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He writes about algorithmically filtering articles on sites like reddit and hacker news. To me, part of the appeal to these sites are that links and content ar
by emef 16y ago
He writes about algorithmically filtering articles on sites like reddit and hacker news.
To me, part of the appeal to these sites are that links and content are driven by the users, and not by what someone else wants me to read.
I'm sure this could highlight interesting stories, but I think it starts to break apart the community these social networking sites provide.
- Alex3917 16y agoI'm not knocking hacker news at all. My point though was that let's say you only want to read articles that are counterintuitive, contrary to your current beliefs, contain facts that you don't already know, etc. With enough computing power and a little human mediation this should be doable, but it's not something you can get from sites like HN currently.
- greyman 16y agoHow can a computer know what my beliefs are? ;-) Overall, I agree with you. It should be possible to define some objective criteria about what is interesting, and then some algorithm could check all the new articles from mainstream dailies, weeklies and monthlies, and return let's say up to 150 articles monthly which should be interesting. That I think could be an useful service. For example, Vanity Fair has 1 or 2 articles monthly which are interesting, but I don't have time to read VF every month to see if I discover something good...if some algo can do that pre-selection, that would help.