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Ask HN: Rules for a desirable, non-toxic and less exploitable social platform?

Article news.ycombinator.com

Ask HN: Rules for a desirable, non-toxic and less exploitable social platform?

From what we have learned about the different flaws of different social platforms (networks and content), can we come up with some first principles that would make the platforms have the properties of being:

- Desirable: Most people actually want to be on it and find some use or pleasure in using it

- Non-toxic: I also added this one because some people might enjoy being on a toxic platform, this is not what this is about

- Less exploitable: Difficult to manipulate which is increasingly important in the age of cheap LLMs, but can also be a tradeoff with desirability as barriers are erected to prevent bot manipulation / vote brigading.

Taking Hacker News as an example of a desirable, non-toxic and less exploitable social platform. I believe several attributes make it so:

- Voting: Upvoted content rises up, contributes towards desirability / non-toxicity of the content

- Strict rules / moderation: Keeps the content on topic, constructive, friendly, more pleasant to parse. Contributes towards desirability / non-toxicity and also makes it less exploitable as manipulation can be detected.

- Novelty / surprisal: This third one is somewhat special, it is less a mechanistic property of the platform but a content focus choice. It contributes towards desirability but I believe also towards lower exploitability: it is more difficult to fake novel or thought-provoking content.

Now I do realize I could have phrased the target properties differently and semantics can always be discussed ad infinitum so take the spirit of what I mean rather than the exact wording.

What I'm specifically asking HN here is what sets of rules / mechanisms could have the above as emergent properties?

Is Hacker News a desirable, non-toxic, less exploitable platform also because it focuses on novel, thought-provoking content or could there be mechanistic rules that would allow having these properties for any kind of social platform?

I'll include some possible mechanistic rules that crossed my mind that each have their flaws:

- Member verification (ID / Credit card): Less exploitable but likely very undesirable for many

- Vouching: Start with a kernel of trusted members, include only members vouched for

- Contribution limits: Members can only contribute / vote n times per day / week

- Active discussion limits: Not everyone involved in the same conversation e.g. have two people discussing a topic, have a system for others to "raise hand" to participate in the conversation

- Exposure limits: Your post can never reach more than n random people, it has to be actively reshared by someone to spread further.

Discussion 5 comments · 4 points · patresh · 2025-12-18
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