5 ms·

I guess I'll be the first to deliver negative feedback. Technically, it's well-designed. It's a fine-looking product that is easy and compelling to use. The ke

I guess I'll be the first to deliver negative feedback. Technically, it's well-designed. It's a fine-looking product that is easy and compelling to use. The key-point summary is a good feature. That's all granted. However, I think this is a bad product to build. The past weeks and months have shown us that we probably need more long-form content and less short-form content, where the loss of details robs us of important nuances. Just reading the headlines -- and that is what this product allows you to do very efficiently -- does not necessarily make the user better-informed, but it dangerously gives the user the probably-false impression that they are now actually informed. I would encourage you to think not just about the problems you would like your product to solve, but also the problems that your product might contribute to.

Taek 10y ago
Building a product is more about creating what people will use than it is about creating what is good for them, and products that prioritize the former will generally outcompete products that focus on the latter. Fixing that equation probably requires a deep restructuring of how companies get attention, growth, and revenue.
- _up 10y ago
  But if your product is ad supported you have the incentive to make it as inefficient as possible as long as it stays interesting. I wonder if there is a market for a paid or freemium product that is designed for efficiency instead of clickbait.
salmaanp 10y ago
Thanks for your insight. I have actually given this a thought. The first point is that the site is not posting super new content, but stuff that is already popular and has a fair bit of discussion around it. Another thing is that I ran https://www.reddit.com/user/samacharbot2 https://www.reddit.com/user/samacharbot2 for quite some time and what would happen was many people never actually read the article but just made assumptions from the headline. The summary actually helped a lot and even became a starting point of discussion. I agree that half baked information can be sometimes harmful than no information at all. Ideally how I'd like the website to be used is that people who find a summary interesting go and click the actual article. Hope you understand my perspective.
- lintiness 10y ago
  Irish leader doesn’t regret calling Trump “racist and dangerous” that's not news.
  - Eldt 10y ago
    Go into the reddit comments and you'll see how the article itself is a bit misleading as well
    - lintiness 10y ago
      r/news comments i avoid like the plague. i have that sub blocked on my front page (along with r/politics and "popular" candidate subs including but not limited to the bern, hillary, and trump). life's too short for any of that shit.
hkmurakami 10y ago
This three tier system is basically what the Economist does in its print edition, so he's got some good company.
atmosx 10y ago
This idea that suddenly the average US citizen "cares about the truth" and fake news destroyed the outcome of the election somehow is incredible. It would be funny if it wasn't tragic and dangerous. Why do engineers have so poor understanding of social sciences? Is there anything in math-driven jobs that inhibits approaching topics without trying to mathematize them?
- rfrey 10y ago
  "Is there anything in math-driven jobs that inhibits approaching topics without trying to mathematize them?" A hangover from logical positivism - in a nutshell, the dogma that any statement that is not falsifiable through observation is actually without meaning.
erikb 10y ago
Is it a bad product? A product's goal is not to do the moral good thing (in which you are right, long and detailed is better) but find the addictive stuff and make it cheap and consumable (which this product seems to do); think Coca Cola (great product, doesn't worry about its healthiness if not forced).
- Veen 10y ago
  What a horribly depressing view of business, design, and life in general.
  - ahstilde 10y ago
    I feel you've held a horribly unrealistic view of business.
    - enkiv2 10y ago
      Business is at best amoral & often actively immoral. For those of us with a conscience, we must sacrifice profit in the name of not being horrible people, or allow capitalism to turn us into horrible people. It's not an easy decision.
      - erikb 10y ago
        Just choosing the White Knight Suit for yourself doesn't solve it though, since too many morally good decisions also F up other people around you.
        enkiv2 10y ago
        Looking like a good person and being a good person aren't the same thing. They often conflict.
Houshalter 10y ago
I don't think short articles or even just headlines is bad. The only issue is that they are horribly misleading and/or biased. I sometimes like to read Wikipedia's Current Events page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events) which is also just short summaries of news. But in Wikipedia's famous neutral style. Reddit in particular likes to upvote things I wouldn't consider news. At one point, 50% of the articles were of the format "mildly important person says something reddit agrees with."
- uncletaco 10y ago
  I just went to that wikipedia page and I like it a lot. I like the idea of getting a current event, no context, just the facts, and then maybe moving on to read about it later from a publication of my choosing. It's kinda like the Yahoo! News digest without the editorializing (and it has a refreshing lack of Trump tweets).
ep103 10y ago
I'm trying to switch off reddit like news sources. I've found longform.org to be amazing in the meanwhile. Strongly recommended.

Taek 10y ago

Building a product is more about creating what people will use than it is about creating what is good for them, and products that prioritize the former will generally outcompete products that focus on the latter. Fixing that equation probably requires a deep restructuring of how companies get attention, growth, and revenue.

_up 10y ago
But if your product is ad supported you have the incentive to make it as inefficient as possible as long as it stays interesting. I wonder if there is a market for a paid or freemium product that is designed for efficiency instead of clickbait.

salmaanp 10y ago

Thanks for your insight. I have actually given this a thought. The first point is that the site is not posting super new content, but stuff that is already popular and has a fair bit of discussion around it. Another thing is that I ran https://www.reddit.com/user/samacharbot2 https://www.reddit.com/user/samacharbot2 for quite some time and what would happen was many people never actually read the article but just made assumptions from the headline. The summary actually helped a lot and even became a starting point of discussion. I agree that half baked information can be sometimes harmful than no information at all. Ideally how I'd like the website to be used is that people who find a summary interesting go and click the actual article. Hope you understand my perspective.

lintiness 10y ago
Irish leader doesn’t regret calling Trump “racist and dangerous” that's not news.
- Eldt 10y ago
  Go into the reddit comments and you'll see how the article itself is a bit misleading as well
  - lintiness 10y ago
    r/news comments i avoid like the plague. i have that sub blocked on my front page (along with r/politics and "popular" candidate subs including but not limited to the bern, hillary, and trump). life's too short for any of that shit.

hkmurakami 10y ago

This three tier system is basically what the Economist does in its print edition, so he's got some good company.

atmosx 10y ago

This idea that suddenly the average US citizen "cares about the truth" and fake news destroyed the outcome of the election somehow is incredible. It would be funny if it wasn't tragic and dangerous. Why do engineers have so poor understanding of social sciences? Is there anything in math-driven jobs that inhibits approaching topics without trying to mathematize them?

rfrey 10y ago
"Is there anything in math-driven jobs that inhibits approaching topics without trying to mathematize them?" A hangover from logical positivism - in a nutshell, the dogma that any statement that is not falsifiable through observation is actually without meaning.

erikb 10y ago

Is it a bad product? A product's goal is not to do the moral good thing (in which you are right, long and detailed is better) but find the addictive stuff and make it cheap and consumable (which this product seems to do); think Coca Cola (great product, doesn't worry about its healthiness if not forced).

Veen 10y ago
What a horribly depressing view of business, design, and life in general.
- ahstilde 10y ago
  I feel you've held a horribly unrealistic view of business.
  - enkiv2 10y ago
    Business is at best amoral & often actively immoral. For those of us with a conscience, we must sacrifice profit in the name of not being horrible people, or allow capitalism to turn us into horrible people. It's not an easy decision.
    - erikb 10y ago
      Just choosing the White Knight Suit for yourself doesn't solve it though, since too many morally good decisions also F up other people around you.
      - enkiv2 10y ago
        Looking like a good person and being a good person aren't the same thing. They often conflict.

Houshalter 10y ago

I don't think short articles or even just headlines is bad. The only issue is that they are horribly misleading and/or biased. I sometimes like to read Wikipedia's Current Events page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events) which is also just short summaries of news. But in Wikipedia's famous neutral style. Reddit in particular likes to upvote things I wouldn't consider news. At one point, 50% of the articles were of the format "mildly important person says something reddit agrees with."

uncletaco 10y ago
I just went to that wikipedia page and I like it a lot. I like the idea of getting a current event, no context, just the facts, and then maybe moving on to read about it later from a publication of my choosing. It's kinda like the Yahoo! News digest without the editorializing (and it has a refreshing lack of Trump tweets).

ep103 10y ago

I'm trying to switch off reddit like news sources. I've found longform.org to be amazing in the meanwhile. Strongly recommended.