Speaking towards this goal, the next lesson I’ve come to learn is that imagining the New Internet is not the same as building it. In my time around the archipelago of internet reform there have been no shortage of ambitious ideas. In the process of implementing said ideas, it was revealed time and time again that ambitiousness does not equal practi... See more

Making internet hang out spaces shouldn't require scribes or high priests — & it definitely shouldn't req. mathematical prowess and/or a seed round

The natural end state of marketplaces and social media is the eventual shift from user generated supply to professionalized supply/content. They can fight it for some time, but eventually there is no other way to keep scaling (or prevent power users from peeling off)

Unfollowing toxic social media influencers makes people less hostile! In 2 large field experiments, unfollowing a few extreme influencers: -Reduced partisan animosity by 24% -Increased satisfaction with Twitter/X -Led people to share higher-quality news Effects persisting for 6+ months and most people choose not to refollow the influencers after ... See more

An Albert Einstein quote: “Somebody who only reads newspapers and at best books of contemporary authors looks to me like an extremely near-sighted person who scorns eyeglasses. He is dependent on the prejudices and fashions of his times since he never gets to see or hear anything else.” Even though on the Internet, we’re just a click away from t... See more

And there was something else to look at what urban planner William White calls triangulation. You don't have to directly engage with other people who are here. You can both be looking at the fire. You're having a nice time. You're warm, you're feeling good. And over the course of sitting for a while, there's opportunity to strike up a conversation ... See more

So right now, it’s like the sparkle and spectacle of the shininess of the internet, it’s started to fade, and we’re really aware in this moment of, you know, trash in the comments and crowds on the timeline and, you know, misinformation graffiti on the walls.

It's unfortunate because too much of a good thing (and it is a good thing – shrewd and well-intentioned people sharing the things that have helped them), when consumed in a frantic haze, becomes a bad thing (a cacophony of voices shoving advice down your throat, bolstering your belief that there's something you're doing wrong and if you just fixed ... See more