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Comment by DylanDmitri | Hacker News Reader

1) Add "calls to account creation" to un-logged in view. Annoying but fine. 2) Use an algorithmic feed and not a chronological one. Bad. 3) Clear up internal replies structure. Good. 4) Show you content from people you aren't following. Bad. 5) Rework push notifications. Depends on execution. 6) Reduce crashes. Good.

I'm on tumblr mostly to keep in touch with a circle of friends from 10 years ago. I don't want to "grow my blog" and I don't want content from people I don't follow.

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> Show you content from people you aren't following

If it's clearly delineated, like "You may also be interested in...", it may be fine and actually helpful. If it's mixed into your regular feed, much less so.

I can get behind this.

Having dropped a 10+ year Reddit account for Lemmy, I'm still very much in the phase of finding new content sources, so I spend much more time in firehose modes than "stuff I've explicitly selected to follow", but the button makes it explicit.

They already have an algorithmic feed, it’s the “For You” tag. As long as they don’t remove the non-algorithmic “Following” tab, I don’t care how they modify the “For You” tab.

Unfortunately, they probably don't want you either. They want the person who is looking to grow their blog and expand their followers. Not surprising that their product principles would reflect that.

That's the problem. Every single large enough commercial social media service devolves into this kind of thing. So where are people who don't want to grow their following or see content from people they don't know supposed to go?

The fediverse would be my answer but I'm curious what others think.

Go private with something like Haven[1], or stay public but on a platform that explicitly avoids "viral loops" like Micro.blog[2]

[1]: https://havenweb.org

[2]: https://micro.blog

Outside?

Sorry, couldn't resist!

    $ sudo touch grass

$ sudo make love

I disagree. They are focusing on empowering creators but are also pointing out their weaknesses with the non-creator experience. Non-creators are arguably more important to the success of a social media brand. I think of Mixr as a great sample of that. They signed the 2 biggest streamers (creators) and it still failed because the viewers (non-creators) didn’t follow.

It's the same pressure though. They want creators to push out more content to wider audiences, and they want non-creators to consume more content. As a random non-creator, you either fall into their trap, or they'll try to push you in through all kinds of psychological trickery, both subtle and blunt - and if that fails, the hope is you'll select yourself out of the user pool. If you can't be milked for profit, you can at least not waste their server resources.

This is the unfortunate consequence of an advertising-based business model. It offers you a shortcut to growth - a panel with a buttons labeled "More". More ads. More obnoxious ads. More sneaky ads. More manipulative ads. More people exposed, and exposed more often. There are many ways to grow that involve actually improving the product and user experience. But pressing one of the "More" buttons on the ad-panel is always easier, and gives you more money faster.

I've been liking the recommendations. They should, of course, be configurable.

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