Ribbonfarm Is Retiring

It seems to me that the blogosphere was not a ZIRP but rather a young Internet phenomenon. Which could exists, like usenet before it, when mere access to it was a filtering mechanism.

Once you have seven billion people with virtually no access control, you can't have a public blogosphere, and groups retreat to the cozyweb.

Either way, I enjoyed it while it lasted. Thanks for the Office series!

https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-...

> Once you have seven billion people with virtually no access control, you can't have a public blogosphere, and groups retreat to the cozyweb.

Why can’t you? There’s a logical leap in this statement I don’t follow.

Those seven billion people aren't very good for the most part, and include a critical mass of spectacularly awful people. It turns out that public access forums calibrated for the small and self-selected community of mostly high quality internet pioneers aren't prepared to deal with 1000000x expansion of reachable audience. The Eternal September effect has been getting stronger ever since it's first been observed.

>It turns out that public access forums calibrated for the small and self-selected community of mostly high quality internet pioneers aren't prepared to deal with 1000000x expansion of reachable audience.

"Checklist for new theories purporting to prove that the social web is presently unworkable:"

...

26. The predicted conflicts still wouldn't be as bad as Usenet flamewars.

27. Your theory proves that Hackernews does not exist. <---

28. Audiences afraid of engaging with an unfamiliar interfaces weren't making websites in 1998 either.

...

Given that hn is the forum of yc, I think we should not feel comfortable with it's trajectory even if dang does a great job moderating. Garry Tan is in the ceo chair here and he is currently advocating for a purge of the homeless, democrats, and "anti-tech" people from San Francisco. A Republican who is too ashamed to admit being a Republican (preferring Grey vs Blue or the network state concept) , who drunkenly tweets death threats at his political opponents is not trustworthy.

I'm not sure how much things have changed, but when HN was semi-spun-off into its own autonomous unit inside YC, dang was given the option to change reporting structure so he'd report directly to the board (and not CEO) if he ever thought that was a better arrangement. If he hasn't done so, then I trust that he hasn't felt he's needed to, and that YC's leadership hasn't meddled in HN's operations.

And if he has pulled that trigger, I expect things are still fine, else he'd leave and go elsewhere.