3 ms·

I think the intent is solid. But using curation by someone else in an attempt to solve the problem of overwhelming malaise in one's news feed just won't "scale

I think the intent is solid. But using curation by someone else in an attempt to solve the problem of overwhelming malaise in one's news feed just won't "scale" (sorry for using that valley buzzword). How much can any entity curate on a day-to-day basis? How does one decide what's actually worthy? Didn't we see this before in the early web when Yahoo thought it could categorize everything? Can we trust _anybody_ (other than ourselves) to white-list what we see? As a twitter user, I've found using the "muted words" feature to be somewhat helpful, my list is _very_ long and includes not only the people and issues I despise (president cheeto-satan, etc), but also their opposition which I generally agree with. Yeah, it's "leaky", every once in a while I get mug shot of somebody I'd rather not see, but it does mitigate the never ending stream of despair. In general, I think individuals would do better to limit their news feeds by themselves, either through the discipline of sticking to trusted sources, or by more draconian measures of filters. Cable news, of course, is a no-go dumpster-fire.

shawn 8y ago
But using curation by someone else in an attempt to solve the problem of overwhelming malaise in one's news feed just won't "scale" (sorry for using that valley buzzword). How much can any entity curate on a day-to-day basis? How does one decide what's actually worthy? Didn't we see this before in the early web when Yahoo thought it could categorize everything? Can we trust _anybody_ (other than ourselves) to white-list what we see? Dan does it on a daily basis right here on HN. It's his job, and he's ruthlessly effective at it. You'd be surprised how much something can scale when you put someone smart and motivated in charge of scaling it. http://paulgraham.com/ds.html http://paulgraham.com/ds.html
armatav 8y ago
Do things that don't scale.
amanaplanacanal 8y ago
Back before the rise of our newer technology, curation seemed to work pretty well. Most folks in the US had access to three or four TV channels, one or two local papers, and a handful of national newspapers and general interest magazines. I'm not sure that particular genie is going back in the bottle, though.

shawn 8y ago

But using curation by someone else in an attempt to solve the problem of overwhelming malaise in one's news feed just won't "scale" (sorry for using that valley buzzword). How much can any entity curate on a day-to-day basis? How does one decide what's actually worthy? Didn't we see this before in the early web when Yahoo thought it could categorize everything? Can we trust _anybody_ (other than ourselves) to white-list what we see? Dan does it on a daily basis right here on HN. It's his job, and he's ruthlessly effective at it. You'd be surprised how much something can scale when you put someone smart and motivated in charge of scaling it. http://paulgraham.com/ds.html http://paulgraham.com/ds.html

armatav 8y ago

Do things that don't scale.

amanaplanacanal 8y ago

Back before the rise of our newer technology, curation seemed to work pretty well. Most folks in the US had access to three or four TV channels, one or two local papers, and a handful of national newspapers and general interest magazines. I'm not sure that particular genie is going back in the bottle, though.