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We could supercharge word of mouth. I've been thinking about an alternative upvote model where content is ranked not primarily based on aggregate voting but by:

We could supercharge word of mouth. I've been thinking about an alternative upvote model where content is ranked not primarily based on aggregate voting but by: - ranking content that users you have upvoted higher - ranking content that users with similar upvote behaviour higher While there is a risk of upvote bubbles, it should potentially make it easier for niche content to spread to interested people and make it possible for products and services to spread using peer trust rather than cold shouting.

endymi0n 7y ago
As long as there are big companies making money off their products, you can be sure they'll find a way to advertise them to you.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
fifnir 7y ago
> ranking content that users with similar upvote behaviour higher That's how you make echochambers
- worldsayshi 7y ago
  All social media have echo chamber characteristics. You have to counteract it with transparency and opt-in/out.
eterps 7y ago
I've had similar ideas recently. Especially niche content (or shared research) would probably be notoriously hard (WRT false positives) for machine learning to decide whether it is relevant to you, people with similar interests know that much better. I was also wondering what would be good options to store votes/upvotes in a decentralized way.
- worldsayshi 7y ago
  > people with similar interests know that much better Yeah, I wonder if there is a cheap way to test this. Actually! There could be! Like using favorite's here on hacker news. That could be mined and visualized in various ways. (Although a quick sample shows me that it's a rarely used feature) > I was also wondering what would be good options to store votes/upvotes in a decentralized way. Yeah there are a lot of interesting optimization challenges if you really want to utilize upvote graphs for ranking.
loxs 7y ago
So, basically Facebook?
scrollaway 7y ago
Not to echo a R&M quote on purpose but that just sounds like targeted advertising with extra steps.
Fjolsvith 7y ago
This sounds so much like Facebook.
- worldsayshi 7y ago
  Any "social" ranking algorithm is going to sound at least superficially similar to what's already out there.
thekyle 7y ago
> ranking content that users with similar upvote behaviour higher This is what Reddit originally tried to do before they pivoted. https://www.reddit.com/r/self/comments/11fiab/are_memes_making_the_internet_boring/c6m9sy8/ https://www.reddit.com/r/self/comments/11fiab/are_memes_maki...
- worldsayshi 7y ago
  Oh, interesting! Makes me think that their original plan could still work if they just put a bit more effort into crafting that algorithm. For example, the main criticism brought up is that things that you dislike that your peers like keep getting recommended. Why not add a de-ranking aspect into it and try adding downvote-peers in addition to upvote peers. I imagine you could create this interesting query language that could answer questions like: what things do you like if you like X and Y but not Z? (I kind of remember that something akin to this have been hacked together using subreddit overlap.)

endymi0n 7y ago

As long as there are big companies making money off their products, you can be sure they'll find a way to advertise them to you.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

fifnir 7y ago

> ranking content that users with similar upvote behaviour higher That's how you make echochambers

worldsayshi 7y ago
All social media have echo chamber characteristics. You have to counteract it with transparency and opt-in/out.

eterps 7y ago

I've had similar ideas recently. Especially niche content (or shared research) would probably be notoriously hard (WRT false positives) for machine learning to decide whether it is relevant to you, people with similar interests know that much better. I was also wondering what would be good options to store votes/upvotes in a decentralized way.

worldsayshi 7y ago
> people with similar interests know that much better Yeah, I wonder if there is a cheap way to test this. Actually! There could be! Like using favorite's here on hacker news. That could be mined and visualized in various ways. (Although a quick sample shows me that it's a rarely used feature) > I was also wondering what would be good options to store votes/upvotes in a decentralized way. Yeah there are a lot of interesting optimization challenges if you really want to utilize upvote graphs for ranking.

loxs 7y ago

So, basically Facebook?

scrollaway 7y ago

Not to echo a R&M quote on purpose but that just sounds like targeted advertising with extra steps.

Fjolsvith 7y ago

This sounds so much like Facebook.

worldsayshi 7y ago
Any "social" ranking algorithm is going to sound at least superficially similar to what's already out there.

thekyle 7y ago

> ranking content that users with similar upvote behaviour higher This is what Reddit originally tried to do before they pivoted. https://www.reddit.com/r/self/comments/11fiab/are_memes_making_the_internet_boring/c6m9sy8/ https://www.reddit.com/r/self/comments/11fiab/are_memes_maki...

worldsayshi 7y ago
Oh, interesting! Makes me think that their original plan could still work if they just put a bit more effort into crafting that algorithm. For example, the main criticism brought up is that things that you dislike that your peers like keep getting recommended. Why not add a de-ranking aspect into it and try adding downvote-peers in addition to upvote peers. I imagine you could create this interesting query language that could answer questions like: what things do you like if you like X and Y but not Z? (I kind of remember that something akin to this have been hacked together using subreddit overlap.)