PG: The biggest source of stress for me at YC was running HN

I think there's a larger point in what he said. Basically all current social media ends up optimizing for creating outrage, spawning mobs, less thoughtful discussion and more vitriolic arguments, etc. It's becoming a real concern to me that this is going to drive us into some kind of civil war or something if we don't find some way to check it.

The outrage seems to be like a drug. Nothing generates engagement quite like it, even if it's toxic in the long-term. So all social media platforms that embrace it grow bigger until they become near-monopolies, and all that don't so far have had a hard time growing userbases, making money, and generally fade into irrelevance.

It would be a real service to society IMO if we could find a way to somehow generate enough engagement and energy to challenge the big players without the outrage culture.

I think about it quite differently —- “outrage culture” has always existed. White flight, lynchings of black men suspected of rape, “mob justice”, “community justice”.

Because we saw that this was a dead end, we created institutions whose purpose was justice. Their mission was unfulfilled because the justice was not meted out equally, and this racist backlash in the form of outrage culture fought against it strongly (still does).

A few things have changed though — before 24/7 news we didn’t have constant, unfiltered access to a stream of all that was wrong in the world. People with differing opinions to us ranging from benign to hateful, constant tragedy, etc.

And additionally, due to the rot of our democratic institutions (unions, etc.) and the growing imbalance of power between everyday people and elites, people are starting to turn towards outrage culture as a solution to societal ills again. And so the calls for “community justice” and the sort return as well. The difference this time is that social media has democratized access to a voice. So now anyone and any cause can be fought for, and with minimal effort.

Fixing social media won’t fix outrage culture, it will just mean that the only people with the power utilize it will be financial and racial elites.

If we want to get rid of it entirely, we need to make our society more democratic.