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> I'd love to see a product/social network that confront their users with opposite point of views. I've long believed that forums are this answer. Interests b

by buro9 10y ago

> I'd love to see a product/social network that confront their users with opposite point of views. I've long believed that forums are this answer. Interests bring people together across political and geographical divides. I run cycling forums, some tech forums, and even had a startup called Microcosm to try and spread this benefit I really believe in more widely (it failed, there's a story, there is always a story). The things I think forums do best: 1. Bring people together around an interest, regardless of race, gender, class, wealth, and political or religious beliefs. 2. Because they bring people together, this frequently (especially when geographically centred) spills over into real life. Forums can be a cure for the modern disease of loneliness that cities spread. 3. Re-thinking political engagement and societal structures. Forums are able to model, test and implement on a small subset of a cross-section of society, various political systems. From dictatorships, through to shades of anarchy. In doing so they are able to imbue a sense of disenfranchisement, or ownership, or whatever... in the user of the forum. Crazily, in an age of social networks, I believe in the forums and the interest network as the obvious solution. I am perhaps wrong, my startup failed, but I still believe.

tremon 10y ago
But what you are describing is not a forum per se, it's "topic-specific" meeting place. That can be anything, from an irc channel to a closed mailing list. Twitter could do this with access-moderated hash tags, for example.
- buro9 10y ago
  That is true. But... If one of the primary functions of a service/site/app is to organise relationships via a network of people... then that isn't suitable for this purpose. The core function needs to be organising around an interest (composed of 1 or more of: topic, place, time), and that core function is so strong that it shouldn't offer the secondary function of then networking around people. People are very good at backing into small groups, forming cliques and communicating privately. Of constructing the very bubbles that are the issue here. A system that puts interests first has to avoid this by not encouraging it. It will still happen, but it shouldn't be a primary function.

by buro9 10y ago

tremon 10y ago

But what you are describing is not a forum per se, it's "topic-specific" meeting place. That can be anything, from an irc channel to a closed mailing list. Twitter could do this with access-moderated hash tags, for example.

buro9 10y ago
That is true. But... If one of the primary functions of a service/site/app is to organise relationships via a network of people... then that isn't suitable for this purpose. The core function needs to be organising around an interest (composed of 1 or more of: topic, place, time), and that core function is so strong that it shouldn't offer the secondary function of then networking around people. People are very good at backing into small groups, forming cliques and communicating privately. Of constructing the very bubbles that are the issue here. A system that puts interests first has to avoid this by not encouraging it. It will still happen, but it shouldn't be a primary function.