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(This post was prompted by an interesting discussion w/ @nemo.)
We all bring expectations about the nature of online interaction. The general default is that you say something once, and then it sticks around forever. If you're old enough, shit you said decades ago can haunt you, or at the least be an embarassment to your future self. That bad hair. Those idiot takes, when you were stoned and thought you were so smart.
But we've sort of come to terms with that, and norms are evolving. People are generally more forgiving of our past selves. If you've been around long enough, you've either been caught out or can vividly imagine how you might ahve been. However, new tech means new possibilities. I'm posting this message on SN, which makes me wonder, what kind of interaction model do people want for a site like SN? I can imagine two poles at opposite ends of a continuum.
Ephemeral: pretend SN is like your local bar. If you happen to be at the bar when I'm there, and I say something, you get to hear it. If you're not there, you don't. At best, other people who did hear what I said, who are still there when you arrive, can tell you. Maybe you can figure it out indirectly.
Permanent: pretend like SN is a university, where lectures and comments made during the lecture are part of the historical record; or a newspaper, where people write articles, and then other people send in comments about those articles, which are printed in later editions, and which exist forever, or at least until the newspaper goes out of print.
It's worth saying that the "ephemeral" pole is actually not really an option in a digital world -- the 1990s should have taught us that -- but you can insert different amounts of friction to create ephemerality for all but the most motivated "attackers" if you want to.
You can also set up incentives in a way to bias toward one thing or another -- if you imagine in 2026, when SN is way more popular, evergreen content could accrue the author an expontential income stream: great articles / comments just keep harvesting sats, and, better yet, keep drawing additional participation in an extended capital formation process. Permanent and discoverable content could really amount to something, eventually.
Anyway, it's an interesting thing to think about. You can imagine designing to maximize ephemerality (e.g., all posts / comments auto-delete after x hours / days) but what would such design choices afford? What would SN be like if it were designed to be a perpetual now? What kind of relationships could we have? In real-life, in small groups, this works -- think of your corner bar, or your gym, or whatever. Online, is it viable?
I've been pondering this for a while. The more I do, the more I conclude that this is a thing people generally default to -- online interaction works the way it's always worked. You know what you're getting. But if you're being more intentional about it, what design choices fall out from your decisions, and what are the consequences of those choices?

Stacker News

I recognise that 80% of the magic of SN is the semi-ephemeral nature. Opening up a window to check the latest ‘news’ and brainwaves, that we’re all interested in. With some abilities to go back and find old stuff, if you’re determined.
I’m coming round to the opinion that this shouldn’t change much here. However I do believe too that older posts could be elevated at opportune times. Like:
  • “you read this article, you may be interested in these too..”
  • “here is what was popular 1 year ago”
  • “this post is trending again from 3 months ago”
  • “this post has been edited with more up to date information”

Against Ephemeral

Ultimately, on the subject of properly ephemeral content, it’s a personal choice. I don’t particularly like seeing the remains of past information and messages that were once there, but are now not, it degrades trust in that person, as well as the reading experience for others.
What I would prefer is for people to have better tools to create ephemeral profiles, to post content that they don’t feel comfortable sharing on their profile.
Yes, it takes a lot of cognitive load, but we need to have easy & accessible coin control for our thoughts. If I post about my favourite sports team, you don’t need to be interested in my thoughts about my favourite investments also. Everything should be possible to be segregated, if we wish. Perhaps open source AI we run locally should help us keep those ‘profiles’ distinct.
We should be able to wear our Neo sunglasses one day and our beach shorts the next, without the cognitive overhead of wondering who is tracking and profiling you and merging both ‘personas’. We need better tools for this.

For Ephemeral

Maybe there’s a place here for certain posts being ephemeral and disappearing but if so it requires careful thought. I believe it shouldn’t damage the experience for others who have engaged. Commenters should be made aware before posting, that their thoughts will also self-destruct if they engage. Better to have no record whatsoever of the conversation, than what looks like a dead-end, or someone who has talked with a brick wall.
However as mentioned, I also think many of the use cases that this provides would be overcome by better profile switching & segregation. Or private communities in the form of buy-in or invite-only groups on Nostr. Smaller communities reduce the attack surface of potential privacy leaks. And I think from what I am seeing with the SN development, this is the likely direction the site will go also. For that reason, I’m extremely happy to be using a site with talented brains behind it, as well as to be here and welcomed. Stacker News is in great hands & shape. Long may it continue.
P.S. Thanks for tagging @elvismercury
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A brief reflection on the day after:
@nemo has deleted all his remarks, which leave comments of the post looking like a forest where a harvester has made a pass, a litter of stumps and scattered branches; or the aftermath of a party, where what's left is dirty dishes and empty glasses on tables.
Looking through my notifications, I wonder if @davidw would weigh in -- as someone who's been a prolific poster and commenter, recently, I'm curious how you see this topic, and the fruits of your own expression.
And to get meta: what I'm doing now (talking about this post after it's stopped being "live") is a thing that makes no sense in ephemeral-mode. It raises the question about whether this post, and the ideas that we've explored here, are things of enduring value that should endure over time?
Or whether they should blow away like fallen leaves.
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@nemo come back, SN needs you! ❤️🩷🧡💛💚💙🩵💜🤎🖤🩶🤍
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Get back in the goldfish bowl, @nemo. We’ve got no one to stare at today.
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I would like to see Stacker News build up more evergreen-ness mechanisms, but I like that it's fairly ephemeral. It's not quite that we have to be on at the same time, but if I miss something by a day or two, I missed out on something. The ephemerality of SN makes regular engagement more important and I think it makes the tone more conversational.
I've seen people kick around various ideas to help with rediscovering good older content. One that just occurred to me (apologies if this is already someone's idea) is a "This Day on Stacker News" page that displays the top posts from prior years. (Is there an analogue of years in block-time? Is that halvings? "At This Point in Prior Halvings", maybe.) If something gets rediscovered and catches people's attention it could end up back on the regular "home" or "top" pages.
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Aye, I did come up with a similar idea where a 'finder' could discover an older post and share the sats with the original creator - find that post, from not so long ago, here:
There were a few ideas exchanged with other if this might help to flesh your idea out further.
I like the way you name jammed on referencing block-time. We should be inventive with words and phrases.
Sometimes they stick!
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Thanks. I'm quite likely the dumbest person on here wrt bitcoin, so I'm glad that ignorance can provide inadvertent value.
I think that was the post I was thinking about, too.
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You got me on a good day. I'm like this the rest of the time http://media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/27/75/88/277588a81aea52ec6eb71d1c149ef06f.jpg
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The old Monty Python guy! I have a piece of brain lodged in my head
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Sorry to hear of your troubles. Clearly you're not missing a beat.
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To tell you the truth Sig, I don't see it as a full scale negative - just another wacky adventure in the book of my life.
It's enabled me to spend more time with my loved ones and make sure my 'energies' go to what's important 😁
I missed this the first time through, but I love this idea of incentivizing value-creation on older stuff. Brilliant!
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Agreed re evergreen. Feels quite fleeting content at the moment.
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Do you have any favorite ideas for how to accomplish evergreenness?
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Genuinely I don’t and I have thought pretty hard about it. Is it a problem Reddit had? Maybe pinned popular posts to continue engagement (doesn’t stop the deleting issue) or ‘sats to delete’ few? Really not sure.
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Min-thievery? That's something to really be afraid of.
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You have nothing to worry about. I may be able to steal ideas directly from your mind, but I'm also too lazy to make long form posts.
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The Achilles heel, thank god.
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Make the post anyway. Don't let me stop you. How were you thinking it should work?
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Well, if it needs a well made post then I'm definitely not your man (or woman or bot or whatever I might be).
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Every act is permanent and ephemeral at the same time, even irl. Permanent because the impact of the act has butterfly effects and ephemeral because the context can not be recreated. My objective is to strive to be worthy of permanence, even if its a 🤪 🚀 moment
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One way to combine both would be to have SN as a forum (as it is now) and a chat room / shout box for the more ephemeral side of interaction within the same community.
I know communities where this works well. It also reduces the chatter on the forum.
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ephermeral for life
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I used to use the evergreen 🌲 notes app
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You're scaring me, man!
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Another, less-scary lens: if btc succeeds, it means (by definition) that everybody will be using it. It's already mainstream enough to be discussed on MSM, in presidential primary debates, etc. Random dipshits I went to high school with have Coinbase accounts.
If I was a well-known pro-btc "personality" from 2011 I might feel differently, and those folks should be careful. If it's known that you're super-rich then you should be careful in every era, regardless of the form your wealth takes; and btc will indeed pose unique challenges.
But the days of worrying about btc-specific extortion for being publicly interested w/ btc is decaying exponentially, imo.
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This is one of these comments where it's probably way more funny to not know what @nemo wrote than to know what @nemo wrote, lol :)
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Oh, don't get me wrong. Your original reply was spot on. That's why I'm scared.
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I have been thinking about this a lot lately.
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He's coding the prediction market thing so hard he passed out.
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