1. Introduction: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47689648> (619 comments)

2. Dynamics: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47693678> (0 comments)

3. Culture: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47703528>

4. Information Ecology: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47718502> (106 comments)

5. Annoyances: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47730981> (171 comments)

6. Psychological Hazards: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47747936> (0 comments)

And this submission makes:

7. Safety: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47754379> (89 comments, presently).

There's also a comprehensive PDF version for those who prefer that kind of thing: <https://aphyr.com/data/posts/411/the-future-of-everything-is...> (PDF) 26 pp.

(Derived from aphyr's comment: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47754834>.)

Media (social or otherwise) is a force multiplier. Ultimately it is the sensory, feedback, and control mechanism for a social system. And yes, if you change the informational behaviour of a system you fundamentally change that system's behaviour, there are still other factors at play.

Corruption, inequality, biases (themselves often reinforced through media, yes), environment, and various other endogenous and exogenous factors also come in to play. I'd also call in other informational elements, including widespread surveillance systems and AI, which operate in at least part outside the scope of social media.

That social media exacerbates many of our present problems I'd agree to. That it's fundamental to all of them, not so much.

<https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/4/5/us-rescues-airman-wh...>

Mine is that the Unix environment is a preferred one, particularly on a device which is nominally a Unix derivative (Linux -> Android) but which fails to deliver in its stock incarnation.

Termux doesn't solve that problem entirely, but it does remarkably well given the underlying limitations.

However *if you're visiting the site via a specified hostname ("www" or "old", previously "i"), following any arbitrary link from a post, comment, or Wiki page to Reddit will not respect the hostname you'd arrived at that link from.

This to me is absolutely maddening behaviour, as it's now necessary to edit the URL within the browser nav bar. Tedious on desktop, painful on a touchscreen device.

I no longer read Reddit.

There's also the San Francisco Bay Model, located in Sausalito, CA:

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Army_Corps_of_Engineers_B...>

There's a model of Biblical Jerusalem at Temple Square in Salt Lake City, though I've no idea of its actual accuracy. This is located in the North Visitor's Centre: <https://www.myutahparks.com/things-to-do/attractions/temple-...>.

There's another such model at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem itself: <https://www.imj.org.il/en/wings/shrine-book/model-jerusalem-...>, and several others elsewhere in the world.

There are several models of ancient Rome, including appropriately one in Rome itself, the Plastico: <https://mymodernmet.com/scale-model-ancient-rome/>.

The Thorne Miniature Rooms at the Art Institute of Chicago are another delightful experience: <https://www.artic.edu/highlights/12/thorne-miniature-rooms>.

And worse: neither would propagate to on-site links. That is, if someone had explicitly linked "www" rather than "old" or "i" at reddit, then regardless of which interface you'd arrived at it from, requiring you to constantly re-specify the actual interface you want. Particularly when not logged in to the site.

I'd begun using Reddit nearly 15 years ago, my last comment is now two years old, and my subs private (and inactive). Site's dead to me.

I suspect that the effect was unintentional, but (at least until internal WiFi access was provided) the consequences were delightful.

Any metallic grid should attenuate signals effectively. Old-school lathe-and-plaster construction (which often incorporates a wire mesh) is well-known WiFi / cellular poison:

<https://www.techwalla.com/articles/how-to-get-a-wifi-signal-...>

Mind: Termux is the only thing on Android which has not precisely sucked in my own 15+ years' experience with the platform. It remains both crippled and emperiled by the OS and Google.

<https://web.archive.org/web/20210103151837/https://wiki.term...>

There's ... some Google Play availability as of June 2024: <https://github.com/termux/termux-app/discussions/4000>.

F-Droid's own future viability is at risk given Google's recent Android directions:

<https://www.techdirt.com/2025/10/07/googles-requirement-for-...>.

My own interests lie more in the ability to run Android emulated under Linux, and switching from phone / tablet devices to a small form-factor laptop (Framework 12 or 13 most likely) for on-the-go computing.

<https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2026/apr/04/middle-ea...> (Live updates at The Guardian, as of 15 minutes prior to my own comment.)

<https://deluzio.house.gov/media/press-releases/joint-stateme...>

Apparently it's "The Wind Rises: The Looming War", a Japanese anime film.

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wind_Rises>

NB: it's generally poor form to presume what someone thinks or perceives. At best it may be highly inaccurate. At worst ... well, worse. Better to couch it in terms of your own experience, or third-party research where that exists.

Though yes, old-style ads are less relentless, and often have some degree of novelty. Repetition of ads where I do encounter them (largely public-broadcasting underwriting spots and on podcasts before I fast-forward through them) is in fact tedious, so you may have a point.

Another factor though is that the old-time ads are attempting to manipulate, yes, but they're trying to manipulate a target which is no longer present. Current-day ads both turn the dial to 11 and are often at least trying to specifically exploit personal information and weaknesses.

TV's been dead to me for decades, in large part for the reasons you describe. The few times I'm exposed to it just reinforces why.

I became aware of this when use of the lists and/or the drama that accompanied them leaked into the Fediverse a few years ago.

The Fediverse also effectively works in ways as a "subscribe to moderation policies" network, in that each individual instance has its own moderation policy and blocklist (individuals and instances), which is probably closer to what you've described than any of the other examples I've noted. This ... has some benefits and frustrations as well, particularly as swapping mods isn't as frictionless as your ideal version would be. There's also the "broken threads" dynamic, similar in ways to that seen on G+, though with the Fediverse (a closer analogue to Twitter) there's no top post, and no original-author-as-moderator dynamic, which means that if a particular thread is interrupted by a blocked profile/instance, the thread as a whole tends to fragment. Devs are aware of this and may be looking at other ways of aggregating threads, e.g., by having multiple "refers-to" type headers (see the Mutt email agent's threading model for more on this).