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Ask HN: Software with biggest potential for positive impact in 5 years?

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Re: Ask HN: Software with biggest potential for positive impact in 5 years?

#101

Post by dash2 »

yodsanklai wrote: post #99
loudmax wrote: post #50

So many communication platforms are proprietary walled gardens these days. Facebook, Twitter, Slack, Discord, and so on. Their incentives do not align with what's best for their users, or society in general. We absolutely need open solutions become the standard dominant medium for communicating. If Matrix and Mastodon become as easy to use as their proprietary counterparts, they could undo much of the harm done by ou…

> they could undo much of the harm done by our culturally divisive "social" networks. Or it could be worse. Meta/Twitter spend a lot of resource to moderate content for a reason. I don't see how a decentralised model could solve the problem of content moderation.

How about the Reddit model, where different subreddits and their mods are given a lot of freedom to implement their own rules?

Re: Ask HN: Software with biggest potential for positive impact in 5 years?

#102

Post by xuki »

mrfusion wrote: post #96

I think tutoring software designed on a tictoc like platform. It would hit all your dopamine centers and keep you engaged but actually teaches you a whole field in micro lessons. (Feel free to steal this idea)

You might find this interesting.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musical.ly

> Musical.ly Inc. was founded by long time friends Alex Zhu and Luyu Yang in Shanghai, China.[7][8] Before launching Musical.ly, Zhu and Yang teamed up to build an education social network app, through which users could both teach and learn different subjects through short-form videos (3–5 minutes long).

Re: Ask HN: Software with biggest potential for positive impact in 5 years?

#104

Post by TruthIsHeresy »

dash2 wrote: post #101
yodsanklai wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they could undo much of the harm done by our culturally divisive "social" networks. Or it could be worse. Meta/Twitter spend a lot of resource to moderate content for a reason. I don't see how a decentralised model could solve the problem of content moderation.

How about the Reddit model, where different subreddits and their mods are given a lot of freedom to implement their own rules?

One important aspect of this system needs to be the ability for communities, not other mods or admins, to have the ability to vote to add/remove moderators of their respective communities. Otherwise, power will concentrate amongst the moderators of popular communities which will undoubtedly lead to abuse, as we have seen on Reddit.

Re: Ask HN: Software with biggest potential for positive impact in 5 years?

#105

Post by itake »

dash2 wrote: post #101
yodsanklai wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they could undo much of the harm done by our culturally divisive "social" networks. Or it could be worse. Meta/Twitter spend a lot of resource to moderate content for a reason. I don't see how a decentralised model could solve the problem of content moderation.

How about the Reddit model, where different subreddits and their mods are given a lot of freedom to implement their own rules?

My complaints with reddit model is:

1/ Moderators aren't always aligned with the community (see recent /r/antiwork scandal).

2/ Reddit does not pay moderators for the labor they provide. Moderation is basically a job that takes hours of time and they profit off the backs of that free labor.

Re: Ask HN: Software with biggest potential for positive impact in 5 years?

#106

Post by skummetmaelk »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #46
fsflover wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you hear about Linux?

Or MacOS as an in-between; it has "cloud bullshit" but it doesn't nag your about it as much.

Except if you don't want to sign into icloud.

Re: Ask HN: Software with biggest potential for positive impact in 5 years?

#107

Post by 2OEH8eoCRo0 »

yodsanklai wrote: post #99
loudmax wrote: post #50

So many communication platforms are proprietary walled gardens these days. Facebook, Twitter, Slack, Discord, and so on. Their incentives do not align with what's best for their users, or society in general. We absolutely need open solutions become the standard dominant medium for communicating. If Matrix and Mastodon become as easy to use as their proprietary counterparts, they could undo much of the harm done by ou…

> they could undo much of the harm done by our culturally divisive "social" networks. Or it could be worse. Meta/Twitter spend a lot of resource to moderate content for a reason. I don't see how a decentralised model could solve the problem of content moderation.

They spend a lot moderating because their platforms largely allow anybody to spam/harass anybody else with no barriers. I suspect the lack of compartmentalization like Reddit or Mastodon is because of money. There is greater engagement with fewer barriers but more potential for abuse.

Re: Ask HN: Software with biggest potential for positive impact in 5 years?

#108

Post by mikewarot »

I think that computer security causes a lot of other issues, like the Walled gardens, and the constant thread of cyber-attacks. A solid OS that is microkernel based, and ends up with a track record of stability is one of the most important things we need right now.

With out it, people have to use the walled gardens to stay safe. Software innovation is stifled, and it's always there as an possible trigger for overbearing legislative answers to a technical problem.

Re: Ask HN: Software with biggest potential for positive impact in 5 years?

#109

Post by perlgeek »

One thing we see over and over again leading to social injustice is the externalization of costs.

Examples:

* burning fossil fuels externalizes the cost of dealing with climate change

* during the housing market crash of 2007, lots of risks were ultimately externalized to the state

* plastic waste ending up in the ocean means somebody[tm] externalized the cost of not properly disposing of / recycling their waste

... and so on, once you think in these terms, you find that pattern nearly everywhere.

If we had some kind of software solution to track externalized costs, that would be a huge step towards reducing it.

I know, this is very abstract, and I don't even know what a software solution for that would look like, but if somebody comes up with a really good of tracking that, it could have a huge impact on society in the long run.

Try to think of a society where nobody could quietly externalize a cost, and we had an effective way of tracking who externalizes how much, and go after the big offenders in a very data-driven way. There could even be general laws that make certain externalizations illegal, in a much broader way than current regulations do.

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