I Don’t Know How to Waste Time on the Internet Anymore

Re:I Don’t Know How to Waste Time on the Internet Anymore by lostctown on Monday May 14, 2018 @11:53PM (#17071530)

The nodes on our existing social graphs are too large. I'll define a node in this case as a user's potential social graph over time. A naive social network that mitigates this is nextdoor. I say naive because the concept of a "neighborhood" on nextdoor results in a lot of bigotry and noisy neighbor effects. Kind of literally in this case.

But the idea of breaking down large nodes in favor of smaller nodes tied to the community in which a user resides is a decent idea. I speculate we'd see greater efficiency in self-regulation, too. It's not a silver bullet, of course. At least globalization tends to decrease cultural ignorance.

I'd wager global social networks are here to stay, but I think a powerful network could arise that focuses on more refined slices of the social graph.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:I Don’t Know How to Waste Time on the Internet Anymore by eksemplar on Tuesday May 15, 2018 @12:59AM (#17071750)

I think size explains some of it, but I think the way we view the internet is the real issue. Upvotes and karma systems have trained us into seeing the internet as a popularity contest even when we’re posting useless nonesense.

Even on small subreddits, you’re still entering a staged debate which gets judged by its audience, and nobody wants to take an unpopular position, and if they do so by mistake they certainly won’t do it twice.

Hacker news is similar. I’m sure there is a lot of people who hold back because they don’t want downvotes or maybe even because they don’t want no votes, and you simply can’t have any meaningful conversation when everyone is self-censoring.

[ Parent | on HN ]