> At their core, social networks are primarily about one thing: Building social capital through signaling.<p>Maybe for the author.<p>People also use social networks without expecting or requiring any net social "capital" benefit through "signalling".<p>Examples:<p>- keeping in touch with people (privately or publicly)<p>- inform others about something they may be interested in (without needing or requiring acknowledgement)<p>- lessening loneliness<p>- gathering or dispensing intel on a topic<p>- filling in time / looking for entertainment<p>I can readily think of many more reasons than the singlular one of signalling to heighten social status. I'm sure that occurs, but listing it as a primary reason cast the article immediately in disfavour for this reader.
For this new trend of monospaced fonts on a blog - just keep in mind that proportional fonts and the entire study of kerning exists to improve readability. Monospaced fonts, while not bad, aren't optimal for reading long form text.
This post has been submitted 7 times (but not by the same users) in the last 5 months <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=julian.digital" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=julian.digital</a><p>I don't know what to think of that. In one way the articles of Julian are always interesting articles, but in another way it just shows that even on HN bruteforce-posting works<p>Obviously (2020)
> <i>Has anyone built a multiplayer version of Anki yet? Flash cards would be a perfect proof-of-knowledge mechanism and could easily be turned into a game where you compete against friends.</i><p>Isn't this basically Duolingo? Complete with internet points, leaderboards, and reinforcement mechanisms for signing up your friends.
I don't mean to be the typical "stick-in-the-mud" HN poster here, but the concept of "proof mechanisms" is absolute nonsense. Anything can be a proof mechanism, and therefore nothing is. See that Benz? It's proof that she's got money. See that guy's biceps? It's proof that he lifts heavy weights. See my clean apartment? It's proof that I just spent 4 hours cleaning it.<p>"Proof mechanisms" are vacuous. It would be more interesting to see why some social networks nail building feedback loops that give us that sweet dopamine hit and compel us to come back for more (Twitter, Instagram, Facebook) and why others suck at it (Google+, MySpace)
Author asks for "Strava for reading". Goodreads already has this functionality. You show off which books you have read, rate and review them, and set goals for books read per year, then compare with your 'friends'.<p>The implementation is a constant source of complaints here and other places, but it does have the basic idea the author wishes for.
A smaller network that more obviously encourages creative production is streak club. [1] Not altogether different from the mainstream networks, but the clear expectation of both content creation and categorisation boosts the signal to noise ratio. Not affiliated and can't personally speak to it's effectiveness to motivate, but certainly an interesting example.<p>[1] <a href="https://streak.club/streaks" rel="nofollow">https://streak.club/streaks</a>
Apparently I'm not the only one trying to load this page;<p>Text-only cache link (full wouldn't load either):
<a href="https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Eh061jXf0IkJ:https://julian.digital/2020/08/06/proof-of-x/&strip=1" rel="nofollow">https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Eh061j...</a>
For those interested in signalling, you might also check out "Too Cool For School? Signalling and Countersignalling" <a href="https://kelley.iu.edu/riharbau/cs-randfinal.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://kelley.iu.edu/riharbau/cs-randfinal.pdf</a>
So many things in this post are just baffling.<p>> The cost to participate in TikTok’s status game is a lot higher than Instagram’s (compare a well-made dance choreography on TikTok to your median Instagram travel post)<p>TikTok is dominated by teenagers dancing in their bedrooms. What does he mean by "cost"? Because if it's financial cost, making a viral TokTok costs nothing, whereas taking an instagram photo with your partner on a hill in Athens at least costs two tickets to Athens. It's not technical skill either, most TikTok stars have not studied for years.
I am attempting to build a social network that is designed to generate truth, or at least emphasize expertise rather that simply attention.<p>I think of social networks like brains. They're both a graph of interconnected nodes that pass messages. The problem with our networks now as I see it is that the social networks are set up to maximize message transmission (i.e. attention) rather than truth.<p>We need a layer on top, like the neocortex, to connect the nodes and give them different weights to generate reliable outputs like a machine learning model does. That's what I'm building.
I'm of two minds about this sort of analysis of social capital.<p>1. It's interesting; a lot of human behavior involves presentation to other human beings, and social media platforms can definitely be seen as a medium for signalling.<p>2. It's dismal and reductive and other words that signal that I don't like it for personal reasons.
I find it weird how no one here in the comments acknowledges this signalling behaviour. I identify to this, see it as a problem and fight it every day. It's present everywhere, I realise that I always want to signal that I'm doing something nice to others or cool that people could/should envy me for.<p>I'm aware of it but it's not enough to make it disappear. How did you handle it?