[HN Gopher] Minus ___________________________________________________________________ Minus Author : fredley Score : 254 points Date : 2021-09-06 18:10 UTC (4 hours ago) (HTM) web link (minus.social) (TXT) w3m dump (minus.social) | [deleted] | a9h74j wrote: | Read a bit, good idea. | | Will be followed by some copycat's Minus++, which will be | montetized. | andreygrehov wrote: | In an effort to get people to look into each other's eyes | more, and also to appease the mutes, the government | has decided to allot each person exactly one hundred | and sixty-seven words, per day. When the phone rings, | I put it to my ear without saying hello. In the restaurant | I point at chicken noodle soup. I am adjusting well to the | new way. Late at night, I call my long distance lover, | proudly say I only used fifty-nine today. I saved the rest | for you. When she doesn't respond, I know she's | used up all her words, so I slowly whisper I love you | thirty-two and a third times. After that, we just sit on | the line and listen to each other breathe. | Jeffrey McDaniel, "The Quiet World" | spoonjim wrote: | Wonderful | saagarjha wrote: | I always wondered why the poem wasn't one hundred and sixty- | seven words long. Perhaps this was all he could save for us. | dredmorbius wrote: | Or the other 42 were for us to give the ones we love. | wizzwizz4 wrote: | 42 words remain. | ComputerGuru wrote: | This was the first comment I favorited on HN, many years ago. | streamofdigits wrote: | Love this. People are craving a different social media experience | or at least quite a few articulate and imaginative ones do. | | But while the failure of the current crop is evident (well not in | terms of shareholder value), what should be a "good" replacement | is not all that obvious. Even beyond sustainable business model | issues, there are so many configurations, platform features, | constraints, user incentives etc. There are two general | principles I can think of: | | * Let a thousand flowers bloom (in a fediverse context) and let | evolutionary trial-and-error determine what works | | * Source some insights from the surveillance capitalists as they | are the ones who have accumulated the largest empirical factbase | about what we should _definitely_ avoid 8-) | vezycash wrote: | Monetization strategy: $10 for 100 more posts. | guerrilla wrote: | That'll shut the poors up. | Vaslo wrote: | Reddit needs this but for upvotes. Tons of low quality posts | starting with a barely funny joke that goes 15 replies deep with | almost the same joke but less and less funny. If you only have | say 5 upvotes a day, you won't contribute garbage to a barely | useful thread. | ok123456 wrote: | This is how slashdot does moderation. | Jaxkr wrote: | Hugged to death :( | lord_and_xavier wrote: | Yeah wordpress doesnt scale. hug of death | wizzwizz4 wrote: | I don't like Wordpress either, but correctly configured it's | not _that_ much worse than a static site. | bastawhiz wrote: | But the sites that are slow or performance sensitive often | aren't just static sites. If it's more than just a simple CMS | to you, you need to be enough of a WordPress expert that you | probably don't need WordPress in the first place (or you're | just using it for the themes or plugins). Weird WP | performance cliffs are hard to avoid for dynamic content and | "correctly configuring" either means rolling a custom | solution or getting neck deep in your infra--both of which | smell a lot more like engineering than not. | Tomte wrote: | Correctly configured it is a static site with a minimal stub | in PHP. | | And if you want to go further you can bypass that stub and | serve the static pages directly from your web server. | | Best of both worlds, really. | vmoore wrote: | > Correctly configured it is a static site with a minimal | stub in PHP | | Maybe there's a 1001 plugins being used which means the | Wordpress site has to make boatloads of requests to the | backend. Many Wordpress sites make that mistake. I keep my | plugin count to at _least_ five plugins. And they 're | obviously plugins which I _really_ need, and they 're not | chatty in any way. | toast0 wrote: | I've only run one wordpress site (and reluctantly), but I | found it very hard to configure correctly. I was very happy | when I was able to convince my boss to replace it with a much | simpler blog system that only supported exactly what we | needed. | noahtallen wrote: | A raw HTML file won't scale if it's served from a potato. ;) | This probably has more to do with the host & servers than | WordPress. | zuppy wrote: | you couldn't be more wrong. wordpress is one of the easiest | apps to scale, put a varnish in front of it as you mostly have | static content. you can go even further, move the comments to | an external tool and you can have a very long cache. | lucideer wrote: | All your comment has communicated is that Varnish can scale. | Wordpress is not Varnish. | | The gp isn't "wrong": putting Varnish in front of WP is a | possible solution to the fact WP doesn't scale, not a | disproof of the fact. | | Furthermore it's a highly limited solution: WP is only static | if you limit it's use to its static features, and configuring | Varnish for the unholy mess of 3rd-party | dynamic/interactive/form-handling WP plugins is nightmare | territory. | | Wordpress doesn't scale. | kortilla wrote: | Producing cache friendly output is how you scale easily. | | A content management system that doesn't produce cacheable | html isn't scalable and one that does is. It's not the job | of the content management system to serve the cached pages. | That's what CDNs, browsers, and caching layers in general | are for. | jsuqo wrote: | "Jira scales. You just need to put a varnish in front and | move the comments to disqus" | rpastuszak wrote: | That's such a lovely idea. Reminds me of a game made by one of my | friends: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/1-chance/id1529736678 | | The game itself seems pretty trivial. What makes it really | interesting is that you get only one chance to play it. | silisili wrote: | It's neat but seems ephemeral. Maybe that's the point. | | I had a not similar but related idea, basically borne from my | hatred of Twitter. Basically, you'd only be able to make a | comment if you have a credit. Credits would be time based, | probably 1 or 2 a day. The only other way to get credits is if | the person you replied to likes your comment. Basically, the idea | being to quit getting people being so controversial and | argumentative. | | Edit: | | I kept replying below describing some vision that doesn't exist, | which I feel is rude to the OP and Minus, so I'll not reply | further. As I have little intention in building anything at the | moment, feel free to take anything you like from it, Minus et al. | rzzzt wrote: | Token bucket! But perhaps a microtransaction system would also | fit neatly in your scenario. >:) | silisili wrote: | I thought about that, but still unsure. Want to be an asshat? | Pay a dollar and get another credit. | axelroze wrote: | That won't stop organizations with lots of money unless the | cost for more credits raises exponentially. Everyone will | have to stop when millions and billions get into play. | maximp wrote: | I like that time-based mechanism much better. The | karma/engagement-based stuff would just let popular people post | more :) | abeppu wrote: | I think this is still bad, because it heavily encourages | people to post stuff that others will respond to, which isn't | necessarily what's honest, authentic, valuable, etc. | silisili wrote: | Posts, as they are not a response to anything, in my head | wouldn't use a credit unless the post tags someone. | | So if you want to write mean things, do so in your own | posts without bothering others' discussions. | silisili wrote: | Well, not more. Sending a comment takes you down to zero, | you're done. Unless that person likes your comment. Popular | posts or number of likes per comment would be irrelevant. The | idea I guess is to allow and even encourage a friendly back | and forth without burning all your credits. | | Example. A -I released this tool! | | B - Wow nice how long did that take | | A - Thanks, 6 months. | | At this point, the conversation is done unless both like each | other's comment, which in such an exchange would be | encouraged. | | If C comes along and says 'this tool sucks', even if 50 | people like it, if A doesn't, C is done commenting for the | day. | | In fairness, I haven't really thought the whole thing out in | detail, just some rough ideas. I appreciate pointing out | challenges and dislikes with it though. | kyle-rb wrote: | What if B, for whatever reason, doesn't like A's reply? So | A is out of comments for the day, and can't respond to | anyone else who replies to them. | | B might have just logged off, or maybe their question was | bait to intentionally silence A. Either way, A is probably | annoyed with B. | kortilla wrote: | Unfortunately this doesn't help with flame wars where | people can go over to a sub thread they get agreement on to | harvest credits to then brigade the ones they disagree | with. | Saptarishi wrote: | Very interesting idea. C can still come back and comment | the next day/after a fixed time frame. I think it provides | a much needed balance between lack of interaction and over | interaction. I guess it can prevent bickering and | unnecessary arguments. | | Though if anyone wanted to set up an information farm, by | creating a bunch of accounts, where they post and like each | other, acting like different individuals, it could still | create engagement with other innocent people who could | eventually become biased, hateful and misinformed. | whitepaint wrote: | Why? | neilv wrote: | https://web.archive.org/web/20210905040333/https://minus.soc... | aerosmile wrote: | 10 years ago, I launched a small modification to a social network | I was running at the time - you could only post once per day. The | quality of the content went through the roof, but it turned the | product into more something like Medium. It had some upsides, but | also some downsides. It was amazing to see how such a simple | change can dramatically alter the nature of the product. | dylan604 wrote: | This to me is the equivalent to the war on drugs. If you limit | someone's ability on your platform, they will find a different | platform. Until you squash the need/desire, those with the | need/desire will find a solution. | | Addiction is more complicated. | maximp wrote: | This product seems to combine a few unrelated ideas. No | monetization, reverse-chronological feed, no notifications: | sweet. Easier to have cleaner, more meaningful conversations with | people, hopefully. In short, a nicer, ad-free, less-harmful | Facebook. How will you pay for it if it ever gets popular? | | I'm not sure how limited posts play into this. I think the | intention is to make users really think about what they're | posting. But the arbitrary, "nice, round number" limit just feels | existentially dreadful at best, and like a headline-generating | schtick at worst. Surely there's some other mechanism that can | nudge people towards more thoughtful, less self-promoting posts | (or whatever the goal is); maybe limiting posts to one a day? | georgeoliver wrote: | This particular implementation isn't a product (it's an art | piece). | sundarurfriend wrote: | > But the arbitrary, "nice, round number" limit just feels | existentially dreadful at best, and like a headline-generating | schtick at worst. | | From TFA: | | > Minus was created by Ben Grosser and commissioned by arebyte | Gallery (London, UK) as part of the solo exhibition Software | for Less [https://www.arebyte.com/software-for-less]. | | It's an art project. Headline-generating schticks and | existential dread are to be expected. | Stupulous wrote: | Re: one a day | | By coincidence, earlier today I had the same idea. I was | thinking about how so much of what you encounter in social | media is biased towards people who post a lot. | | In politics, for example, most people are relatively moderate. | People who spend more time talking about politics are more | likely to hold extreme positions. And people who spend the most | time talking about politics are the ones who spend the least | time evaluating their and others' positions. So the political | social media is dominated by uneducated extremists with hot | takes. (I admit this often includes myself, though I do try to | put effort into my comments). | | A possible solution to this would be reducing the amount of | allowed posts per time, which would quiet the noise and give | high-effort interactions a more level playing field. Of course, | that sucks for engagement and interferes with topics like humor | that benefit from low-effort contributions. I wonder if there's | a client-side way to bias your feed towards people who post | less frequently. | darig wrote: | Any only system that attempts to limit the bandwidth of | single accounts will be overrun by forged and stolen accounts | to make up for the restrictions. At the same time, honest | account holders are silenced, unable to counter. The system | is doomed to fail. | lcnmrn wrote: | I scaled Subreply with the same amount of money I would pay for | Netflix/Spotify. | JasonFruit wrote: | I know, I know, this is more art than a serious social medium (if | social media can be serious): but I don't think the concept is as | clever as it tries to seem. A project like this, even as an | _objet d 'art_, ought to inspire someone to interact with it, to | poke at it and see what happens -- but would anyone really | bother? The limitations would make you think carefully about what | you share with the community, but that caution works against | building any sort of community, even an ephemeral one. It's just | not attractive or engaging, like a painting you'd see in a | gallery and walk past after a glance. | johnnyApplePRNG wrote: | Interesting idea, but what's stopping someone from creating a | second account? | nacs wrote: | Nothing and that's exactly what would happen if it became | popular. | | You'd get @kanyewest7, @kanyewest289, @kanyewest3058, etc. | | Also, the younger you are when you join the network, the fewer | posts you get per year. If you join as an 18 year old, you have | a little over 1 post per year remaining. If you join at 90, you | have 10 posts per year, etc. | axelroze wrote: | Inconvenience. With the second account one has to re-friend all | the users from the first account. Also it would lead to bad | social standing as by re-friending it will be obvious they are | breaking the 100 posts per person per life rule. This could | even lead to automatic bans by studying the connection | structure. | pgroves wrote: | That's what I want... this would force me to make a different | account for every topic I might comment/post on, and they can | have their own local networks. If it's a topic that I know a | lot about (eg what I do at my day job), it would force a fresh | start every few years. | | This is in contrast to my twitter account, which is such a mess | that I don't like posting b/c "most" people who will see it | followed me for some other topic. | yellow_lead wrote: | The artist has many more gimmick projects like this if anyone | else is interested | | https://bengrosser.com/projects/ | abeppu wrote: | I love this as an idea, but I suspect as a user, I would use | either zero or one posts. | | I do like the idea that the platform can actively disrupt the | "addictive" patterns that develop elsewhere. Other things I've | wanted: | | - Instagram with an ML layer that auto-rejects pics with faces or | text. Landscapes, vistas, animals, architecture etc all would be | welcome. | | - high latency Twitter, where no post is viewable until at least | 2 weeks after it's published. Bickering threads become | impractical. People learn to post stuff that will be worth caring | about later. | | - Clearly just for entertainment and not information Facebook | alternative, in which GPT bots produce a significant fraction of | posts, impersonating users and making stuff up. Everyone quickly | learns you can't trust it, but it can still be cute/fun/humorous. | fogof wrote: | Let me take this chance to mention the "Unhook" Youtube browser | extension, which I recently added and which I think has been | having a big positive effect for me. The extension allows you | to remove (among other things, it's very customizable) the | sidebar of suggested videos from Youtube. | | This extension has been more effective for me than any other at | cutting down how much youtube I watch. Maybe the biggest factor | in this is that it doesn't ban me from youtube entirely - When | I've tried extensions like that in the past, I've always ended | up uninstalling the extension when I needed to watch a youtube | video for work. This way, I can watch a little, but the lack of | constant new recommendations keeps me from spending hours and | hours on the site. | simias wrote: | I really like like the idea of a "high latency" social network, | effectively bringing back the feeling of old snail mail (but | more public). | | 2 weeks seems unnecessarily extreme to me though, even 24h | would probably be enough to severely limit the flame potential. | It would also potentially mean that one could have a daily | routine of checking for the new content and replies and writing | your own stuff and you're good to go for the day. | | Although to really be effective I think it'd have to work on a | global tick (i.e., all new content is published once a day at a | certain time). Otherwise the new content would still slowly | drip continuously and you'd still have the addictive nature of | social networks. | | At this point I'm sort of reinventing a collaborative version | of a newspaper. | villasv wrote: | > high latency Twitter | | This seems easy enough for current twitter-fediverse-clones to | implement. | Beaver117 wrote: | For the last one: https://www.reddit.com/r/SubSimulatorGPT2/ | dunnevens wrote: | Regarding high latency twitter: maybe someone should make | FidoNet.social. For those who don't remember, back in the early | 90's your local BBS's might offer message boards connected to | the rest of the US/world. Not a continuous connection. Every | day at 2 AM (or whenever), your favorite BBS would dial into | some remote node and sync messages. | | Practical effect was a roughly 24-48 (or more) hour wait for | responses. Didn't stop bickering though. I was quite young at | the time. Asked some question about a game. The first response | was fairly hostile. Which started an argument. My first time | flamed online, and my first online argument. Which went very | slowly. | | Still, slow social media would be interesting. I kinda like the | FidoNet model. Where syncing only happens once a day. Maybe | only at a set time overnight. Faster than snailmail but you | have the full day to type out your response about why Ultima V | did not suck as your opponent claimed. With the ability to | submit a post any time, but also with the ability to edit it | until sync. I think it would encourage long posting more than | the current systems. Which may or may not be a good thing. | hkt wrote: | I've always wondered about the practicality of doing | something like fidonet over AX25/some other packet radio | system. It'd be fabulous to be able to ditch the internet and | participate in something slower and more humane. Your post | has reminded me of that ambition. These days, I'd love an | e-ink display to accompany it. Slow computing! | int_19h wrote: | With AREDN, you get a whole TCP/IP ecosystem to play with. | This could then be used to run protocols like UUCP or NNTP, | that are tailored to disconnected scenarios. | | https://arednmesh.readthedocs.io/ | int_19h wrote: | FidoNet didn't really mandate syncing once per day. It | required the nodes to sync _at least_ that often, and | established a common hour for each zone to allow direct node- | to-node connections for that purpose; but even in late 90s, | larger nodes would already sync more often in practice. | | FWIW FidoNet is still around, although most connections seem | to be over IP these days. | kripy wrote: | > Clearly just for entertainment and not information Facebook | alternative, in which GPT bots produce a significant fraction | of posts, impersonating users and making stuff up. Everyone | quickly learns you can't trust it, but it can still be | cute/fun/humorous. | | Billy Chasen developed faux-social network called Botnet. | Unfortunately, it looks like it's gone and I doubt that name | would have lasted long in the App store let alone how he | managed to get it through. | | https://www.wired.com/story/botnet-social-network-where-ever... | 0-_-0 wrote: | The latency idea actually makes a lot of sense | woko wrote: | I emulate it by deactivating as many notifications as | possible, and manually checking replies after a few days or | weeks, when I remember. I have noticed that what was a "hot" | discussion often becomes pointless and laughable after enough | time has elapsed. I usually don't feel the need to reply to | these old bickerings anymore. | Y_Y wrote: | What about a low-bandwidth Twitter, where posts load | immediately, but at 2e-3 bits per second, so that it takes two | weeks to load the whole thing. | itisit wrote: | Call it "Loris" | rzzzt wrote: | The combination of your ideas would be Mars rover Twitter: | 5-20 minutes propagation delay, 160-800 bps bandwidth using | the X-Band High-Gain Antenna - https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020 | /spacecraft/rover/communicatio... | dylan604 wrote: | >- Clearly just for entertainment and not information Facebook | alternative, in which GPT bots produce a significant fraction | of posts, impersonating users and making stuff up. Everyone | quickly learns you can't trust it, but it can still be | cute/fun/humorous. | | Aren't we pretty much there now with a so many bots posting? | aymendjellal wrote: | For the twitter latency | | Have you tried slowly.app? It's an app that simulates snail | mail Pairs you with someone based on your preferences and you | can write them a letter / email that will be delivered in a few | hours / days, based on your distance with said person | [deleted] | Andrew_nenakhov wrote: | How about the last post being a redirect to new account? | Amorymeltzer wrote: | There was a social network "this" some years back, the idea being | that you could make just one post a day. I enjoyed it a bit, and | IIRC it didn't do too terribly. | | Predictably, it's now gone. | sayhar wrote: | I have one of their stickers. It was nice! IIRC it was doing | fine, but they ran of out funding and their next round of | financing fell through unexpectedly. | quickthrower2 wrote: | The old "X" but with new cool restriction "Y" startup idea. Like | Twitter or Snapchat. | beckman466 wrote: | Sounds a bit like the dev got stuck in the childhood fantasy of | "what if the more words I speak, the sooner I die"... | [deleted] | droptablemain wrote: | I don't use social media, so I'm probably not the target audience | anyway -- but I don't understand this at all. It just seems like | an arbitrary and stupid limitation. | 01100011 wrote: | I wonder what sorts of social media we'd see if it wasn't | dependent on selling ads. The need to drive engagement and sell | things to people tends to limit the types of social media. It's | nice to see an experiment like this but I don't know if it will | go anywhere. | | I was thinking the other day of an idea where you take turns with | people in your circle to become a 'star' for a period of | time(day, days, week, hour, whatever) every so often. During that | time you get the limelight, and become the focus of the group. | Imagine that, during that tie period, you're encouraged to share | more of the boring details of life. Like 5 minutes of every hour | or two maybe. | | Something like this appeals to me because I feel like I don't | really connect with my friends on social media the way I would in | real life. If I hung out with a friend, I'd experience more of | the banalities and have a more complete picture of what their day | to day life was actually like. Obviously that's not something you | want to get blasted with every day in your feed, and it's not | something you want the responsibility to produce every day, but | let's say it happens once a year for each person. | | I just feel like the Facebook/Instagram model promotes a focus on | curated highlights of a persons life, which is fine, but doesn't | really feel like friendship. I want something that replaces the | experience of spending a day with someone. With all the distance | between us these days, either from economic migration, the | pandemic, or whatever, I really feel like I'm losing touch with | my friends. Seeing their highlights on my feed or even | communicating with them via text/im/voice just doesn't cut it. | How can we provide that sense of connection remotely? | myself248 wrote: | > take turns with people in your circle to become a 'star' for | a period of time | | I like this idea. For a while, "day in the life of a ____" | posts were very popular on imgur, and I really enjoyed it, even | though they were strangers. | | The downside I figure might be that after someone's star-time, | they get a lot of incoming attention, which then fades out. | Some people might react quite well to that and others quite | poorly, so I figure you'd need a set of other functions (say, | blast-from-the-past auto-regurgiations, or week-delayed emails | as suggested in another post here) to mitigate that and help | people of various social proclivities all feel comfortable. | | I miss letter writing. When you'd sit down and put real thought | into it because you'd know it would be the only time you'd | communicate for the next week or two. Or even tape swapping -- | my dad and uncle used to mail tapes back and forth, hour-long | audio rambles because it was more fun than the written word. | Every tape started with a delay to make sure the leader was | past the head, then the "pk-ssht" of a beer can being | opened.... | OneEyedRobot wrote: | >I wonder what sorts of social media we'd see if it wasn't | dependent on selling ads. | | I suppose you could skim through Usenet archives. | crazygringo wrote: | > _if it wasn 't dependent on selling ads. The need to drive | engagement_ | | Driving engagement isn't a consequence of ads. Netflix tries to | aggressively drive engagement too and it doesn't have ads. | | The reason is simple: the less people use a service, the more | likely they are to unsubscribe. The more likely they are to | spend their time on a competing service that's doing a better | job at driving engagement. | | Driving engagement is necessary for a business period, no | matter how they're funded. | [deleted] | juliend2 wrote: | (Site is down) | | Here's the intro video: https://vimeo.com/587261149 | [deleted] | soneca wrote: | Tangential plug, I launched my own social network without feed, | notifications, or even a way to find people there. | | It flopped everywhere I promoted it, but it is still online since | I am on free tier of the host service. | | If anyone wants to check it: | | https://www.quidsentio.com | smoldesu wrote: | > ...It flopped everywhere I promoted it... | | Have you considered lowering the barrier-of-entry from $19? For | what is effectively a journaling app, you're driving an | incredible amount of margin out of a scenario where your | audience has no incentive to pay. | soneca wrote: | It is a _shared_ journaling app, not many of those around. I | believe $19 annually is pretty low already ($1.58/month). And | people have to pay only after they have a lot of posts, so | anyone can try for free. If people aren't willing to pay | that, it does not make sense to lower the price, but rather | give up the idea. | | Even my comment above mentioning has been downvoted twice. It | is pretty clear it's not something people want. | [deleted] ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-09-06 23:00 UTC)