Watching people on here and nostr slowly realize what Facebook, Twitter and all the others figured out a decade ago. Most people, most of the time, are only capable of continuous partial attention. They don’t want challenging, calorically expensive content that makes them think and change their minds. They want to have their brains tickled while on the toilet, at a red light, while they should be working, etc.
At least you’re paid for generating content here, but to fight against these tendencies is to fight against how brains are wired.
Another difference is that, contrary to those other platforms, high-quality, long-form and thoughtful content does get rewarded here.
Here's what I've noticed, as someone who's hungry for this and bitches about it from time to time: there's a sizeable group of lurkers (not only lurkers, but many of them are lurkers) who come out of the woodwork on SN when you give them something smart and thoughtful. So if that's the kind of thing you want, don't just bemoan its absence, be an active force in creating it, and you'll find a horde of others hungry for the same thing.
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Maybe it’s hard to tell from text, but I’m not bemoaning anything. I presented a theory that explains past data and I think will be accurate predicting future data. Your thesis is mutually exclusive from mine. I’m not saying all long form content isn’t appreciated by anyone and you’re not explaining how copy pasting a link from Twitter gets so many sats.
I’ve seen this play out with many communities from hacking, to D&D, to Napster, to Bitcoin. As this site gets more popular and we get a lower geek to mop ratio, it’s going to take more effort to sift through the noise to find good content. I don’t see anything different in the incentive structure here to prevent what happened to Twitter 20 years ago.
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I don’t see anything different in the incentive structure here to prevent what happened to Twitter 20 years ago.
We'll see how it shakes out, but if you don't see anything different in the incentive structure then I'm not sure where exactly you're looking. The incentive structure couldn't be more different and is one of the most remarkable things about SN.
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10 sats \ 0 replies \ @ek 28 Jan
I’ve seen this play out with many communities from hacking, to D&D, to Napster, to Bitcoin. As this site gets more popular and we get a lower geek to mop ratio, it’s going to take more effort to sift through the noise to find good content. I don’t see anything different in the incentive structure here to prevent what happened to Twitter 20 years ago.
Btw, you're talking about eternal September right? Have some sats because it's an important topic to discuss :)
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you’re not explaining how copy pasting a link from Twitter gets so many sats.
I tried to explain it here. But the short answer is that it got so many sats because it's relevant news from a credible source. I am not on twitter so I would probably have missed it if @C_Otto wouldn't have posted it here--or someone else. So we're rewarding the discovery and sharing it with us.
Be the first to post such kind of news and you'll get rewarded and we get fast news in return.
Btw, I don't necessarily disagree with you here:
Most people, most of the time, are only capable of continuous partial attention. They don’t want challenging, calorically expensive content that makes them think and change their minds. They want to have their brains tickled while on the toilet, at a red light, while they should be working, etc.
But I think you're ignoring that the incentives are misaligned on other platforms. I don't think people want it as much as the platforms push it. The other platforms rely on ad revenue so they want people to spend as much time as possible on their platforms.
Here, on SN, the incentives are more aligned with what users want: You pay to post stuff, you get paid for posting good stuff.
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