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0 pointsquotemstr5mo ago0 comments

There are probably people on this thread who were born after algorithmic feeds became ubiquitous and they seem to have turned out fine.

The moral panic over feed ranking models will seem to history as quaint as the moral panic over the telegraph and the train.

If your new technology isn't attracting a swarm of moral gnats buzzing about it corrupting the youth, are you even making something impactful?

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hnuser1234565mo ago

Okay, but that doesn't mean we should throw up our hands and say "guess chronological sorting is too much to ask for." I flip between the homepage of HN, the /newest section, and the /active section, and frequently find interesting content at the top of each that is missing from (or buried in) the other views. Similar with facebook. The default feed to find bigger posts that might be a few days or a week old, and the recent feed for what's happening right now.

How does it hurt you by requiring social media to offer a working chronological sort?

I think even casual users understand the appeal of having both options and wouldn't want to lose it, assuming they discover it.

I agree with the judge. We are not obligated to suffer the degeneracy of the hyper-optimized algorithm with no alternative.

Just because you have never experienced the utility of working chronological sort doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

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