Live data from Hacker News

My dream of the great unbundling

wired.com

31–33 of 33 posts

Re: My dream of the great unbundling

#31
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those streamers could be paid to talk a bit about the climate while they are playing. Mr Beast and friends planted 22 million trees ( https://teamtrees.org/ ), and I think this did have a lasting effect on pop culture, however small.

That wasn't a decision made by the product manager of an algorithmic feed, though.

The algorithm decides how much views such videos get though. Reward streamers with feed picks and trending spots, and you’ll get more of those.

Re: My dream of the great unbundling

#32
post #28

If I want to dream of anything, I want to dream of an economy which moves from trying to grab eyeballs to focus on screens. I want the harm of social media to be known and for people to take back those billions of hours they waste per year. I've noticed society's in the last 12 years or so has gotten much meaner, much more angry. And for what, most people are actually really nice in the real world. Social media often…

The thing about eyeballs on screens is that there's two types: the commercial kind which we can certainly do with less of and get better at, and secondly it's a basic human desire, to be seen, felt, relevant. The latter will persist in any medium and we should make better incarnations that do this through technology. Online or shared world gaming communities might be one way. Another that should be in accelerated development right now are more ways of sharing experiences. E.g. we don't have physical movie theatres, but there can be something more social than Netflix, etc.

Re: My dream of the great unbundling

#33

> If you’re a product manager working on a feed or search interface inside of a giant tech company, you have access to hundreds of billions of hours of human attention. Could you help your users spend one hour a year learning about what’s coming for the world, climate-wise, with a small dose of civics to go with it? > Because, if you did, that would be 2 or 3 billion hours of shared experience. Two to 3 billion hours…

>Although this power could be used for good, it’s scary to think of what could happen if the “bad guys” develop or control such platforms. It wouldn’t just be a yearly 1 hour knowledge drip, but instead a firehose of propaganda. I have bad news for you.

> but instead a firehose of propaganda.

Perfectly sums up current state of affairs on social and mass media.

Post reply on HN