[japhyr]

These projects are pretty interesting: "News from people like you." It seems like these kinds of apps further the isolation people develop from reading mostly articles recommended by like-minded friends.

I wonder if anyone is building an app that recommends articles that provide a variety of perspectives different from your own. "News from people who think differently than you do", or something like that.

But I think that's what newspapers are supposed to be.

[declan]

>I wonder if anyone is building an app that recommends articles that provide a variety of perspectives different from your own.

When building Recent News (https://recent.io/) we considered adding the options of seeing news from perspectives both similar to and different from your own, at least as we understand them based on your usage.

We didn't do that. It turns out in early testing that users liked seeing a broad range of articles. For instance, a pro-2A voter might want to read a Salon.com article talking about how firearms should be banned--just to share it to argue how wrong it is! Or an anti-2A voter might be interested in a Fox News article talking about repealing anti-gun laws, if only because it reinforces how nutty those conservatives can be. (It also added more complexity when our goal was an MVP.)

The current version of our iOS+Android app includes a personal tab that is unique to you based on what we believe your interests to be, and a Hot News tab that is not unique to you. Neither filters by perspective, and not one person has requested that feature in the weeks since we launched--the feature requests have included things like dark theme, offline mode, text resizing, etc. instead.

[ducuboy]

Recent News is quite interesting. How is it different from Prismatic?

[declan]

Thanks for your interest! Prismatic made a beautiful app but took a very different approach toward recommendation. They tried to build, as I understand it, their own social commenting layer on top of news--an effective competitor to Twitter and Facebook--and encouraged linking with social networks. We experimented with the latter in an early version of Recent News but discarded it in favor of a user-focused approach that doesn't require social linking (and isn't as prone to bad recommendations if your friends' interests are different from yours).

In any case Prismatic is no longer updating or supporting its iOS and Android apps. Techcrunch reported in July that Prismatic pivoted to B2B and is trying to make money like Dataminr by selling access to its APIs.

[ducuboy]

Thank you for the insight!

I'm very interested because (as I mentioned several times here already so sorry for the plug again) I'm building http://svven.com. It's also about recommendation but instead of AI I'm betting on the intelligence of the people - a social approach to relevance.

I will sure try Recent News to compare the results.

[declan]

Thanks! Good luck with Svven. It's an interesting approach and different than the path we've taken with Recent News.

I just went to the site and was about to try it but saw Svven wanted permission to: "Post Tweets for you."

Is it possible to use Svven without granting you permission to post on my Twitter timeline? I have a policy of not granting apps or services such permission, so I stopped without testing it. :(

If there's a way to tweak the permissions I'll give it a shot!

[ducuboy]

Oh yes sure, Svven doesn't post tweets for you or anything like that.

Thanks for pointing this out, I'm thinking about changing the Twitter app settings to read-only. All it does is parse your home timeline to get the tweets so read-only is enough for Svven.

[tnorthcutt]

I use Twitter this way, to some extent. I consciously try to follow people with different perspectives than me and with opinions counter to my own. Sometimes I end up unfollowing those people if the signal:noise ratio is too high, but over time it serves as a way of introducing me to new ideas and ways of looking at things that I hadn't considered before. And, because of retweets, I'm then introduced to more people with similar perspectives. Once you "seed" your timeline with a few people with different perspectives/opinions than your own, this works really well.

All that to say you can use at least Twitter to intentionally break out of that intellectual isolation that can otherwise be difficult to escape.

[ducuboy]

Ok good idea, I just followed you on Twitter ;)

But if you're interested in different perspectives from your own, isn't this part of your, well, interests? Do you still need to break out of that?

Personally I see the "filter bubble" as a non-issue. Partly because people will go with their interests no matter what. Forcing them to see everything else reminds me of this image

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Clockwork_Orange_(film)#/med...

[japhyr]

I teach high school, and I feel like I see pretty direct effects of the filter bubble. My students who are inside the bubble and unaware of that fact are more closed minded, racist, sexist, and hostile toward individuals and groups with views different than their own. Students who get their "news" from a variety of perspectives (through more consistent academic engagement, for example) are more open minded and tolerant.

Breaking out of the bubble is not about "forcing them to see everything else". It's about curating a variety of perspectives, rather than curating a slice of similar perspectives.

[ducuboy]

I get the point, but as I mentioned it all comes down to how the system works.

Svven for example puts together people tweeting same links. Tweeting, not liking. Two tweets containing same link can have very different and often contradictory messages.

To give a practical example, some of you probably noticed PG's controversial tweet about unions (https://twitter.com/paulg/status/663456748494127104), and also the reply that took double the likes of that (https://twitter.com/MarkAmesExiled/status/663495439069614080). Because the reply contained the link to PG's tweet, in Svven you can see all sides of this story around the same link.

[japhyr]

> Two tweets containing same link can have very different and often contradictory messages.

That sounds really interesting! I like how that might impact people's bubbles.

I'm currently teaching a class where students are learning to build simple apps, and ask critical questions about the apps we use. Would you be interested in doing a skype session with my class (~12 students) about how you and your team are approaching this issue, from a social and technical perspective? They'd love it, and you might get some good insights into how high school students think about these issues in deciding which apps to use.

[ducuboy]

Wow I'm really flattered!

And also a little worried given your description of some of your students :P But sure, it should be interesting, also because Svven is built in Python and I see this is what you teach.

I just followed you on Twitter, I'm @ducu, let's DM there.

[ducuboy]

Disclaimer: I'm building http://svven.com

Your concern is the so called "filter bubble". I think it all comes down to how this kind of system is implemented. Svven in particular encourages you to navigate further from your fellows and it immediately adapts to however your interests (ie. tweets) are changing. A new tweet gives you a new perspective.