Item — HN Reader

> More importantly, I don’t enjoy how people interact on social media anymore

I'm really just not convinced social media is very useful. The main use I can see is very fast dispersal of information, but anything truly important will be distributed by mainstream media, and less important things will travel between small communities at a slower rate. So what are we left with exactly?

I think small communities where people actually have to maintain a reputation are the future, and the past.

7 comments

>I think small communities where people actually have to maintain a reputation are the future, and the past.

I believe early on in the internet, there was more discussion of reputation systems like you see for eBay sellers.

Seems like this area hasn't advanced very much. You've got karma systems like on HN, and follow-count systems like on X or Instagram, but both of those arguably track "usage intensity" x "susceptibility to audience capture" more than "reputation".

Low-hanging fruit would be if X showed you the number of Community Notes a user has received. They aren't even bothering to do that.

Plus, just how exams only test you on how good you are at exams, those systems only show how good you are at getting likes, votes, followers, etc. You can have a billion followers, doesn't mean anything to me other than you're good at getting followers. Which now that I think about it, says enough.

I agree with the reputation part, but the reputation part has been a blocker to using mainstream media for me. I can think of lots of important things MSM misses or won't touch (oh and look who happens to be sponsors of this segment). Plus here we are sharing ideas on social media <3

The problem isn't social media, it's mass social media.

Oldschool forums are "social media". But they were usually much smaller than the current mass social media where an ad buy can get you in front of millions and millions of eyeballs in a hyper-targeted fashion.

I think the small community stuff is useful, even on the scale of HN, which is only small when you think about the regulars posting, which people recognize.

Now that we have functional distributed social networks, I want a system that abolishes power mods. Whatever technical solution gets us there. Give us spam filters, but let people self-organize. I don't give two fucking shits that some Tom, Dick, or Harry doesn't like a Bob if I want to hear what Bob has to say.

What you are highlighting is the thing social media has issues with--trust.

> anything truly important will be distributed by mainstream media

First of all this is just blatantly not true (e.g. MSM ignoring politically inconvenient news). Second of all what is important varies for each person. e.g., local news or news about your specific interests

> I think small communities where people actually have to maintain a reputation are the future, and the past.

This is what social media is (was?)

the problem is obviously, we can sorta filter out the bot spreading, but when people just use the avenue to spam whatever, it's a firehose only good for bullshit.