Comment by mnky9800n | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mnky9800n | Hacker News Reader

I have been working on this idea of a curators only social media. where instead of algorithms delivering you content, you follow people whose taste you appreciate. The original idea came from having your own "tv station". If you think about what cable tv is, it's basically a 24 hour block that the station manager could decide what to put on. Station managers with good taste (and perhaps deep pockets) could put on consistently great content. Like, it was actually nice to watch Comedy Central or Cartoon Network at some point. So I had this idea to build a website where you get a timeline where you can add youtube videos that you think are important and they will play during the day when you set them up to play. So a person could watch your channel and watch whatever you wanted to be on at that time. Everything would be curated instead of algorithmically delivered. I guess it's not a novel idea, but I haven't put it all together yet, i have been just working on this repo: https://github.com/mnky9800n/timeline-tv-studio

To be honest, I’d treat your service like I treat IPTV. I would use your service for exposure to things I might enjoy and for curated lists and then go watch those things somewhere more convenient. Or I’d leave it on for my dogs.

TV schedules, the things shows had to do for those schedules, and advertisements feel like something I escaped from and I don’t see the appeal of going back at all. The only two benefits to me are: Knowing someone else is also watching the same thing (which could be done for streaming with a simple “viewers” count; and limited selection “forcing” me to watch something I wouldn’t otherwise watch. But that doesn’t really exist in this world anymore.

Yeah that's all true and I agree with you. I just thought it would be fun to be able to create a television station. I always liked the weird al movie UHF as a kid, and I thought maybe it would be fun to have some kind of tv station manager simulator.

Crazy that you bring up UHF, because it is tradition for us to watch it on the 4th of July.

The idea definitely appeals to me, I just know I wouldn't use it properly. On the other hand, it might be fun to run as a personal service for my own stuff. A Plex plugin maybe.

Have you considered making it a game?

Yeah in another comment thread it came to me that this might be more fun ahaha. Like this game developer simulators.

I had similar idea but applied to anything that uses some sort of “recommendation engine” internally.

The things I wanted use it for was for Netflix for TV shows and movies, and Yelp for restaurants.

With the restaurant example, the curation can become as strict as dietary requirements (vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free, kosher, halal, etc) that are in some cases regulated by NGOs or government bodies or as flexible as having the same spice tolerance as a friend.

Wouldn't just sharing bookmarks be more usable / efficient than forcing a time when they are played (and might not match others timezone or schedules - say I want to follow someone at the other side of the planet because I like their tastes)?

Asked differently, what does the TV channel-like model brings to the table?

I always thought it would be fun to have a television station when I was a kid. Now I can build the technology to create a facsimile of that. I guess what might be more fun for people would be a game like those game studio simulator games. Then you could just play it when you feel like it.

but yes, i think you are correct, a curator's list maker would be a better version of this idea.

...i dont think adding 'manage a tv station' to my day to day is going to help me be more social or help anyone i share it with.

you are probably right. i just was building this as like a side project thing. i never thought anyone would use it. But I do think I would be interested in a kind of curator focused social media.

FWIW, a podcaster that I follow believes that the future of social media will be kind of what you are describing. I didn't think much about, but after getting bored of AI vídeos, texts and images, I agree with you. People not only will search for human curated lists, they will pay for it. However, as others have commented, the TV station part is not that appealing.

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