Comment by helen___keller
5 years ago
> IMO, there's a multibillion dollar company waiting to be founded to provide authenticity verification services for humans online
On the flip side, successful startups that aren't full social but do require some authenticity verification have already been proven: nextdoor and blind, for example
I think the biggest issue is scaling to a facebook-style, reddit-style, or twitter-style "full-world" social network implies colliding people who have no other relationship or interaction but are linked through a topic or shared interest
And, in my opinion, when you hit a certain level of scale, the verification almost becomes pointless: there's enough loud angry and troll people out there that I dont think it matters if they're verified or not. You can't moderate away toxicity in discussions that include literally a million participants.
I think you need both verification and some way to keep all the users' subnetworks small enough that it isn't toxic or chilling. But then you lose that addictive feed of endless content that links people to reddit or Facebook or Instagram. Tough problem
> You can't moderate away toxicity in discussions that include literally a million participants.
In my opinion HN is the gold-standard of online communities and it's being managed pretty well despite it scaling to what it is right now.
I wonder more leanings from HN (specially on the moderation front) can be applied to newer social platforms.
The moderation here is very good, but I think cultural self-selection is a big factor too. Speaking broadly, it attracts technical, logical people who share values and standards around reasoned debate. I don't see that part scaling to society at large.
Eternal September is a datum that, contrary to initial hopes, that part doesn't scale to society at large. Online has become much more like offline than vice versa.
And even if we aren’t more Vulcan then the norm, we like to think we are :)
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I don't even think toxicity is a problem for users without public persona. Those that are public have to play by the same rules that were already in place for classical PR.
We only got this problem with users trying to do house cleaning. Most communities are completely fine without authentication, so it certainly isn't necessary.
> But then you lose that addictive feed of endless content that links people to reddit or Facebook or Instagram. Tough problem
... Which is a good thing. (for the users, at least)
> do require some authenticity verification have already been proven
can add levels.fyi to that list as they now use actual offer letters to build their data set