- No infinite scroll
- No algorithmic content recommendations (ex: if you like X, you'll like Y)
- Highly targeted and moderated content
- The user is not the product (this is maybe the most important and has far reaching consequences)
This is a good example for this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37210298
> People tend to view every other social media platform negatively except for the one they personally use, and they're prepared to staunchly defend their choice no matter what.
Besides, nowadays pretty much any random content website (including newspapers) have infinite scroll, algorithmic content recommendation (btw, content recommendation is algorithmic by definition), untargeted content and ads (= the user is the product) while not always being a social media platform.
It does use "popularity" and it's gamed - maybe not algorithmic content, but it's still promoting content.
It uses Social media game to upvote/downvote comments, etc. which impacts people's behaviors and group think.
There's such a wide variety of articles on here, and a pretty wide variety of people, too. I'm always suprised by how many non-programmer types are really around here.
The user's not the product? We'll there is targeting of Job ads and such on here for Y-Combinator companies. Probably other things that you just don't know about.
It's just a niche social media company that you happen to really align with. But so are certain Reddits for people, etc.
The one thing it doesn't have here is the distractions with other links (I'm
Then we can discuss which attributes are good or bad and which attributes interact with some kind of synergy or opposition.