To me, the major advantage of social media is they make it easy to choose whose content to read. A version of LW where only my 25 favorite posters were visible would be exciting where the current version is boring. (I don’t think that’s a feasible change, but maybe it’s another data point that helps people understand the problem.)
You can already do this. If you click on a user’s profile, there will be a little box in the top right corner. Click on the button that says “add to friends” there. When you “friend” someone on LessWrong, it just means you follow them. If you go to www.lesswrong.com/r/friends, there’s a feed with submissions from only the other users you’re following.
Ignoring the feasibility question for a minute, I’m confused about whether it would be desirable (if feasible). There are some obvious advantages to making it easy for people to choose what to read. And as a general heuristic, making it easy for people to do things they want to do seems usually good/cooperative. But there are also strong advantages to having common knowledge of particular content/arguments (a cannon; a single thread of assumed “yes that’s okay to assume and build on”); and making user displays individual (as e.g. Facebook does) cuts heavily against that.
(I realize you weren’t talking about what was all-things-considered desirable, only about what feels exciting/boring.)
That seems an important set of concerns, but also I’m not sure how much people are letting lack of canonicity bother them in choosing what to cite and reply to, and popular content will become canon through other mechanisms than the front page, and the more canon there exists, the harder it will be to take it as common knowledge. User-picked content is to some extent also compatible with canon, e.g. through social pressure to read a general “best of” feed. (Just to be clear, though, I don’t think this is probably the way we should go / the best use of resources.)
To me, the major advantage of social media is they make it easy to choose whose content to read. A version of LW where only my 25 favorite posters were visible would be exciting where the current version is boring. (I don’t think that’s a feasible change, but maybe it’s another data point that helps people understand the problem.)
You can already do this. If you click on a user’s profile, there will be a little box in the top right corner. Click on the button that says “add to friends” there. When you “friend” someone on LessWrong, it just means you follow them. If you go to www.lesswrong.com/r/friends, there’s a feed with submissions from only the other users you’re following.
Cool, thanks, but it looks like that’s posts only, not comments.
Ignoring the feasibility question for a minute, I’m confused about whether it would be desirable (if feasible). There are some obvious advantages to making it easy for people to choose what to read. And as a general heuristic, making it easy for people to do things they want to do seems usually good/cooperative. But there are also strong advantages to having common knowledge of particular content/arguments (a cannon; a single thread of assumed “yes that’s okay to assume and build on”); and making user displays individual (as e.g. Facebook does) cuts heavily against that.
(I realize you weren’t talking about what was all-things-considered desirable, only about what feels exciting/boring.)
That seems an important set of concerns, but also I’m not sure how much people are letting lack of canonicity bother them in choosing what to cite and reply to, and popular content will become canon through other mechanisms than the front page, and the more canon there exists, the harder it will be to take it as common knowledge. User-picked content is to some extent also compatible with canon, e.g. through social pressure to read a general “best of” feed. (Just to be clear, though, I don’t think this is probably the way we should go / the best use of resources.)