a thoughtful web.
Good ideas and conversation. No ads, no tracking.   Login or Take a Tour!
comment
blackfox026  ·  3302 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: This Old Hubski: What is, and what could be

I don't often mute or block users on this site unless they're spammers, so most of my experience with curating content comes from unfollowing people on my Facebook feed. One thing I thought was a rare good idea on Facebook's part was a suggestion to reconnect with unfollowed users. It was non-intrusive, but served as a reminder that I'd drastically altered the content of the website. I thought this might be worth reconsidering, so I re-followed all of those users. And while I ended up unfollowing almost all of them again within a week, I've left a couple of them in my feed--mostly people I'd disagreed with to the point I became annoyed with their posts. I've realized that it's good to have their opinions in my feed because it gives me a real sense of who the people around me are, even if some of their opinions are absurd.

It's difficult to notice where the line is between removing offensive or worthless content, and constructing a personal echo-chamber of non-objectionable content in order to make yourself feel comfortable and validated. But while I don't think the latter is something that's inherently bad, a subtle reminder of how much you're altering the flow of information might be a good thing. Maybe a subtle (2) in the bottom corner of a given post or comment to show that two child comments have been filtered out. For users who never really considered the extent of their filter, it could provide an opportunity to reflect on that, and possibly reintroduce some objectionable content into their feed. For everyone else, it could be a reminder to thank the mods for providing them them tools to prevent ignorant commenters from raising their blood pressure.