Very thoughtful analysis. I particularly like the insight around the industry metrics and Goodhart's Law. “DAU” and the like align with social media companies’ interests of increasing attention and time on site, which lead to more ad revenue. But, they are at odds with their users’ interests, or at least don’t consider user costs (ie time). I wonder if a social product could thrive based on the principle of “efficient” usage, a la the platform works on my behalf to keep me efficiently informed on what’s going on in my network and considers the cost tradeoffs of my time and attention. I suspect I could feel very “up to date” on the things I care about most by checking into a social product ~weekly with a thoughtfully curated digest of content.
Aren't a lot of users on there simply to waste time?
It costs next to nothing, provides some sort of sensation in your brain that you're doing things, you might see some neat pictures or videos. It's like a different kind of video game where you can't win and it's appealing to nearly every age group, gender, demographic.
I can see a platform that gives you just the data you need to stay informed working, although what data you wish to receive and how quickly seems like a potential stumbling point.
Perhaps you don't want to receive news about celebrities, _unless_ it involves someone you care deeply about, for example Michael Jackson. It would require quite a bit of tailoring for a platform to be able to curate for that.
Having tried (and failed) to build a more privacy friendly social network, I can confidently tell you that the big players in this space do the shady things they do solely because users reward them for doing so.
Trying to grow a new product is super hard. Trying to move into an established market is even harder. Trying to do that while also foregoing all the dark patterns is … well I won’t say it’s impossible but ugh it would take a huge head start in terms of name recognition, funding, or something else truly extraordinary.
I am a PullRequest user/customer. I shared some of your concerns when I first heard about them, and was admittedly the least on board them trying them vs the others on my team. In short, I didn't believe that an outsider could provide adequate reviews and that, at best, an outsider would supplement our internal review process. I was wrong, and have learned several things about code review from this company.
1. Once ramped up, PullRequest provides consistent reviewers for project, even down to fairly granular sections of the codebase. i.e. we’ll get the same reviewer or sets of reviewers who review code for backend architecture changes, a different person (but consistent) who reviews security code even within a monolithic repo. These reviews feel like a real part of your team after a while, but fully focused on providing quality review.
2. It’s true that the reviews are not involved in initial planning conversations, but in practice this turns out to be moot or even a net positive. This is because they are providing a removed perspective on the review. I can think back to one time very specifically when the team planned to implement a feature in a specific way. An engineer went off and did so as had been planned by the team. An internal review from any of the original teammates who had planned the feature with him would have immediately approved the PR since it was exactly to the original spec. However, our PullRequest reviewer caught a MAJOR VULNERABILITY that the feature’s architecture had presented. Thus, a fresh set of eyes from an outsider who knows our codebase but is not involved in planning/implementation discussions was critical. IMO this is one of PullRequest’s greatest value-adds and why I will always advocate using them /other services like them no matter what team (though I don’t know of any comparable services, though I suspect more will arise and 3rd party review becomes table stakes, but that’s a different discussion).
3. The people that PullRequest gets to do reviews are top notch. In some ways, overkill from what would be required to actually develop a feature from soup to nuts, but it gives us more confidence to let junior developers run more freely on larger features knowing that they will have to pass code review from PullRequest.
Super excited for this, and I am planning to relocate from SF to Tempe for [mostly] this reason. It's about time there was a truly novel offering in the world of residential living, and the Culdesac crew are doing in in the right way! Been a huge fan from the sidelines ever since their YC days.
Agreed, this is fascinating and potentially huge. This comes months after the Pentagon released UFO footage for the first time (not necessarily alien, but unidentified). Wonder if there could be a coordinated effort to slowly disseminate the information to the public slowly instead of all at once.
I found Capsule very valuable. The content is 2nd to none, they boil down some huge concepts that span thousands of pages across multiple books/papers into dense and digestible bites of material. Very high bandwidth and efficient.
I see a lot of commentary about the price being high. I'm not sure whether they have the right price point or not, but what I would say as someone who considers myself pretty frugal, I would compare the value I got from Capsule to a series of books and probably therapists that would've cost hundreds or thousands of dollars (and many more hours).
No videos, it's written content with questions to answer/reflect on.
There's also a way to write in to a real-life person/team with follow-on thoughts/questions after each section. I've done this a number of times not really expecting much, but have been blown away with how fast and thoughtful a response I've always gotten. Almost feels like you're getting personal coach (which they are really underselling IMHO).
I finished all the Missions in a few weeks, forget exactly the days. It could definitely be done faster but I spaced out one Mission every few days (I think there are 8 or 9 of them).
I’ve really enjoyed using https://www.createcapsule.com/ for this. Has been helpful with everything from practicing better CBT, to relationship communication in both personal and professional settings.
They do an amazing job of condensing down a lot of material into very succinct and digestible lessons (aka missions). Everything is also referenced so if you want to deep dive into a specific topic you can.
The whole course is short enough to finish in an afternoon, or can also be broken down in 20 minute slots.
