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Comment by rich_sasha | Hacker News Reader

First create a product that deluges you with a crap ton of useless work spam, make it impossible to search or organize information (was it a 1:1 chat? Group chat? Room? Thread?), add tons of useless distractions like emoji reactions, THEN offer an AI to search through it.

Masterpiece

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The emoji reactions limit the noise a lot in practice. Imagine the spam of: yes, this, correct, exactly, no, let's do this, ... which now lives folded into a less-than-one-message space right under the original message. I remember the pre-reaction crap and regardless my view on the emoji itself, it fixed so much in chat communication, I love the idea.

This. I didn’t think I’d like it either, but turns out it’s far easier and cleaner to convey simple thoughts with a tiny picture. Not sure how accessibility tools like screen readers handle those, though.

As a sighted person, I still find it really useful that I can hover over any emoji in slack and get its textual representation, e.g. :thumbsup:. I believe screen readers just process those.

The only gripe I have about this is a super implementation detail (perhaps on our instances only): the “thank you” hands emoji is :pray:. There is also a :thank: that is the same emoji, but it’s weirdly lower res.

Also reduces your cognitive load when you just want to answer as quickly as possible without thinking about e.g. “am I being too rude/dry etc”?

Their search isn't bad imo. I actually use it pretty frequently for things I barely remember, and it's pretty solid.

The search is awful. I search for exact things which I typed yesterday, and it recommends stuff in archived channels from staff that left 5 years ago.

At least I am 99% certain they index only whole words. YYMV

The natural step after enshittification is enAIfication.

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