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My understanding of Eternal September is that it's basically used to argue that higher traffic inevitably leads to lower quality of discussion, correct? Maybe

My understanding of Eternal September is that it's basically used to argue that higher traffic inevitably leads to lower quality of discussion, correct? Maybe I'm too optimistic, but I do feel like platforms could improve to better foster higher quality discussion, or at least better tailor users to see the type of content they enjoy, which is what I mentioned at the end of the article. It doesn't seem like there's been much innovation in that department, especially since Reddit virtually has a monopoly so there's not really much incentive for them to change anything.

renewiltord 5y ago
I suppose, in some way, I agree but I think you can't stop people posting junk. You have to just help people extract value out of the junk. So I don't disagree that techniques can improve quality. I just think the big bang for the buck is in the read layer. Also, I believe that the most popular posts on Facebook are the ones like "Can you solve this math problem? 4x3-2=?" and stuff like that, so you overestimate how much quality matters to the bottom line which means that platforms are not incentivized to improve quality (not out of some evilness but out of pure economic incentives).
dkonofalski 5y ago
>platforms could improve to better foster higher quality discussion The only way these platforms can improve is by growing the moderation teams in ways that scale with the userbase and reinforce the neutrality you're looking for. It's a bureaucracy nightmare but you almost need mods for the mods level of checks and balances to ensure that you don't end up with a Reddit-like situation of 25 people pulling the strings of discourse.