What would the adaptation for Hacker News or Reddit look like? For one thing, probably a controlled release of all new content in batches, so we get trained out of refreshing them all the time. To its credit, HN at least provides noprocrast.
This is exactly what I do.
I wrote a system that reads from multiple RSS feeds and screen scrapes non-rss sources into RSS feeds. Every article goes through some basic tagging before being indexed in a personal Elasticsearch instance and archived on-disk (my "personal Google").
Every morning I get an email with content filtered based on tags, prioritized based on my interests and upvotes (where applicable), and coarsely aggregated by theme (mostly for politics). I limit myself to 30 minutes of reading for each update, forcing myself to conscientiously prioritize. I occasionally click to the HN comments, but avoid Reddit like the plague.
Actionable articles get added to OmniFocus, but only if I will take action. Informative articles get added to Evernote, but only if I will reference them in the future.
It's imperfect, but still scratches that cave-man itch to constantly check the environment for new signals - I trust my software to do so on my behalf. Funneling content into action-items and references keeps me otherwise focused on doing things instead of reading things.
(I also abandoned Facebook/Twitter/etc because their mix of news/entertainment/communication was addictive - all I need is communication)
I've noticed that with hot-topic issues (like the Google memo), there's usually a flurry of divisive, and in my opinion uninformed and low-quality discussion over multiple submission, followed by (somewhat) more informed and reasonable discussion when the initial outrage dies down.
I wouldn't know what the best way to implement this would be, though. A community guideline? A 'too hot, let it cool down' button for users with a certain amount of karma? Active moderation?
My FB stream mostly consists of inane things that other people have clicked "like" on, and if FB thinks those are the things that interest me the most, they are failing big time.
That sounds a little arrogant, but is my general experience. I see this in the submissions and comments where HN demands thought out posts. Jokes or comments that do not contribute are rarely at the top and often removed, while the opposite is true of jokes on Reddit (in general)
The "avoid gratuitous negativity" policy has helped, but we are still very much in a place of "most negative opinion wins" which pushes some discussions way off of reality. And those are just the ones I know about.
Turns out that sounding smart or righteously indignant (or usually, both) doesn't make something correct. Just a weird rabbit hole of darkly gratifying negativity. I guess I'm waking up to the fact that our flavor of "discussing ideas" might not actually be that more high-minded than Reddit or Facebook.
Holy Usenet Batman.
This is exactly what I did when I had to pay per minute of dial up. Still ended up spending hours in front of a computer.
I have found that putting some friction in front of the unconscious "tabbing to timewasting site" habit is really useful while trying to get something done.
I think a lot of people are reluctant to take this line of thinking to its logical conclusion: that we've made a monstrous and unconscionable mistake.
Recognizing that mistake for what it is demands that we own our parts in its genesis and solution. Neither will be terribly profitable.
Still, the grain of truth that consumers themselves could radically change the landscape by changing their habits is not wrong. It's just not realistic either. The entire point of hyper-metrics-driven mobile and web app design is to figure out what makes users do what YOU want, not what they would normally do.
I'd say the "grain" of truth a about consumers being able to change the landscape by changing their habits is exactly right. It might be unrealistic for everyone to do it en masse (though such things have happend in the past and will happen again). But it is entirely realistic for indivduals the landscape around themselves.
For example I don't glue myself to my phone, and am no longer on Facebook so I can't bring myself to care much about the evil things that Facebook is said to be doing on peoples phones.
I'm proud at least that we recognzed and stopped that behavior early on my project. But I didn't question the instructions I was given very directly without help from others, which I'm a bit ashamed of.
I have many tremendously-fun discussions with my friends on Facebook. On current events, philosophy, their most-recent research paper or gadget or patent. A lot of social media hand-wringing involves people (a) treating unfiltered public commentary as person discourse and/or (b) under-filtering their feeds, thereby turning what should be a personal space into one dominated by unfiltered public commentary.
On the other hand, what you see in HN is what everybody else sees, it's not hidden and you can selectively read and comment about what you find interesting.
a) no profile picture albums; no one gets to evaluate you based on what you choose to show off about your lifestyle, friends, the stuff you own, the fun you have, the trips you take, the people you date, whatever; those pictures may be interesting but it really is irrelevant to this network while being primarily attention-seeking, and is also the main source of anxiety and depression (especially for young people) related to using FB today. Obviously pictures of you or others pertinent to a discussion are fine, as is having a profile picture, just no concept of photo albums for the profile or otherwise.
b) there would have to be UI and features for organizing the entire network around discussions, wrt what's on your feed, what posts look like, how you interact with others, how you launch or join discussions, etc.
c) again, it's more than a HN with your real identity, it's still a social network, you still organize events, you still check in about things going on with each other, but "launch discussion" or "join discussion" are the primary features, not a generic "share", "update status", "like", "tag", "browse album" etc. Overall it's oriented around insights and mind more than stuff, lifestyle, and impulse thinking.
Towards a better humanity.
There's something called "Ethical Investing" (aka "Socially responsible investing", "sustainable investing" or "resposible investing").[1]
Its existence is clear proof that at least some investors do care about the social value of the companies and products they invest in.
What about just using client-based PoW to indicate how "loudly" one wishes to speak their post?
Casual posts probably would benefit very little. But at least fake news generators would have to pay some money if they want to get clicks by making your uncle angry.
How can anyone know?
For most people, social media isn't strictly a necessity but it's essential for keeping in touch with friends, long distance family, and to see what's going on with those friends, e.g. events. So stating "deleting social media is the only answer" is counterproductive because it's a non-solution.
As I've gotten older, my tolerance for bullshit diminished. You don't have to be friend with everybody. If people are substantially different than you, chances are high you can't be best friends.
Writing messages through pigeon carriers may be entertaining for few days, but all of my friends are accessible through phone or email.
I was just saying more on how we choose who we give our time to, rather than the medium.
As for Facebook/Gmail etc. They are fine tools for now, as all other software companies, they'll be gone one day.
Facebook probably faster than Google as it will be turning into a graveyard network at some point.
Social media became 'essential' because the barrier to communication dropped drastically, effectively widening your net for useless connections and sucking you into a vortex of crap.
After deleting FB, I could only remember a handful of people that mattered, another few reaching out of their own accord who I'd forgotten about.
Can't for the life of me remember beyond 30~ people from my list out of 900~. I realized I truly did not give a fuck about Kristoffer from Norway that I met zip lining in Mexico in the summer of 08.
You are of course right that that would be absurd. But sometimes it's good to demand what you really want even though it's unreasonable. I think in this case, that we all think this is absurd that they would do such a thing, is a very strong argument against our current society and how it works at a deep level.
> Imagine we replace the Comment button with a Let’s Meet button. When we want to post something controversial, we can have the choice to say, “Hey let’s talk about this” in person, not online.
Why would Facebook, or any "attention seeking" Internet company for that matter, do this? You can even tell the interviewer is skeptical. If he had suggested, say, that we should take our business to consumer companies whose business models don't rely on attention grabbing, that would've at least been a start. Instead he suggests we "become more self-aware" and "transform design." Which consumers should become self-aware? Why would entrenched companies change their design? The idealism is nice and all, but so far I think this has been a wasted opportunity to fix a real problem. The messaging could be far more specific and realistic. But at least we're talking about it.