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hn-ifs commented on Why the open social web matters now   werd.io/why-the-open-soci... · Posted by u/benwerd
Gigachad · 2 months ago
Discovery is probably the main problem social media creates. Almost all of these problems solve themselves when you remove discovery. If someone in your friends group chat is spamming porn you just remove them. There's no need for the platform to intervene here, small groups of people can moderate their own friend groups.

Once you start algorithmically shoving content to people you have to start worrying about spam, trolling, politics, copyright, and all kinds of issues. The best discovery system is friends sharing chat invite links to other friends who are interested.

hn-ifs · 2 months ago
Yeah this is pretty much my sentiment. I want to discover I teresting stuff, main reason I'm on HN. But big S social media is a cancer on attention as far as I'm concerned, it serve no benefit to society.

The only times on the internet I've felt part of a community was on old web forums.

I used some of those similar web type services for discovery in the past but they became shit fast or shut down. HN is the nearest I can find that surfaces stuff I'm interested in. Social media might have stuff on it but I'm unwilling to waste my time trying to find it

hn-ifs commented on Why the open social web matters now   werd.io/why-the-open-soci... · Posted by u/benwerd
johnnyanmac · 2 months ago
> skimmed this article, I still don't get it.

But you're posting here, in socisl media, no? So you sought out something here that a group chat wouldn't give.

Most of the article here is focused more on making sure any social media (be it chats, a public forum, or email) isn't hijacked by vested powers who want to spread propaganda or drown the user in ads. One approach to that focused in this article is decentralization, which gives a user the ability to take their ball and go home.

Of course, it's futile if the user doesn't care about wielding that power.

hn-ifs · 2 months ago
> But you're posting here, in socisl media, no? So you sought out something here that a group chat wouldn't give.

This is true, of course. I'm here interacting with strangers. But, for me, HN is about discovery not community like what the article talks about. I'd be just as content not posting if the ability wasn't there. I just don't agree that social media is that important.

I personally think what the article talks about is already available in the form of group chats on platforms like signal. My impression, from the article, is the author is extremely politically motivated and seems to believe social media is somehow a good thing, as long as the people they don't like can't control it , and likely can't use it? That last point might not be true.

hn-ifs commented on Why the open social web matters now   werd.io/why-the-open-soci... · Posted by u/benwerd
noman-land · 2 months ago
Group chats are lowercase S social media but they still benefit from being open.
hn-ifs · 2 months ago
By open do you mean not centralised? I don't get the significance of big S social media. Functionally how would big S improve on group chats?
hn-ifs commented on Why the open social web matters now   werd.io/why-the-open-soci... · Posted by u/benwerd
hn-ifs · 2 months ago
I've never really got social media in any of its forms. I use messaging apps to stay in contact with people I like, but that's about it.

I skimmed this article, I still don't get it. I think group chats cover most of what the author is taking about, public and private ones. But this might be my lack of imagination. I feel there article, and by extension, the talk could have been a lot shorter.

hn-ifs commented on Is Flutter Dead in 2026?   hungrimind.com/articles/f... · Posted by u/tadaspetra
hn-ifs · 2 months ago
Clickbait. The piece argues Flutter is healthy (Google Trends up, 1M+ apps, big adopters like Google/Headspace, VC-backed tooling) but the authors focus is selling a Flutter course/tools.
hn-ifs commented on The RSS feed reader landscape   lighthouseapp.io/blog/fee... · Posted by u/domysee
CGamesPlay · 2 months ago
> [1] … if your cache mechanisms will protect you from polling some people’s RSS feeds too fast. Maybe you’re better off if they block you.

They do, just use `--etag-save` and `--etag-compare` and curl does proper caching, since 2020: https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2019/12/06/curl-speaks-etag/

I have dabbled with replacing my RSS reader with something like this, but haven't done it, yet.

hn-ifs · 2 months ago
I was recently looking at using Nushell to do the same thing. Nushell can natively do almost all you need for this.
hn-ifs commented on The RSS feed reader landscape   lighthouseapp.io/blog/fee... · Posted by u/domysee
squirrellous · 2 months ago
Not a user (yet) but just want to say I concur that email is the best medium for RSS feeds, so kudos.
hn-ifs · 2 months ago
I disagree, I use RSS so I don't need to clog up my email with feeds or sure updates, etc. I flat out refuse to sign up for mailing lists for the same reason. RSS is the perfect solution.
hn-ifs commented on The RSS feed reader landscape   lighthouseapp.io/blog/fee... · Posted by u/domysee
netghost · 2 months ago
I'll just shill my own feed reader here: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/brook-feed-re...

It currently only runs in Firefox but if anyone is interested, I'll Port it to Chrome since it now supports a sidebar interface.

I made this because I wanted to have feeds show up where I read them, in the browser, and I wanted it on my own device so nobody else controls it. No hosting, no payment, just a simple tool that lets me control what I read.

Bonus: if you try it you'll likely increase the global usage by double digits ;)

hn-ifs · 2 months ago
Interested. I miss when Firefox sorted in natively, even if it was bare minimum. I've been looking for a lightweight RSS reader for desktop. I'd probably ditch my mobile app too if this was compatible with Firefox mobile.
hn-ifs commented on In Praise of RSS and Controlled Feeds of Information   blog.burkert.me/posts/in_... · Posted by u/curioussquirrel
hn-ifs · 3 months ago
I love RSS. Like all the old web tech the user is in control. If I like a page/site I'll look for an RSS to keep up to date with it, if one doesn't exist I'll likely forget about it. I'm not signing up for email updates.
hn-ifs commented on A simple habit that saves my evenings   alikhil.dev/posts/the-sim... · Posted by u/alikhil
9dev · 3 months ago
I see what you’re doing, yet it’s still infuriating me.
hn-ifs · 3 months ago
I'm infuriated t

u/hn-ifs

KarmaCake day22August 24, 2025View Original