My rule for feeds: if it's not reverse chronological, I won't use it.
What’s the front page of HN?
The follow lie, and why it's worse than ever
31–40 of 44 posts
Re: The follow lie, and why it's worse than ever
#32[deleted]
Re: The follow lie, and why it's worse than ever
#33My rule for feeds: if it's not reverse chronological, I won't use it.
What’s the front page of HN?
Re: The follow lie, and why it's worse than ever
#34So... the recommendation system works like it's supposed to? Giving you content you want to see. I'm not sure what the complaint is here, besides that platforms strong arm their creators into creating more engaging content to retain their viewers. Everyone's taste shifts from time to time, so I think it's reasonable to expect platforms to show you what content you're likely in the mood for watching at the moment. It'…
[dead]
Re: The follow lie, and why it's worse than ever
#35Good article, but the 'use newsletters' advice at the end is bunk. Email is mostly dead as a way of reaching people, especially anyone under 30. You might as well collect names and addresses and mail out brochures. Nobody likes promotional emails, so even if they don't go to spam they tend to just pile up unread until someone does a purge and unsubscribes. Once again, spammers and oversharers ruin things for everyone…
Everything is dead until it isn’t anymore.
RSS was dead and yet people are rediscovering it and plenty of people are still using it.
Blogs were dead and yet plenty of people are creating new ones.
Email is dead and yet newsletters are growing in popularity.
Young people simply use whatever is trending at the time they start using the web. Most of them don’t even know that there are alternatives.
I heard from plenty of < 25 years old that didn’t even know RSS existed. Some are baffled at the idea of being able to connect to someone via email rather than a DM.
Re: The follow lie, and why it's worse than ever
#36Fortunately, Substack still offers RSS (/feed).
For other newsletters, I've been a long time user of "Kill the Newsletter!" [0], which "converts" a newsletter email address to an RSS feed in a single click.
Re: The follow lie, and why it's worse than ever
#37My rule for feeds: if it's not reverse chronological, I won't use it.
What’s the front page of HN?
I would probably stop reading HN if https://hckrnews.com/ went away.
Re: The follow lie, and why it's worse than ever
#38Good article, but the 'use newsletters' advice at the end is bunk. Email is mostly dead as a way of reaching people, especially anyone under 30. You might as well collect names and addresses and mail out brochures. Nobody likes promotional emails, so even if they don't go to spam they tend to just pile up unread until someone does a purge and unsubscribes. Once again, spammers and oversharers ruin things for everyone…
Everything is dead until it isn’t anymore. RSS was dead and yet people are rediscovering it and plenty of people are still using it. Blogs were dead and yet plenty of people are creating new ones. Email is dead and yet newsletters are growing in popularity. Young people simply use whatever is trending at the time they start using the web. Most of them don’t even know that there are alternatives. I heard from plenty o…
Any stats to back that up? All of those things feel untrue. If I went out on the street and asked people what RSS is, I suspect it would take me a very long time before I encountered a single person who could answer. Marketing emails are just annoying. Email is where my receipts and bills go. Anything else is spam crowding out the important stuff.
Re: The follow lie, and why it's worse than ever
#39I suspect the follow button exists primarily to train the advertising algorithm -- how much more would you pay to show a political ad to someone who "followed" Nikki Haley or show your Honda Civic aftermarket parts to someone who "follows" Honda vs just a demographic match.
The follow button exists because feeds used to be reverse chronological, and that fosters community.
I suspect the average person just does not carefully curate and prune their follow list. Youtube lets you see stuff only from channels you subscribed to. The content tends to be a lot less interesting than the usual front page.
Re: The follow lie, and why it's worse than ever
#40So... the recommendation system works like it's supposed to? Giving you content you want to see. I'm not sure what the complaint is here, besides that platforms strong arm their creators into creating more engaging content to retain their viewers. Everyone's taste shifts from time to time, so I think it's reasonable to expect platforms to show you what content you're likely in the mood for watching at the moment. It'…
Yes the 100% natural candy they gave you, surreptitiously laced with addictive substances, did what it was supposed to! By the time you are addicted, they don't care that you know. (The line between addiction, and highly reinforced habit, is a continuum. But it is all insidious. Your choice and will was hacked by deception, before you had an informed choice to not even start.)
When I check out YouTube's home page, I usually find recommendations for cool stuff like https://youtu.be/Loq-YHYGZy8, https://youtu.be/xb_g7qNCpuo, or https://youtu.be/8iPoXZuzlUg. This isn't the stereotypical, braindead content everyone complains about. It's actually relevant to what I watch. A lot of these come from smaller creators who post a mix of topics, which means the traditional subscriber model flat out doesn't work. Sometimes they also only post a few videos and then vanish. So when people say the recommendation system is broken, I have to wonder if it's really about not wanting to face the fact that their feed reflects what they watch. If they're getting recommended stuff they don't like, maybe it's because that's what they've been into.