People in the rationalist community have complained about Facebook in the past, and this position looks like it is getting more mainstream. It seems possible that there will be an opening for new social media platforms. Before long, journalists may start writing listicles with titles like “9 Facebook Killers to Watch in 2018”. LW2 now has an active userbase, a steady volume of posts, and an aesthetic that stands in stark contrast to Facebook’s. So it might make an interesting entry in such a listicle. It seems worth at least briefly considering doing some publicist work by e.g. reaching out to the journalist who wrote this article to try to get LW2 in the running for “next hot social media platform” (in case such a race is about to get run). There’s the potential benefit of having rationalist memes reach a much broader audience, but also the potential risk of the site’s culture change (hopefully the LW2 karma mechanism would preserve the site’s culture to some degree). I don’t have a particular opinion on whether the risks outweight the benefits, I just wanted to put this possibility on the dev team’s radar.
People in the rationalist community have complained about Facebook in the past, and this position looks like it is getting more mainstream. It seems possible that there will be an opening for new social media platforms. Before long, journalists may start writing listicles with titles like “9 Facebook Killers to Watch in 2018”. LW2 now has an active userbase, a steady volume of posts, and an aesthetic that stands in stark contrast to Facebook’s. So it might make an interesting entry in such a listicle. It seems worth at least briefly considering doing some publicist work by e.g. reaching out to the journalist who wrote this article to try to get LW2 in the running for “next hot social media platform” (in case such a race is about to get run). There’s the potential benefit of having rationalist memes reach a much broader audience, but also the potential risk of the site’s culture change (hopefully the LW2 karma mechanism would preserve the site’s culture to some degree). I don’t have a particular opinion on whether the risks outweight the benefits, I just wanted to put this possibility on the dev team’s radar.
I really don’t think LW wants to be the next hot social media platform.