Korva is a scroll of the internet’s best ideas.
Go back to smaller communities
The old internet
Back then, no algorithms were fighting to keep anyone online at any cost. At some point people were done with the internet for the day.
Each community was like a small village gathering around shared beliefs and interests, separated from the others by digital rivers and mountains. Each had its own culture and set of rules. One might be into rough humour and soft moderation, another might have strict rules and ban easily.
The town square problem
Anyone who didn't play by the village rules got banned, or could move to a village that suited them better. Social media instead gathers everyone in one town square, which overwhelms the brain. One solution for less social sorting may be extremely simple: go back to smaller online communities.
Evolution is too slow to catch up with the information age, and billions of people are now within reach. Models that work with what brains can tolerate are what's needed.
Why did Usenet culture break in 1993?
Usenet, a network of discussion groups that began around 1980, used to receive a wave of new users each September when university students arrived on campus. Veteran users had time to teach the newcomers the norms before the next wave came. In September 1993, America Online gave its subscribers access to Usenet, and the stream of newcomers never stopped. Longtime users began calling it the Eternal September.
How big can one community get?
Anthropologist Robin Dunbar proposed in the 1990s that the size of a primate's neocortex predicts the size of its social group. Extending the trend to humans, he arrived at a figure of about 150 people, now known as Dunbar's number. He pointed to examples such as Hutterite communities, which are known to split into two once they approach that size. Researchers still debate how firm the number is.
How did feeds become one town square?
Early social sites mostly showed each person their own profile page and the pages of friends they chose to visit. Facebook launched its News Feed in September 2006, merging friends' updates into a single stream on every user's home page. Other platforms later adopted feeds that blended posts from accounts a person follows with posts the platform picks. The result is one shared space where posts from many separate circles appear next to each other.
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