Front page is entirely spam = I am not going to use your site
Of course I do? I'm well aware that the spam is obviously a direct result of the lack of any content moderation, in the name of anti-censorship. I can oppose censorship as a general concept while also acknowledging that it's difficult (or maybe impossible) to build publicly accessible Internet communities that are of high quality in their discussion while also being resistant to censorship. Recognizing that doesn't mean I have to stop supporting attempts to make them play nicely.
The ML stuff was just throwing some ideas out there for the future.
Regarding the spam, apologies on that. I posted this before going to sleep, and woke up to see the spam. This is just a side project and I didn't implement any automated spam moderation yet or assign any mods.
I think being able to reward post authors with something of value vs platform specific "coins" is excellent. People should be compensated for their work.
I also think that ML can and will play an important role in intermediating human discussion. From preventing flamewars and personal attacks to detecting logical fallacies.
Reddit isn't good, it is just the one of the best things we have right now in terms of audience and breadth of subject matter. It is basically AOL+Usenet without the advantages of Usenet.
Having posts and tags doesn't make it a Reddit replacement, because a lot of what reddit is about is specific subs about a particular topic. Sure, you can find that hyperplane of folks that like the same tag, etc. But that doesn't seem to work.
Lobsters [1] is also that HN/Reddit alternative and while it has a large subscriber count, it doesn't have the discussion volume.
One of the biggest problems with all of sosh-meeds is that it is designed to a constant stream of ephemeral distractions to engage eyeballs to see ads.
The static viewer, river of artifacts that we drop hot takes on for forum points is what needs to get replaced.
I think you are on to something, but it looks more like a link aggregator with comments than a forum to build discussions around topics.