4 ms·

The article fails to account an important fundamental fact: attention is rivalrous and time is scarce. We don't want to settle for mediocre content or muddle t

The article fails to account an important fundamental fact: attention is rivalrous and time is scarce. We don't want to settle for mediocre content or muddle through mediocre search results. If searching fails us, we will use side channels like sharing, and the accrual of readership may self-sort into the same aggregation patterns anyway. Or, move to a new platform.

ghaff 6y ago
If a platform wants to steer me towards things I may not know about to help me discover previously unknown content I may well be interested in, that's one thing. But I don't want a platform to "spread the wealth" by steering me to less interesting stuff because it's good for the platform or just "fairer."
- purple-again 6y ago
  Sorry citizen, Game of Thrones has reached its download limit. May we suggest The Wheel of Time of Sword of Truth instead? Quite the dystopia you paint. More importantly I wanted to watch Walking Dead and Game of Thrones not on their own merit but preciously because they entered some kind of cultural flashpoint where all the people I cared about were watching these things. It was more important to me to be able to talk to them about the show we were watching than it was for me to enjoy the content. It’s the same for the music I chose when I was young (in my old age music had become background noise, something 15 year old me never would have believed). I am willing to bet this phenomenon both already has a name and is majorly responsible for the power laws we see in content creation domains.
DennisP 6y ago
If the only strategy were to focus more attention on mediocre content, that would be a problem. Hence the second strategy, "serve heterogeneity in user preferences & empower niche." E.g. I'm subscribed to a bunch of obscure, specialized subreddits that would be deadly boring to most people. But my reddit is far more interesting to me than the reddit I see when I'm not logged in, where posts have thousands of upvotes instead of dozens.
- zippy5 6y ago
  I think it’s worth noting that popularity isn’t always deterministic or meritocratic. I once read about an experiment where users would listen to music and and the platform counted the number of listens and showed users. When the experiment was rerun, a different set of songs from the first experiment were popular. I believe I read this in Invisible Influence by Jonah Berger. The point is that most content platforms select for content that is sufficiently good (or clickable) but not necessarily the best.
  - ghaff 6y ago
    >most content platforms select for content that is sufficiently good (or clickable) but not necessarily the best Best is in the eye of the beholder anyway. But, truth be told, as long as an algorithm is reasonably dialed into my genre preferences... (There are some genres I just don't like even if you show me the very cream of the crop. And there are less popular ones that I'll probably enjoy even Tier 2 performers well enough.) I'll be pretty well satisfied with the overall most popular songs in those genres. Will it hit all my favorites. No. But it wouldn't be a bad cut.
  - wmf 6y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_cascade https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_cascade
skohan 6y ago
But I think search results are largely mediocre, aren't they? Search tends to favor content which is acceptable to everyone vs what's transcendent to any particular individual. I actually think this has gotten quite a bit worse thanks to algorithmic content recommendations. For instance, when Pandora launched with hand-curated content, the recommendations were a lot better than I currently get with spotify.
- xapata 6y ago
  That may be your experience, but sadly the average person likes the average content. It might be simply because they want to see and hear what's popular.
skybrian 6y ago
We all benefit from variety when looking for something specific. As an example, I play accordion and I like to hear other accordion play songs on YouTube. There may be lots of covers of a popular song I want to learn, but there are rarely many accordion covers, let alone good ones. So the question is whether you are looking for generic entertainment, or do you take an interest in something specific? Add another search term to a query and the results can thin out pretty quick. From a professional creator’s point of view (not me), the question is whether these niches have enough money in them to get started and grow from there? And that depends on market conditions. Can people find what they like when it’s not mainstream?
- xivzgrev 6y ago
  If you are YouTube, would you rather show joe schmo visitor a suggestion for accordion covers or a Cardi B video? Odds are they’re more likely to watch (and repeat watch) and share the latter. So it’s a bit of a chicken and egg problem. Unless accordion covers go viral on its own, it’s probably not going to break out. But if it did then YouTube would add fuel to the fire as long as people are responding
  - skybrian 6y ago
    The suggestions change based on what you watch, though. YouTube shows me lots of accordion videos. It doesn't have to be mainstream to get the flywheel started, just well-liked by some niche.
- throwawaycuriou 6y ago
  if I can ask something specific to an accordian player, I fell in love with a band called Swap. swedish fiddles with British guitar and accordian. do you recommend anything like it?
  - skybrian 6y ago
    Well, not really. There are a lot of folk genres that use accordion and I'm unfamiliar with most of them, which makes exploring interesting. Swåp is new to me. That's like Celtic music I guess? But I've listened to some of Karen Tweed's videos before. If you have Spotify, here's a playlist of accordion recordings I like: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0Ydvyr0ZjfiG4085izipNC https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0Ydvyr0ZjfiG4085izipNC
xapata 6y ago
Fails to account?! She mentioned the fact of non-substitutabiliy several times.

ghaff 6y ago

If a platform wants to steer me towards things I may not know about to help me discover previously unknown content I may well be interested in, that's one thing. But I don't want a platform to "spread the wealth" by steering me to less interesting stuff because it's good for the platform or just "fairer."

purple-again 6y ago
Sorry citizen, Game of Thrones has reached its download limit. May we suggest The Wheel of Time of Sword of Truth instead? Quite the dystopia you paint. More importantly I wanted to watch Walking Dead and Game of Thrones not on their own merit but preciously because they entered some kind of cultural flashpoint where all the people I cared about were watching these things. It was more important to me to be able to talk to them about the show we were watching than it was for me to enjoy the content. It’s the same for the music I chose when I was young (in my old age music had become background noise, something 15 year old me never would have believed). I am willing to bet this phenomenon both already has a name and is majorly responsible for the power laws we see in content creation domains.

DennisP 6y ago

If the only strategy were to focus more attention on mediocre content, that would be a problem. Hence the second strategy, "serve heterogeneity in user preferences & empower niche." E.g. I'm subscribed to a bunch of obscure, specialized subreddits that would be deadly boring to most people. But my reddit is far more interesting to me than the reddit I see when I'm not logged in, where posts have thousands of upvotes instead of dozens.

zippy5 6y ago
I think it’s worth noting that popularity isn’t always deterministic or meritocratic. I once read about an experiment where users would listen to music and and the platform counted the number of listens and showed users. When the experiment was rerun, a different set of songs from the first experiment were popular. I believe I read this in Invisible Influence by Jonah Berger. The point is that most content platforms select for content that is sufficiently good (or clickable) but not necessarily the best.
- ghaff 6y ago
  >most content platforms select for content that is sufficiently good (or clickable) but not necessarily the best Best is in the eye of the beholder anyway. But, truth be told, as long as an algorithm is reasonably dialed into my genre preferences... (There are some genres I just don't like even if you show me the very cream of the crop. And there are less popular ones that I'll probably enjoy even Tier 2 performers well enough.) I'll be pretty well satisfied with the overall most popular songs in those genres. Will it hit all my favorites. No. But it wouldn't be a bad cut.
- wmf 6y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_cascade https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_cascade

skohan 6y ago

But I think search results are largely mediocre, aren't they? Search tends to favor content which is acceptable to everyone vs what's transcendent to any particular individual. I actually think this has gotten quite a bit worse thanks to algorithmic content recommendations. For instance, when Pandora launched with hand-curated content, the recommendations were a lot better than I currently get with spotify.

xapata 6y ago
That may be your experience, but sadly the average person likes the average content. It might be simply because they want to see and hear what's popular.

skybrian 6y ago

We all benefit from variety when looking for something specific. As an example, I play accordion and I like to hear other accordion play songs on YouTube. There may be lots of covers of a popular song I want to learn, but there are rarely many accordion covers, let alone good ones. So the question is whether you are looking for generic entertainment, or do you take an interest in something specific? Add another search term to a query and the results can thin out pretty quick. From a professional creator’s point of view (not me), the question is whether these niches have enough money in them to get started and grow from there? And that depends on market conditions. Can people find what they like when it’s not mainstream?

xivzgrev 6y ago
If you are YouTube, would you rather show joe schmo visitor a suggestion for accordion covers or a Cardi B video? Odds are they’re more likely to watch (and repeat watch) and share the latter. So it’s a bit of a chicken and egg problem. Unless accordion covers go viral on its own, it’s probably not going to break out. But if it did then YouTube would add fuel to the fire as long as people are responding
- skybrian 6y ago
  The suggestions change based on what you watch, though. YouTube shows me lots of accordion videos. It doesn't have to be mainstream to get the flywheel started, just well-liked by some niche.
throwawaycuriou 6y ago
if I can ask something specific to an accordian player, I fell in love with a band called Swap. swedish fiddles with British guitar and accordian. do you recommend anything like it?
- skybrian 6y ago
  Well, not really. There are a lot of folk genres that use accordion and I'm unfamiliar with most of them, which makes exploring interesting. Swåp is new to me. That's like Celtic music I guess? But I've listened to some of Karen Tweed's videos before. If you have Spotify, here's a playlist of accordion recordings I like: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0Ydvyr0ZjfiG4085izipNC https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0Ydvyr0ZjfiG4085izipNC

xapata 6y ago

Fails to account?! She mentioned the fact of non-substitutabiliy several times.