The weirder thing is that redditors make it possible to own categories.
The name of the subreddit shouldn't matter much at all. For each category there are several subreddits but people don't actively move to the subreddits with the best moderators.
For aggregators as a whole, it's the same. Places like https://tildes.net/ don't have many visitors even though Reddit's flaws should incentivize significant amounts of users to try other aggregators.
>Why do I find myself in this situation? Is it FOMO driving me to want to keep track of everything? Perhaps it’s some form of perfectionism or even an addiction.
My preferred explanation is Repetition compulsion [1].
>Whatever the cause, the end result is the same: I spend a huge amount of time collecting a never-ending stream of links, notes, and thoughts, only to never actually go back and read them again.
Do those notes have to be read again by the one who creates them? Connecting information and publishing that on social media allows others to do the next steps.
The opposite of information hoarding is not unexciting, mind-numbing work. The opposite of information hoarding is doing what you want to do.
If somebody can do something nice, and still does information hoarding, things become interesting.
That's why it's more than a habit:
>Repetition compulsion is the unconscious tendency of a person to repeat a traumatic event or its circumstances
Information hoarding is the perfect repeatable event. There is an almost infinite supply of rewarding ideas and there is no physical obstacle building up that triggers invention from somebody else.
With those conditions, any traumatic event, any drama, can be projected onto these situations until the lesson is learned.
The cruel paradox of the information hoarder community is that they haven't managed to create a list of information that helps to resolves their unfortunate condition.
- Please offer the option to test the web app without having to register an account. The data could be static so that it doesn't tax your servers.
- Using votes is good, allowing users to vote would be better. Could you use ActivityPub to allow users to publish their votes and pool them within the Fediverse? I am waiting for a future where all RSS readers share their votes so that good content is highlighted.
- If you use ActivityPub, you could also enable your users to comment on posts.
>It has a CMS and social network to organize, share, and discover with others
What's your opinion on ActivityPub? Could you make the network compatible so that annotations can be shared on Mastodon and people with a Mastodon account can add comments to any highlight they find on Kontxt.io?
Would it be possible to export the data so that the notes, highlights and annotations can be used in case you discontinue Kontxt.io?
What I am missing from tools like Hypothes.is is the ability to interact with ActivityPub accounts. There is too much frictions if others have to create a hypothes.is account before they can react to a highlight or annotation.
>If Google isn’t making any money from you on Gmail
Isn't Gmail the core pillar of Google's ad network? Whoever is logged into Gmail tells Google who is using an IP address.
Facebook is the other ad network because they can also link requests to ids.
Facebook can monetize Instagram because they can sell targeted ads. Likewise, Google can monetize Youtube. If ads can be sold without those ids, Instagram and Youtube could have grown on their won.
Is this an emperor's clothing situation and nobody talks about this or do I have a complete misunderstanding of ad technology?
> Isn't Gmail the core pillar of Google's ad network?
Absolutely. GMail is the main reason people are logged into their Google account all the time on their computers and mobile devices. It is absolutely essential for tracking.
> We do not scan or read your Gmail messages to show you ads
If you have a work or school account, you will never be shown ads in Gmail.
> When you use your personal Google account and open the promotions or social tabs in Gmail, you'll see ads that were selected to be the most useful and relevant for you. The process of selecting and showing personalized ads in Gmail is fully automated. These ads are shown to you based on your online activity while you're signed into Google, however we do not process email content to serve ads.
I know a company that once worked on an unannounced product, X, a few years ago. At the time, you could Google "who made X," and Google would correctly show you that company. It was a start-up size business using GSuite, so far too unlikely to be a lucky guess by Google.
This caused no damage as the public needed to know what X was to Google it, and it was unannounced. But it was suspicious. Either Google was scanning GSuite Gmail or Drive accounts, or perhaps someone stored a document on or sent an email to a personal Google account with some keywords. How these things happen is always very opaque with companies like Google.
Our maybe an internal page was accidentally externally accessible, someone internal visited it in Chrome, and the URL got added to the list of things to scrape.
I've see this without Gsuite vector. Could be employees logged in to personal device and leaking through those interactions. Or email to external investors, consultants, or contractors? Send something out to your external translation or localization team, ad agency, or copy editor? Difficult not to have some leakage.
All of these could be true. However, the start-up was using GSuite a lot. It constituted about 90% of the company's interactions with Google. It's impossible to certainly know what happened since Google can't be asked where it got its data.
End-to-end encryption with keys only you control is really the only type that matters from a privacy point of view. Encryption at rest or in transit behind the scenes helps protect against some actors but does not give you privacy.
The zero-setup encryption offered by cloud providers is also smoke and mirrors. It's a key they control, so while it may improve security against someone internal snooping on a raw SAN device it doesn't do much for your privacy.
In most cases the same information you can glean from someone’s email inbox, you can likely glean the same accuracy by looking at their google search history.
I would guess Google doesn’t read emails because the data is more difficult to parse (there’s a lot of it) and, when compared to intent based interests that can be gleaned from your google searches, the value of the content in your inbox is lower than most people think.
> Whoever is logged into Gmail tells Google who is using an IP address.
Google already has most people's IP address through search. Google is just providing free email because they want control, and I am willing to bet that it would be very hard to make profit, both direct or indirect, through gmail.
Without the Google login, Google has a bunch of 32-bit numbers from people’s search activity. With gmail, they now know a lot more about what’s behind those 32-bit numbers.
Let's remember that Gmail opened the door for Google to become the default identity provider for many people. A lot of consumer and behavioral data can be inferred from every service account tied via OAuth to google.
Were you searching for homes to buy? You'll probably use your google account. Bought a couple of home automation devices, cameras, and doorbells? Chances are you are using a google login.
Use Waze in your car? Now google knows what car you drive and the places where you go and can tie it nicely with all other pieces of data because you are using your google account.
This is invaluable for them. From your usage of a google account, they can infer your family arrangements, probably what your job is, your income and wealth level, tastes and habits.
They may be paying to be the first option in "choose your email provider" lists. Although Apple's Mail.app (both iOS and macOS) offers their own and Microsoft's services before Google's.
For Google, the easiest way to gain new GMail users is to not deliver mail coming to existing users from 3rd party services or to throw it into trash/spam folders for no reason.
I’m describing using telemetry correlating which IP addresses/devices have used specific gmail accounts, nothing to do with the contents of those emails.
The gmail account just as a correlation ID has a ton of value in search.
The data from Gmail isn't what's valuable to Google, it's the fact that targeted ads are more profitable and Google can target you with ads accurately because you logged in and identified yourself to access Gmail.
Google did make money providing email for one of my companies with G Suite. Then something screwed up happened that disrupted service, their support was worse than useless, and I will never pay for any non-advertising Google product ever again.
>How often, truly, do you find yourself wanting to link a task in your todo list app to a file in Dropbox
Links are much more useful once notes and todo lists are shared and published. I am surprised that not all tools for thought have standardized on ActivityPub to enable their users to connect each other's notes. People with an account could correct mistakes or link to crucial knowledge that was overlooked.
Like Wikipedia, information would grow "on its own". Important ideas could be identified, information could be collected until it is enough for further steps.
Zettelkasten is great for one person but that's for prolific people who process a massive amount of information. With the internet, a group of average people can turn into a genius by collectively collecting information and turning it into a useful form.
The printing press made it easy to quickly share finished thoughts, boosting science and bringing the industrial revolution. There should be an equal opportunity for progress when we start sharing unfinished thoughts.
What could change our attitude about privacy? We share code, but only good looking code. We share thoughts, but only finished articles and good looking tweets. This inhibits collaboration on the most difficult part of creating ideas.
AI like ChatGPT can become supportive. But why wait for a technical solution if a social solution is possible? What's better than a to-do list which is resolved or made easy because others just happen to have the necessary resources available?
I hope that Obsidian extends the social network beyond Discord integration. Those digital gardens only grow on their own when others can enrich notes and annotate ideas.
>writing software for banks or insurance companies
Look at Gimp. It's the software that people like to write but not the one designers like to use.
There was this submission: 'Ask HN: How might HN build a social network together?' [1]. With Mastodon, people create a social network, but one that is unnecessarily inefficient. Why hasn't that submission led to a better social network?
Ford is quoted with saying: 'People would have asked for faster horses'.
How do you give the people with new ideas the power to implement them?
You empower people by making sure their basic needs are taken care of so they have the freedom to fully pursue these projects.
It’s no wonder projects like GIMP don’t take off because these developers work on it in their spare time. They don’t have the time or energy to fully commit to it because they’re busy being forced to write someone else’s software.
Linux, for example, was built over the course of 8 years while Linus Torvalds was in college. He was able to do so because his college in Finland provided room and board and the freedom to pursue his interests alongside his studies.
>You empower people by making sure their basic needs are taken care of so they have the freedom to fully pursue these projects.
This is interesting because you look at the situation from a different point of view. I was wondering how somebody can influence others to create change and you focus on how to remove influence to create change.
I believe that you can never supply enough resources for people to feel free to implement change. What are the basic needs that have to be met? I would like to say that they are already met. Every software developer can reduce their working hours to a minimum and have ample time to pursue whatever they want.
People are already empowered but they lack motivation. Compared to the global south, the north has plenty of resources. But most citizens don't invest them. Instead they spend them on vacations, clothing, cars and houses because they want to match their peers.
With that perspective, what could incentivize people whose basic needs are met, to spend their time on innovations?
Most people spend the best part of their day pursuing their employers interests instead of their own. It's no wonder people want to relax during their time off! Clothing, cars, and houses become coping mechanisms for dealing with their situation. This is a very real reality for a lot of people.
Reducing your hours is a risky proposal. Even asking your boss about it can be a big risk. Becoming a contractor is a big risk too. The reality is that, for most people, their boss owns most of their lives, and trying to go off on their own is very risky. Plus you risk messing up your resume and having to explain yourself which is yet another thing working against you.
So yes, being employed might put food on your table and a roof over your head. If your a software developer it'll even let you buy gadgets and take vacations. However, the current system prevents people from reaching farther up Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, because taking that next step to pursue your own interests in very risky and expensive.
So to answer your question, I don't think you need incentives. You need to enable people to pursue their intrinsic motivations.
How much can be accomplished by somebody who isn't willing to take as much risk for their idea as women take for having a child? Of course, paternity leave shows that most men need an incentive to take time off for their children.
But that's kind of the point. In a world where there is no majority to give people the space for their intrinsic motivation, who is going to pursue innovative ideas? People could make it socially acceptable to take time off or to work less, but they don't. If you have to nudge them to make that change, you are back at square one: 'How do you give the people with new ideas the power to implement them?'
If it is work itself that inhibits people from pursuing their intrinsic motivation, how could you make it economically viable to give everybody the space for their intrinsic motivations? If it is not viable, doesn't that leave us with incentives?
I think you’re missing the point. I’m not interested in a business relationship with you. The point is that I need certain things to get done, and it’s not feasible to sit around and hope that enough people decide to take on my specific problems as their passion project. And if taking care of someone’s basic needs is sufficient, why would they work on my software when they could do anything else that is more enjoyable?
The fact that you think I have any interest in working with you is amazing. I have negative interest in that.
You proved my point again. Everything in your responses is about YOU and YOUR software and what people can do for YOU.
If you want someone to work on your project you should have to convince them that it’s worth their time. Instead they rely on you for insurance and a livelihood. If you think your employees would still work for you if they had the freedom to pursue their own interests then I have a bridge to sell you.
Amazon doesn't make profits and thus doesn't pay taxes. Bezos doesn't sell much and thus doesn't pay taxes either. Changing rates wouldn't change anything. Tax rates only affect the middle class, and as @jliptzin has pointed out, those tax rates are quite similar.
The EU has a lower output because there are fewer investors. One successful startup creates wealth in the hand of knowledgeable people who can create the next startup. There are simply not thousands of millionaires and billionaires who can successfully pick the next round. There is also less of a network effect where venture capitalists can offer their portfolio as leads for the sales teams of their new investments.
The Nordic welfare levels can turn out to be the path to European success. It's easier to start an idea when failure doesn't end in an existential crisis.
The name of the subreddit shouldn't matter much at all. For each category there are several subreddits but people don't actively move to the subreddits with the best moderators.
For aggregators as a whole, it's the same. Places like https://tildes.net/ don't have many visitors even though Reddit's flaws should incentivize significant amounts of users to try other aggregators.