacker News, for all its problems and fractiousness, is in sort of a blessed position where we're not subject to those same pressures and can optimize for other things. But it's also two orders of magnitude smaller than Reddit, which means we're not facing the same problems at all. If I think about facing those problems at that scale, the phrases 'sheer terror' and 'passing out' come to mind.
The irony here is that while Hacker News is not growth-driven and that's surely part of what makes it great, the bills are paid by a firm that couldn't be more focused on growth.
Here's a thought, which is probably far too political for its own good but oh well. The characteristics of the software industry (both the ones we love and hate) boil in great part down to IP and business law... why not get behind legal reforms that would mitigate the growth at all cost environment. For instance if America had a better antitrust framework then some of the more predatory business plans out there might never have been written. And Stallman, the FSF etc. have been out there for many years pushing us to think about IP in a way that has had enormous societal benefits.
It's worse in every way. Significantly slower, less information, more ads, more distractions, dark patterns everywhere and it just looks bad.
When you see the behavior of the leadership of the company it's no surprise they manage this level of incompetence.
The manipulation by power mods, advertising agencies and political shills is unparalleled.
- I have a multireddit with select magic the gathering subs
- I have a multireddit with select tech subs
- I have a multireddit with general high quality subs
- My “all” feed has HUNDREDS of subs filtered off. This is a life long excersice. Whenever I see a meme on “all”, i filter that sub away.
I have customized FB as well, removing every CS element on the site except the shortcuts list for groups on the left, where I can acess a few important groups.
My main problem is Twitter now. Why the fuck is every american news in the form of a tweet? The site is awful to use, and I really don’t want anothet SoMe account.
It doesn't really help, every time something happens in America theres a new word you have to mute, also Twitter doesn't respect certain hashtags mutes if they have a custom icon and people retweeting things bypasses the mutes sometimes.
Twitter could easily just solve all this by adding a huge "Politics On/Off" switch in their preferences and then people who for mental health reasons or just because they're not there for that (e.g brand customer support workers) but they'd never do that because I suspect they ideologically think its more important to control the flow of political information that is broadcast to their users even if its at a great detriment to their users mental health.
I don't want to be on Twitter, I was forced on Twitter because RSS was killed by Google Reader and all the journos/bloggers said "Just use Twitter, whats the big deal" now the only way to get the information I used to get before is with an unwanted side order of politics.
EDIT: here are ways to automate https://github.com/zedeus/nitter/wiki/Extensions
They are drowned in the noise, but on Reddit it is very easy to read past the noise.
Here the noise is usually someone trying to sell you something while pretending to be innocent or defending his employer while pretending to be innocent.
Much harder to read past that, also since the moderation claims it never happens.