I would say that this can help with discovery of content that you're interested in. Similar to hacker news, just an alternative approach.
I'm interested to try it and have joined the wait-list. I'm looking forward to how it differentiates itself from other article curation apps (Feedly, Google news, etc.).
I am skeptical of this line of thinking, even for something like Hacker News. It is the same thing that people say about TikTok, and pretty much every other preceding social network/content distribution app. "Discovery of content" implies to me that there is some kind of search. It implies an amount of self-directed, self-motivated activity. I would think that a PhD researcher or a programmer on stack-overflow or a person in a library is "discovering content"
However, on these algorithmically informed apps, the thing doing the discovering is the app, not you. It is discovering the bare-minimum amount of interest that it can provide such that you don't leave. If the app showed you only things that you are the most interested in right away, that would mean that each new piece of content was less interesting than the previous. You would open it up, spend 5 minutes, and then leave. Instead, it learns how to intermittently reward you with interesting content and figures out how much filler you will put up with without exiting.
At least on hacker news and other forum-based sites, you have the ability to only click on links that you want. I regularly open the site see there is nothing for me and leave within 20 seconds. Facebook is more controlling as you can only see a few posts at a glance. TikTok is completely controlling as there is no realistic 'browse' experience. You can see someone's profile, but since the content is video you can't really preview anything or know what it is going to be like without diving into the one-after-another-no-breaks feed.
The over-all point here is just to remember how passive a process using any of these applications are, and to remain clear-headed about it.
> "Discovery of content" implies to me that there is some kind of search. It implies an amount of self-directed, self-motivated activity. I would think that a PhD researcher or a programmer on stack-overflow or a person in a library is "discovering content"
This confused me until I realized that you're using "discovery" like a lawyer would:
discovery (noun)
1. The act or an instance of discovering.
2. Something discovered.
3. The compulsory disclosure to the opposing party of factual information or documents relevant to a lawsuit prior to trial.
I'm interested to try it and have joined the wait-list. I'm looking forward to how it differentiates itself from other article curation apps (Feedly, Google news, etc.).