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0 pointsrglullis2y ago0 comments

> if you can imagine a world where it takes users less effort in setting up their twitter account to get the same quality output

What I am failing to understand is idea that "quality output" is a measurable metric in any meaningful way. The dimensionality of this metric would be almost as big as the number of people you have in your network, so in the end you are just trying to solve an infinite customization problem.

> can cause some unnecessary strife and result in the rather silly situation of being in violent agreement.

Or perhaps it is a good way to illustrate that the strife is actually necessary and should be embraced and seen as a natural consequence of any group of people who are trying to make sense of their internal worldview and how it fits with the real world?

There is no place in the real world where people "connect and form bonds" by following a strict protocol and have all their interaction methods designed. Every attempt at crating those end up with a system that feels forced and boring, like speed dating, town hall meetings or those ridiculous college assemblies where they need to have a mediator to constantly remind everyone what they should and should not do.

Conflict and strife is not a problem to be removed away. If you succeed at doing that, you'll end up removing an important part of what makes us human. What we need is to have better mechanisms to deal with conflict and strife, and I really don't believe that the way to go is by throwing tech designs around.

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npunt2y ago

> Or perhaps it is a good way to illustrate that the strife is actually necessary and should be embraced and seen as a natural consequence of any group of people who are trying to make sense of their internal worldview and how it fits with the real world? ... Conflict and strife is not a problem to be removed away.

I specifically said 'unnecessary conflict' to mean the part of conflict that is induced by the limitations of the medium, the topic of this thread. I too believe that some conflict is absolutely necessary and our communication mediums must be able to hold space for that conflict. We agree!

Again, I encourage you to interpret more charitably and to make fewer assumptions. This is the second time you've put words in my mouth and defended a position I'm not attacking and I'm trying to be polite but it's kinda tedious (can you see this?).

The time could have been better spent in exploration; I still don't know if you see any room for improvement anywhere, you don't seem to be engaging on that. A good design discussion doesn't consist of 'no no no'.

rglullisOP2y ago

> 'unnecessary conflict' to mean the part of conflict that is induced by the limitations of the medium.

How would you expect to do this without changing the medium itself?

> I still don't know if you see any room for improvement anywhere

I don't see it, no. At least not by adding "features" or by tweaking on the software implementation of the system.

In regards of "social media", I am more and more convinced that the only winning move is not to play, but unfortunately we will never do it. The only option that I see left is to work on "damage reduction", which is why I've spent so much time, energy and money to see if we can get "corporate-free social media" as a viable alternative for the masses.

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