Comment by cortesoft
3 months ago
How do you define a “feed engineered to be addictive”? How do you distinguish between addictive and just good quality?
3 months ago
How do you define a “feed engineered to be addictive”? How do you distinguish between addictive and just good quality?
This isn't from the bill, but this is what I would like to see: Any endless scroll "feed" can only be chronological content only from people/orgs/entities you opt-in to see ("follow", "subscribe", what-have-you).
Will that be bad for "engagement"?
Yes. That's the point.
Why chronological? What is special about that ordering?
You aren’t allowed any kind of filtering, or alternative ordering?
Do you always view the ‘new’ feed on hackernews, or do you prefer looking at the front page? I much prefer the front page, for all sorts of reasons. The new feed has all sorts of spam and garbage posts. Reposts, troll bait, etc. The front page usually has much more interesting posts, and definitely posts that have more interesting comments on them.
I don’t want to get rid of the front page, I like the idea of seeing posts ordered by popularity.
Why should you get to decide I am no longer allowed to sort my own feed by popularity, or however I want? I can’t sort things, just because you think I shouldn’t enjoy my feed too much?
I am not so egotistical as to think I get to decide any of this. Hence, I did not say I "should" get to decide.
I simply said that if I could, that is what I would like to see.
I tried to phrase my comment to convey that I know it is not a popular opinion. I am not surprised that someone would disagree me with, and I am okay with that :)
2 replies →
You could engineer the feed to maximize user satisfaction, rather than maximizing usage.
But what if maximum satisfaction causes maximum usage? If you make the perfect feed that shows someone exactly what they want to see at every moment, people are going to use that all the time.
You're assuming wanting to watch something always leads to being satisfied after seeing it. Which is increasingly not the case. People are doomscrolling for hours, and then regret doomscrolling for hours rather than doing something meaningful instead.
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