4 ms·
You can think of every user as a neuron where upvotes on the same items strengthen their connections. Though there is one important bit of asymmetry: you conne
by lonk11 5y ago
You can think of every user as a neuron where upvotes on the same items strengthen their connections.
Though there is one important bit of asymmetry: you connect to those who upvoted that item *before* you. That way people who recognize useful information earlier earn more trust. In a sense this is a "proof of work" - to recognize valuable content before it becomes popular.
My hope is that this asymmetrical nature of connections will get less informed people to connect to more informed people. Which is the opposite of the echo-chamber effect - when less informed people are connected to similarly less informed peers.
And yes, I'm slowly preparing to do a "Show NH" for LinkLonk. But I probably need to grow the number of active users a bit before I do that, otherwise the "Shown HN" will bring a lot of clicks that will just bounce.
- elevaet 5y agoSo let me get this straight - you become connected to those who upvoted the item before you, but not to those who upvoted after, right? So this incentivizes the avant garde, rather than the promoters of stuff that's already going viral. Very interesting.
- lonk11 5y agoCorrect. This also provides some protection from gaming of the system. You can't simply upvote a bunch of popular items to get other people who already upvoted it become connected to you. You have to be good at prediction what people will like in order to get them connected to you. And this is what a good curator does.
- elevaet 5y agoI wonder how this dynamic would affect virality in relation to truthfullness? As in, will this dynamic tend to reward the spread of "edgy" fake news more than current network paradigms already do, or will it tend to slow its spread, or will it be neutral on that axis? Seems like a hypothesis that would need to be tested, but maybe you have a hunch or insight on the matter.
- lonk11 5y agoThe overall system behaviour is hard to predict. So yes we need to try it out and see. But as a user I can say that I do behave differently when it comes to upvoting content on LinkLonk. It is much less impulsive because my ratings have consequences for myself. If I find something that I completely agree with but I haven't learned anything new - I would not upvote it on LinkLonk, while I would be tempted to signal boost it elsewhere (like HN). Let's see whether this generalizes and what kind of system behaviour emerges out of it. To properly test it out we need more users.