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The web inundated with garbage because of the perverse incentives[1][2][3] that now rule it. I'm am working on ideas to fix this, including: - Articulating the

The web inundated with garbage because of the perverse incentives[1][2][3] that now rule it. I'm am working on ideas to fix this, including: - Articulating the problem and its causes very well, better than what I did in the footnotes below. If you have an interest or expertise in the business models of the Internet, content publishing, economic analysis of advertising, or the promotion of "commons" approaches to human betterment (e.g. Wikipedia, open source, creative commons), talk to me! - Designing a internet-wide, independent collaborative filtering layer that let's people share negative feedback with a single click. Imagine the satisfaction of hitting a trash can button when you are presented with garbage, and knowing that there is now a cost to publishing garbage. This adds a much needed negative feedback loop to the web[3]. I have a unique (as far as I know) idea that both solves the problem of "One person's garbage is another person's gold" and makes the system un-gamable. If you have interests or expertise in cluster analysis, statistical classification, collaborative filtering, talk to me! - Promoting what I call the "Users First" covenant": A list of principles that internet sites and services adhere to. - Promoting other solutions to the problem, work being done by other teams, such as -- a consumer-friendly web browser that puts privacy first. No need to install any extensions. Open source, non-profit and in no way tied to advertising revenue. Adheres to the Users First covenant. -- A way for publishers to get paid by their readers rather than advertisers. For example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8009959 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8009959 I actually have more than a half a year of free time to work on this, because I quit my job (and my cushy life) to work on this. You in? - [1] It's bullshit that advertising gives us stuff for free. In fact, it makes everything way more expensive: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7485773 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7485773 [2] Since advertisers pay for much of it, sites and services are incented to trick us into clicking on links, to show as many ads as possible, and to invade our privacy for the benefit of advertisers. Users do not come first, advertisers do. We are the product, as they say. [3] Viral dynamics rule! The web only has a positive feedback loop (people linking to pages, sharing URLs) and lacks the dampening effects of negative feedback. This let's good things as well as crap spiral to viral popularity. What we need is a way to downvote or flag garbage on the web in general (not just within communities such as HN), and this certainly can't be owned or operated by a business that takes advertising money (see [1]). It needs to be ungamable, and take into account that one person's garbage is another person's gold.

walterbell 12y ago
Have you looked at http://hypothes.is http://hypothes.is or the W3C annotation work?
- eevilspock 12y ago
  Yes, as soon as they came out. Too geeky and complicated. For this to have the impact on the web it needs to have, it has to be adopted by everyday non-technical users. Annotations serve as notes explaining why a lot of people consider something garbage, but most often just need a warning that essentially means: "A lot of people you respect or who think this item is garbage". Not censorship, just a flag. Hypothes.is and W3C annotations are like HN with only comments, no up or down votes.
  - walterbell 12y ago
    Would users be able to choose their preferred editorial server, e.g. would it be "everyone on the internet thinks this is garbage", or would it be "hackernews thinks this is off topic and "reddit thinks this is moderately interesting"?
    - eevilspock 12y ago
      More like the latter, but you don't get to choose. The system automatically clusters you with others whose historical votes are like yours. So what you get is "true karma" where the collaborative filter you get is a direct result of the quality of your votes, as opposed to karma being a score as it is on HN. You may think you are an open and fair-minded thinker, but if you vote ideologically, or vote with things you want to be true whether or not they are, you will be clustered with the same. It would be like Apple fanboys and Android fanboys getting put into their own clusters, getting out of the way of others who engage in "agnostic" fair-minded discussions. [Typo in prior reply. Should be "A lot of people... who think like you think this item is garbage."] Astro-turfers and bots trying to game the system naturally don't cluster with anyone except those who happen to agree with them, in which case who cares? There really is no difference between fake votes and dumb votes, so the system doesn't make that distinction. Trust is asymmetrical, so even even though your filter is influenced by those in your cluster, you may have no influence on your cluster. Trust is earned by voting on something before others do, and then those others agreeing with your vote. So it is impossible to game trust by mimicking the votes of others. The system distinguishes between leading votes and following votes. The clustering is entirely transparent... You can "flip" your view at any time to one of the other clusters. I have a number of ideas how to surface a meaningful label for each cluster so that, for example, a self-professed fair-minded user can realize he is actually rather close minded and ideological. I call this "Mirror". One's cluster would never be publicly displayed (not in the business of shaming), but you can look in the mirror in private, and gain self-awareness. The system would support the maximum privacy and anonymity guarantees possible (allowing people the option to register with no password recovery email, for example). Before the system has enough users to do effective clustering, it would simply flag garbage that has widespread agreement as such. That in and of itself is a valuable service. My original project name for this is "Garbage" (How much of the web do you think is garbage?), but I've settled on "Common Karma" as the official name. This is my first sharing of the above idea and its names beyond my friends. You heard it here first!

walterbell 12y ago

Have you looked at http://hypothes.is http://hypothes.is or the W3C annotation work?

eevilspock 12y ago
Yes, as soon as they came out. Too geeky and complicated. For this to have the impact on the web it needs to have, it has to be adopted by everyday non-technical users. Annotations serve as notes explaining why a lot of people consider something garbage, but most often just need a warning that essentially means: "A lot of people you respect or who think this item is garbage". Not censorship, just a flag. Hypothes.is and W3C annotations are like HN with only comments, no up or down votes.
- walterbell 12y ago
  Would users be able to choose their preferred editorial server, e.g. would it be "everyone on the internet thinks this is garbage", or would it be "hackernews thinks this is off topic and "reddit thinks this is moderately interesting"?
  - eevilspock 12y ago
    More like the latter, but you don't get to choose. The system automatically clusters you with others whose historical votes are like yours. So what you get is "true karma" where the collaborative filter you get is a direct result of the quality of your votes, as opposed to karma being a score as it is on HN. You may think you are an open and fair-minded thinker, but if you vote ideologically, or vote with things you want to be true whether or not they are, you will be clustered with the same. It would be like Apple fanboys and Android fanboys getting put into their own clusters, getting out of the way of others who engage in "agnostic" fair-minded discussions. [Typo in prior reply. Should be "A lot of people... who think like you think this item is garbage."] Astro-turfers and bots trying to game the system naturally don't cluster with anyone except those who happen to agree with them, in which case who cares? There really is no difference between fake votes and dumb votes, so the system doesn't make that distinction. Trust is asymmetrical, so even even though your filter is influenced by those in your cluster, you may have no influence on your cluster. Trust is earned by voting on something before others do, and then those others agreeing with your vote. So it is impossible to game trust by mimicking the votes of others. The system distinguishes between leading votes and following votes. The clustering is entirely transparent... You can "flip" your view at any time to one of the other clusters. I have a number of ideas how to surface a meaningful label for each cluster so that, for example, a self-professed fair-minded user can realize he is actually rather close minded and ideological. I call this "Mirror". One's cluster would never be publicly displayed (not in the business of shaming), but you can look in the mirror in private, and gain self-awareness. The system would support the maximum privacy and anonymity guarantees possible (allowing people the option to register with no password recovery email, for example). Before the system has enough users to do effective clustering, it would simply flag garbage that has widespread agreement as such. That in and of itself is a valuable service. My original project name for this is "Garbage" (How much of the web do you think is garbage?), but I've settled on "Common Karma" as the official name. This is my first sharing of the above idea and its names beyond my friends. You heard it here first!