The Internet's Best Comment Section
Texts to a friend on how to solve the political information crisis:
- I think there could be value in using AI to create: “the Internet's best comment section.”
- So often, whether its Reddit or ZeroHedge or Twitter, I skip the content and just look at reactions, but the biggest friction is redundancy—if you click into a Twitter trending tag; you’ll see 50 posts in a row that all parrot the same headline, but with different wordings. You need to schlep through slop to find a signal. You also get echo chambers, and bot storms.
- So consider the story of “NYC protests about immigration or deportation”—one thing happens, and there’s a shockwave through old and new media. Imagine processing every article and every comment for that event… I really just want to see a headline of what happens, and then 10 radically different comments to expand my range of interpretation.
- I don’t think it needs to be “left/right/center” it should look for distinct takes—it means every chosen comment is a unique or novel way to process the given facts. It's not "bias-free." I don't want to eliminate bias, I want to categorize and consider all possible bias.
Prompt: “You are an expert at synthesizing complex comment sections for political news articles. You will read the hundreds of comments below, and then create a list of the distinct interpretations of the event. There is no given number of points you should end up with, but no two points should be remotely similar. It's your job to cluster. To structure your points, please start with a concise, punchy, witty one sentence summary, and then use 2-3 sentences to unpack, and quote directly so we get a sense of the source. The quote or comments can vary in length (from 20-100 words each). Comments below: