I do like the reader-constructed and buddy reads concepts. A couple of these are ideas I already plan to implement in small pockets after… certain projects are finished. Until then, I’ll stick with my regular “this was made by an actual human” patterns: Run-on sentences, lengthy tangents, weird-yet-not-incorrect phrasing for the mundane, a sprinkle of profanity and a singular clever pun out of God damn nowhere.
reader-constructed: as more readers interact with the post and highlight or heart passages, the styling emphasizes text that readers like and deemphasizes (or even collapses) text that few readers have interacted with, so the essay evolves and tightens based on reader input
I really would not want other people to be able to edit my writing this way.
With that said, I do like to see which parts of a text that people choose to respond or react to, which is (part of ) why I like when comment sections allow formatting for blockquotes.
Most of these novel limits feel more like they will repel readers rather than engage them
not saying it’s bad, but if it’s inconvenient, I still think it’s losing a battle on Ai’s terms. I think winning looks like changing things to suit human’s terms - when things move at a speed people actually operate, they’re much better at calling out and flagging bots and bad actors. Humans are naturally good at playing phone-tree, if that information is able to persist. It’s harder to last as a bot in rich community contexts. And little incentive with low ad revenue.
Feed stuff just operates at too big of a volume and too fast a speed. People pull the fire-alarm on others, but in a few minutes its gone, so it relies on reblogging/retweeting/etc to keep fire alarms alive, and that’s how you get trapped on a platform where fire alarms are going 24/7 with no region decay so everything in the world is on fire all of the time.
I think the geofenced idea was nice for that reason, but yeah ultimately if things persist on huge feed-y platforms, it breaks human ability to keep track of its tribe, so bots get past the defenses everywhere and can churn ad revenue on muck. But I know it will take a colossal amount of feed rot and mistrust to cause an exodus and reliance on slower or curated platforms.
I think Wiki is an example of something with great utility, vetting, and information persistence though. I know they have notes about Ai writing happening there too, but there are voluntary bookkeeprs reviewing articles to clean and version check them, which is not something that really happens often online and I much appreciate.
// just my thoughts, they are open ended, don’t take too seriously
I’m reminded of this lovely piece on using creative forms to increase legibility:
That piece also uses recursive summaries which I think are particularly interesting.
Also wrt geofencing, I appreciate the initiative to lower “reach”, but I don’t think using physical location for it makes sense - it removes some of the digital worlds’ best advantages. I’d rather see efforts in combatting virality in other ways.
It would be interesting, as an experiment, to simply implement the “geolocking” randomly, forming groups of people as arbitrarily as possible. What sorts of communities would form? Would there be communities? Would the experiment fail every time? What would people focus on to unite around?
I agree, but it would be fun to do this on one page, sort of like a collaboratively-edited novel. It kind of reminds me of Soundcloud, which will let you highlight a part of the track you’re listening to and comment on it. Overall I’m not a fan of social networks, but that is one part of Soundcloud I’ve always really liked. I enjoy hovering over the songs I’m listening to and seeing what parts people liked the most.
I replied on her site that putting links in your posts is a good way to signal that you’re human. Links are the reason the web was invented in the first place. They break the silos and create community.
Unfortunately links have long been the bread and butter of backlink SEO spammers, so that’s no guarantee of authenticity unfortunately, as much as I love links.
Good point. You would have to look at where the links go. If it’s to an indie blogger, that’s a good sign. BTW, In Praise of Links is quite the amazing collection.
Edit: Two days later, I couldn’t resist publishing my own take on links.