Why You Need a Community: Opportunity Exposure and the Internet Echo Chamber | Hacker News Reader

Why You Need a Community: Opportunity Exposure and the Internet Echo Chamber

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74 pointswporr39 comments

The only online communities I've found valuable are the ones that mirror my real-world network. People I have met in person, former coworkers, friends of friends, or at least people in the same tight-knit industry or hobby niche.

The problem with the public communities is that it doesn't take long before they're dominated by those who have the most free time on their hands. Free time to post, free time to respond, free time to upvote/downvote and direct the discussion. Generally speaking, the people who have the most free time to be online all day, every day are not the same people who are out there getting things done, doing interesting work, and otherwise having a good time in the real world. That's fine if you're looking to waste time clicking around on Reddit or Twitter, but it's not often conducive to forming real friendships, relationships, or communities. Obviously there are exceptions, but the more public and noisy the community, the more time you have to invest to filter through to the weak signal in all of that noise.

I've found a combination of transparency and a liberal ban policy to be helpful.

This exactly, and I'd add another thing - online only communities can become dominated by the folks with the absolute strongest feelings / opinions. Most offensive or most offended, most absolute in their thinking. It tends to drive the folks I'm interested in hearing from out. In a social group they'd quickly just not be invited to stuff, or might value other aspects of a relationship and so dial back a bit. Online - not so much.

There's also very little consequence for blowing things up into bigger / click-bait style headlining.

If community is bouncing ideas around, thoughts, etc, then that is much harder online.

I've found getting off social media helps HUGELY in naturally helping get other communities going.

I agree. Sometimes the more reasonable people lose control to the more acerbic folks because the latter are a bit better at dealing with moderation issues (or are willing to take it on) However the bad side is by their nature these people can exercise strong opinions and dismiss other people’s input and they end up shaping the community into their image rather than the of the group. To add to that they’ll violate the principles they set up and use to moderate often without consequence.

The extremists types need to be controlled both online and in real world: the same way as you kick out THAT guy from a party who is trying to convince everybody for the 25th time that the earth is flat, the online platform would have to do the same. I had a few warnings on HN for the way some of my post were written and while initially not quite satisfied about it, I did reflect on it and it made me realise that these rules do make HN better.

This is so extremely true, it’s insane. I’m particularly thinking about these “polymath” guys on Twitter that have a following for reading the Stoics, into Keto, and following Naval and Tim Ferris. They sell their courses and continue to espouse their strong takes on everything.

At a real life event they would quickly be seen as a know it all and too domineering, and taken down a few notches. But online they grow a “community”. It’s not all bad, and they share some good thoughts, but it is very different, for better or for worse.

I'm glad I'm not the only one who finds the preaching on Twitter a bit weird.

> The problem with the public communities is that it doesn't take long before they're dominated by those who have the most free time on their hands.

In both online and offline communities you can partially mitigate this issue by employing people to be full-time caretakers of the community.

I think he means dominated in terms of posting as much as dominated in terms of moderation.

Yeah, but you can actively discourage this through moderation (and/or curate content such that these posts get less attention).

I think that more niche communities tend to be more valuable, but they still run the issue of intellectual isolation

Another issue I've found with online communities is that they generally focus on a single thing.

It's great when you just want to talk about that one thing, but I don't think it's a great way to make friends.

Twitter is interesting to me because it's a network rather than a community, but there often seems to be a weird power dynamic between people which would also stifle friendships.

Perhaps we need a newsfeed that promotes people who post rarely, and demotes people who post often.

Just create multiple accounts. Hooray!

Any system can be gamed by the determined. Luckily, most people are not that determined.

But we're talking about designing new systems to reduce the influence of people who are ridiculously active. These people aren't quite determined by definition, but they're the best candidates for "that determined".

That arrow doesn't go both ways.

Even if the most determined to cheat people are highly active, I don't think most of the highly active posters are determined to cheat. I think cheaters are a tiny proportion of users.

If people keep creating new accounts, they can't gain any reputation or other social linkages. No karma, no name recognition, nobody knows it's the same person. No continuity, not even a conversation.

Even if new accounts are easy to make, I think that would be unattractive to most people, who are simply participating and happen to post more than others, not being malicious or trying to cheat in any way.

For the few trolls, and advertisers trying to subvert the feed, a different mechanism is needed to keep those down to a manageable level, as has always been the case.

To me the most important part of that blog post is the bit about serendipity. Serendipity or spontaneous interaction is one of the biggest factors that determines relationships. I'm not sure if there's an official name for this theory, but I remember studying it in grad school. The gist of the study was that increased frequency in unplanned/spontaneous interactions was correlated with increased likelihood of a relationship (or maybe the correlation was with a stronger relationship).

Your friends from school are your friends because you had the opportunity to see and interact with each other every day, and get to know each other.

Same thing with romantic relationships. If you keep running into that cute girl or guy you kinda know, you'll have more chances to talk and to get to know them well enough to ask them out.

I think this is partly why dating apps have been such a crapshoot for so many people, they don't get the chance to interact past the initial swipe or chat. This is also partly why it's difficult to make friends as adults. You simply don't have as many opportunities to meet new people. And you don't have as many opportunities to turn those new people into familiar people and eventually friends.

Spontaneous encounters can only occur if you put yourself in a place for that serendipity to occur. So if you join a community like the blog post encourages, then you set yourself up to have more of those spontaneous interacts with the same people.

I agree that this is the most important part of the post, and it should probably be emphasized even more. I'm probably going to write a post about this in itself.

Curious about the studies you mention. Have any names or links?

Pretty sure it was one of the required readings for a course taught by one of these professors.

Erin Krupka https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=Z1eLCr4AAAAJ

Yan Chen https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=He8AKt4AAAAJ&hl=en

I don't think it was either of their own publications, but these links might be helpful anyway.

This is very helpful, thanks!

Do you have a link to the course reading list by any chance?

Sorry couldn't find anything, I must not have saved as much as I thought

In times of Covid, I've found that serendipity can be found in online parties - I'm specifically referring to https://spatial.chat (no affiliation). This is able to mimic in-person social interactions in a way that it's not 10 people speaking one at a time.

Instead, you can organically form smaller groups according to their camera/avatar X,Y position (volume is inverse to distance).

In these "parties" I can meet friends of friends, who I wouldn't normally meet by myself or online. There's enough social pressure to actually listen to someone I don't know that might end up being very interesting.

I didnt have time to talk about it, but I think that the COVID crisis could be helpful for maturing this part of the internet. Its not that I dont think its possible for serendipity to be found online, but that we still need to develop a framework that is able to mimic it well

>I'm specifically referring to https://spatial.chat

I am curious to know more about this for personal and professional reasons but am unwilling to give my email just to find out. Do they have an about page hidden somewhere? Hard to find information on these guys!

Not sure. They only require the host to sign up - guests may join anonymously with the link.

> "but am unwilling to give my email"

Curious--you have only one email? I've been keeping a junk email for the occasion when I want to look at something without divulging PII.

I thought this was the _normal_ way to navigate the wild wild www.

>I'm specifically referring to https://spatial.chat

Kinda off topic, but I'm starting to see this kind of website design more frequently these days, just a big "Join" button (or something) without any information whatsoever about what is it I'm joining up for. I hate it and I don't know why anyone thinks it's a good idea.

For whatever it's worth, I haven't gotten any sort of spam or followups from them. Haven't bothered to look for a ToS!

The problem isn't so much signing up, the problem is that from their website, without signing up, I have no idea what their service does and what are it's features.

A small paragraph and maybe a screenshot would do wonders for my willingness to try their service. But I'm basically complaining for the sake of complaining because I dislike this trend.

I had the exact same thought when I saw their website

> The middleground can be thought of as a combination of people, places, and events that provide a way of getting the underground communities to interact with each other. It can be a place where people gather, like a bar or a cafe. Influential people, like investors, are good at bringing different communities together.

For some HN is that middleground, for others it's their higher ground to bolster ones vanity. I do agree that IRL communities are invaluable but these are not easy to find and/or fit into.

I make a deliberate effort to not involve myself in any communities, either online or in person. Social communities from my experience are nothing more than a small group of people, or even a single person using the community for their own ends until, eventually, everything becomes about them.

And sure, it can sometimes be lonely, but I find that honestly preferable than the alternative.

Maybe I have misunderstood your claim here. If you ever change your mind, it would be my honor to get to know you.

Alright, from my own experience, being part of thriving communities composed of people geographically close to oneself seems to be hugely benefitial. What about an online platform that facilitates offline encounters with like-minded people? Perhaps a free, more casual and decentralized version of Meetup?

This could work, but people would need to embrace it for it to work. These things tend to turn into hookup sites or platforms for other unintended interaction.

We need to do away with the downvote button. A simple reporting button for trolling suffices.

Places with just upvotes do just as badly. (Facebook, for instance.)

downvotes are valuable, when you scan HN it becomes easy to see threads where all the negativity turns third of the posts grey so you can skip it depending on your mood.

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