Comment by chomp | Hacker News Reader

Comment by chomp | Hacker News Reader

>The bill would eliminate minors’ access to any algorithmically generated navigation aids, such as “top content” and “hot items” lists. It would also eliminate home pages that are algorithmically organized, whether personalized to individual users or not, which would be replaced by a list of items presented chronologically (presumably in reverse chronological order if allowed because chronological order prioritizes the oldest content, which is rarely what users want). Assuming minors can subscribe to other users’ content, they will have to subscribe sparingly to avoid being overwhelmed by an incoming flow of content unhelpfully organized solely by date. The minors would also have to constantly review the content to avoid missing something important (remember, popular or important content wouldn’t be highlighted, so it could be easily missed).

Sorry for the snark, but could I change my age to 17 to get access to this? Sounds like a dream feature.

Purely chronological feed? No "suggested" content? Sign me up! Can we mandate this for all ages?

Why would you want this exactly? Fixing the problems with social media so it becomes more appealing to use… so that you end up using it more?

Why not just go outside?

Fixing the problem would just be removing the RT / Share button. That’s it. Then we would all use it less because it wouldn’t be that interesting at all.

That may help, but I suspect it will not be enough. Perhaps limiting people to mutual relationships (can’t follow without a follow back) and a maximum following/followers count of 256 to avoid parasocial relationships? (Only semi joking)

Quite the opposite actually -- the goal is to make it less appealing. Social media is designed to be addictive and prey on base psychological impulses.

So people find non-chronological feeds and suggested content appealing?

I thought people were always saying they hated these features.

The tiny fraction of people who comment on HN say that. It is folly to believe this place represents public opinion.

Compelling != appealing.

I can’t risk going near “idle” genre games, because even the ones I hate I find incredibly compelling.

If this was better, it would exist.

if it made them money, it would exist. If it reduces engagement, it doesn't.

Yes. The description sounds heavily biased. I know lots of people want to see Facebook content chronologically ordered.

People also want this so others can see their posts, not just posts from popular posters.

Facebook seems to have this option, but I can’t get it to work. So I uninstalled it again.

Having this as an option might be nice, though it's more likely to be useless at scale. Having it as the only option sounds like a nightmare: Blink and you'll miss the content you're interested in, with no easy way to get back to it. To actually stay connected and up-to-date you'd have to monitor your feed 24/7, manually filtering through piles of data you don't care about to find the rare gems. And what these busybodies in Minnesota are trying to mandate is not mere availability of a chronological feed, but exclusivity.

This sounds like you are following way too many sources.

You can certainly cut down on the number of items to scan through by simply cutting off most of it, but then you'll miss some things you would have been interested in. Even worse, making it difficult to follow a wide variety of sources can only make the filter-bubble effect more pronounced—e.g., those so inclined will still follow Fox News but will be much less likely to see anything from alternative news sources since they would need to opt in to seeing everything those sources post.

The problem is not that the feed is algorithmically filtered. We should use algorithms to automatically gather useful information from a wide variety of sources. The problem is who controls the filters, and whose interests the default algorithms serve.

Does this include Spotify playlists?

YouTube entirely organized chronologically seems like a nightmare too. What about sites that offer study aids?

I guess it means all of Reddit would be organized by ‘new’? Hacker news too

Edit: Etsy and even you could argue Amazon have UGC as well.

Before they lock in the language, could we talk them into mandating static HTML... pretty please? :-)

I... would be OK with just plain text.

Best I can do is a weekly email digest.

If it's legally mandated and services don't pull out of the market - yea usually it benefits us all since we can hop on the train (sometimes requiring a VPN but generally being offered as a feature for sale.

I, too, would love to switch over to such a mode on several social services.

There goes Google's customized search results. Maybe even any results that attempt to "rank" sites.

Hand-curated search like Yahoo in 1993 shall be the future!

Genius! VPNs would get a lot more useful

I teach at a highschool (in Minnesota no less). VPN usage is already endemic.

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