Maybe you're too young to remember or there's some sarcasm I'm missing, but that's literally how social media sites used to work.

Content discovery was word of mouth or a separate page dedicated to popular stuff.

I am in my 40s, so certainly not too young. Depending on how you define social media, they have had sort order besides 'latest posts first' for about as long as listing sites have existed.

There is no sarcasm; does anyone genuinely only browse sites like hackernews by viewing the 'new' page? That is what the comment is advocating, that the only view should be the new page, with submissions listed by post date only.

If discovery is by a separate page dedicated to popular stuff, how is that any better? Whatever 'algorithm' is used to create that page would have the same problems that people are complaining about; why would putting it on a different page change anything? That is sort of how things are currently; you can view a feed by 'latest first' or by the 'algorithm'. You can choose either one, but most people prefer the algorithm version because it curates.

People WANT curation. You can argue with the particular type of curation, but I think the concept itself is pretty universally desired.

Yea maybe our definitions are just different, because I wouldn't call HN a social media site. It's a content aggregator to me, with some social features, like Reddit or Slashdot.

Look at Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook, I believe there is a desire for a less algorithmic approach on those sites, hence all the uproar about the algorithms and shadow banning. Reverse chronological ordering from people you follow was the standard before, and a feature before revenue mattered as much. You curated your own feed by following people, not by a black box

I think HN fits the standard definition of a social media site:

> Social media are interactive technologies that facilitate the creation, sharing and aggregation of content, ideas, interests, and other forms of expression through virtual communities and networks.

Hacknews is one virtual community. The whole point of visiting the site is to aggregate content and read and make comments about that content.

Reddit and slashdot are also both social media sites.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media

Ranking has been a thing since at least Slashdot. There is simply too much stuff for most people to go back to pure chronological only.

> Maybe you're too young to remember

An ad hominem attack doesn't seem necessary to prove your point (speaking as someone who actually is old enough to remember).

Sorry wasn't meant as an attack, the algorithm based feeds of instagram and twitter are almost a decade old now, and I believe facebooks older.

There are definitely people in the tech field who have only (or mostly) experienced algorithmic based feeds.

This specific thread is about children. Children might also want to drink alcohol but we have laws against that.

If there's a need to provably ensure kids are not being influenced by algorithm, I think my solution works. Making social media less engaging for children is something I'm fine with. Adults can have whatever experience they want.

It seems strange to me to think that the algorithm is the only issue with kids and social media.

I don't, but this is what this topic is about. Open another one and I can share my opinions about that. I don't even think "publishing algorithms" is feasible, so my point is if you want to do this for adults, I disagree, if you want to do it for children, I don't disagree, but would rather just simplify the experience for them because its easier to prove the mechanism.

The front page of a site that’s the same for everyone (more or less) is different from individualized feeds.

> How would new content discovery happen in your proposed world?

Seconding other posts—entirely fine, like it did before that kind of garbage.

Last I checked, HN has published it's algorithm. Probably out of date now I suppose, but it proves the premise. Slashdot also used to.

The comment I replied to said that the only algorithm should be sorted by reverse post date, so it doesn't matter that the algorithm is published or not.

Hacker News doesn't publish anything. It's based on Arc Forum, but YCombinator has made numerous undocumented changes and it may as well be a proprietary fork at this point.

Also a part of HN's "algorithm" is literally the mods manually adjusting things, and you can't publish that.