A website to destroy all websites

I have found that HN is, ironically, a horrible place to post experimental work on, with a few exceptions - e.g. things "written in Rust" etc. I think it's because the majority of the commentators here haven't really made anything from scratch.

Damn this was quite annoying

Really enjoyed reading this. Thank you - very inspiring.

Optimistically, I think this is similar to how it's viewed when dating in the US. They want to see how well behaved you are, what your empathy level is with other people, and what you're thinking about day to day.

Not to say I agree with the reasoning, but it comes from a place of fear. The more fear, the more scrutiny. The criteria you need to show is based on what they fear.

Merely having a somewhat populated account on Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn passes the bar of being a "real person." You share a few regular everyday things, you get happy birthday posts, a handful of people usually like your posts, you get a green flag in almost every circumstance.

Not having a social media presence comes with this question that can make it the scary part: Is it because of disinterest, because you're not socially belonging, or because you got ran off the platforms? It's obvious to us that is is disinterest, but they no way of truly knowing. And based on what they fear it can scare them, that unknowing.

If you can convince the other person it truly it is simple disinterest, there is no problem. Unless they're really bent on seeing your everyday thoughts...

If you don't "integrate well," it scares some people. You're too different and they fear becoming the outcasted outgroup with your inclusion.

If you're banned, that's... not good :) Which is a terrible place to be for people who were unrightfully banned.

What they're really hoping to catch is the blatantly obvious people that are openly delusional or violent on social media. There is a non-trivial amount of people who do this. If you have a page like this, or worse if you don't disclose it, that is the huge red flag.

This is a social investigation we personally do with others at the inner relationship level, with people who are already in the US. Right or not, it's not surprising to me that this reputational criteria bubbled up to immigration.

The thing that I got stuck on most in 2025 is how often we complain about these centralized behemoths but only rarely distill them to the actual value they provide. Its only if you go through the exercise of understanding why people use them, and what it would take to replicate them, that you can understand what it would actually take to improve them. For example, the fundamental feature of facebook is the network. And layered on, the ability to publish short-stories on the internet and have some control over who gets to read it. The technological part is hard but possible, and the network part well - think about how they did it originally. They physically targeted small social groups and systematically built it over time. It was a big deal when Facebook was open to my university, everyone got on about the same time, and so instantly you were all connecting with each other.

I believe we can build something better. But I'm also now equally convinced that it's possible the next step isn't technological at all, but social. Regulation, breaking up the monopolies, whatever. We treat roads and all manner of other infrastructure as government provided; maybe a social platform is part of it. We always lean these thoughts dystopian, but also which of us technologically inclined readers and creators is spending as much time on policy documents, lobbying, etc, as we are schlepping code around hoping it will be a factor in this process. This is only a half thought but, at least these days I'm thinking more about not only is it time to build, but perhaps its time to be building non-code related things, to achieve what we previously thought were purely technological outcomes.