Hacker News Reader

I think it can be argued that, because human interests are so different and fractal, there's only so much damage that can be done with non-personalized algorithm. Ads for a certain demographic will just alienate the other demographic. But with personalized algorithm, the poison can be customized for each person and be more fatal.

View on HN

We can imagine 100 different websites each with different non-personalized algorithms - another algorithm decides which one is best for you and directs you to that site. That's effectively a personalized algorithm with extra steps.

That's where we are. HN is one of those sites.

Yeah but then each of those websites would only have 1 audience, which would be economically ruinous. Even HN has >1M daily view which is quite a lot of eyes to cater.

I guess there can be a sweet spot in a certain amount of MAU. And this is why I prefer medium-sized subreddit.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com