Oddbean

just pretend for a moment that you are geniuses like me and try to understand what im saying "follow" is a psyop - like covid masking think real life - do you "follow" anybody in real life ? no, you simply have varying levels of interest in different people. virtual reality should mimic physical reality, which is analog. instead of following you should simply assign interest value to people. for people who are retarded and can't do math they can drag a slider from "not interested at all" to "extremely interested" in this person and their content.

when you join by default everyone is assigned "not particularly interested" value and your feed is simply based on notes that are most often reposted, quoted, liked and so on. as you read this content you can check out the profiles of people posting it and adjust their value. eventually those whom you rated higher than "not particularly interested" will push other content down the timeline. you never "follow" or "unfollow" everybody. you simply TUNE your timeline from a purely algorithmic one ( based on global engagements ) to one that reflects your personal preferences.

lists, chats, explore page and so on - are all crutches to try and compensate for the fact that your approach is fundamentally wrong a truly brilliant approach like what i described does away with the need for all those things stop thinking in terms of lists and think of the network as a medium that connects the minds of many people into one this can only be effectively accomplished using the same type of analog math as the brain itself uses learn some AI if you can't understand what i'm saying