Hey everyone, this has been a pretty crazy day for me, and I'm pretty sure it's been crazy for everyone else as all. Sorry for only just responding to everyone on this thread, I've been super busy and have only just gotten a chance to sit down and get to work.
First off, I'd like to thank everyone for the feedback of gotten on the project, both positive and negative. As was revealed by the ton of technical difficulties and ridiculously sized bundle.js file, this was a hashed together project that was more of a proof of concept rather than a final app. Now that I know that there's a lot of interest in at least some sort of app developed along these lines, I'm going to spend a lot of time polishing the site and exactly how one expresses belief "for" or "against" topics or people. I also plan to look into research as posted on how to work against polarization in the country. I pushed a couple changes that should hopefully account for some of the technical problems people were having earlier, but I won't have time until the weekend to dive deep into it.
Secondly, I totally agree with okreallywtf that technology like this has the potential to be great, but so far tech's only made the problem worse. As the interest from HN shows, I think that there's a lot of room for developers to actually go out into more bridge-building type projects that work to get people to interact with those on the "other side." To get moralistic, I think that there's not only room for development here, but that we have the duty to explore these options. We have to prevent division from becoming further entrenched in this country. In this vein, I want to especially point out comments that highlight other sites that try to bring people together and become more informed about government like Placecot and pol.is. Maybe there's still ways that social media and technology can change the ways we interact with people. Perhaps we just have to be more aware of the forces that keep us within our own ideological bubbles.
We have a lot to work to do in this country to try and bring everyone together after this election. Let's see what can be done.
First off, I'd like to thank everyone for the feedback of gotten on the project, both positive and negative. As was revealed by the ton of technical difficulties and ridiculously sized bundle.js file, this was a hashed together project that was more of a proof of concept rather than a final app. Now that I know that there's a lot of interest in at least some sort of app developed along these lines, I'm going to spend a lot of time polishing the site and exactly how one expresses belief "for" or "against" topics or people. I also plan to look into research as posted on how to work against polarization in the country. I pushed a couple changes that should hopefully account for some of the technical problems people were having earlier, but I won't have time until the weekend to dive deep into it.
Secondly, I totally agree with okreallywtf that technology like this has the potential to be great, but so far tech's only made the problem worse. As the interest from HN shows, I think that there's a lot of room for developers to actually go out into more bridge-building type projects that work to get people to interact with those on the "other side." To get moralistic, I think that there's not only room for development here, but that we have the duty to explore these options. We have to prevent division from becoming further entrenched in this country. In this vein, I want to especially point out comments that highlight other sites that try to bring people together and become more informed about government like Placecot and pol.is. Maybe there's still ways that social media and technology can change the ways we interact with people. Perhaps we just have to be more aware of the forces that keep us within our own ideological bubbles.
We have a lot to work to do in this country to try and bring everyone together after this election. Let's see what can be done.