Suggestions for improvement to the community forum

In general, I think the idea of this website is good. However, there are some details that bother me a little bit. As example, this website does not use HTTPS which should be (for security and privacy reasons) a standard everywhere.
The idea of the Humane Tech Community is to encourage people reducing the usage of Social Media like Facebook. But then, people are being encouraged to join a Facebook Group for discussion. That to me is more or less an oxymoron. It just seems like things haven’t been thought through very well.

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Second the “get rid of the FB group” idea.

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Agreed about moving away from FB, even though I helped set it up to begin with. That’s where some of these discussions started in the first place (and where the bulk of attention-hacked people currently are, unfortunately), but setting up this forum as the place for serious long-term discussion seems like an essential next step.

Maybe the FB group can only be mentioned on FB itself, for people already hooked on the wrong routines; and the website and other spaces can point to attention-conserving spaces like this one.

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Add a Collaboration and/or Work Opportunities category.

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How do you people think about a linkedin group instead? Not as a medium for community members, but to attract new people to join. Linkedin is the professional equivalent to FB and may be more suited (though it is becoming more facebook-like of recent)

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I think limiting every social media site presence to just link to here or the main landing page would be enough, no need to fracture forum/list discussion over multiple sites. but as many linked pages as people want to create, just centralize the actual discussion.

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Collab category added. That’s where I’m sending any creative ideas I run across for partnerships with the community; ditto for interest that comes in via the site.

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Hi Founders,

I was just wondering why Humane Tech - being a non-profit - has chosen a DotCom(mercial) domain name?
Why did you not go for a .org domain instead?

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Maybe the FB group can only be mentioned on FB itself, for people already hooked on the wrong routines; and the website and other spaces can point to attention-conserving spaces like this one.

This is the right approach. You need to engage with social media and filter people into this space for deeper discussion.

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Rajah @metasj , “where the bulk of attention-hacked people currently are, unfortunately”

yeah the front-line is the ‘attention-hacked’ people. If the goal is to reverse the trend and make change to humanity, perhaps have to meet the audience where they hang-out

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I see that on LinkedIn there already exists a Center for Humane Technology group founded by Charles, though it has no link to the community in its description. Looks like it is refering to this community, though :slight_smile:

One of the of the big challenges of Time Well Spent faces I think as an organization is how to disseminate informations to the mass of people worldwide the negative effects of technology (smart phone, social media etc.) as well as proven solutions?

Are you sure CHT it is a non-profit?!

Also, has anyone engage with someone from the CHT side so far?!
I’m here to share and learn, to find my allies, share tools and build a better future… but at the moment this platform feels more like as an idea source pool for CHT staff!!

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yes, CHT is a non-profit, and Time Well Spent a collection of ideas. This forum is designed to be an idea source for us all. We are each of us trying to understand how best to change design and the tech industry; hopefully CHT will provide a space for some of that work to happen.

Actually, this forum is designed to dump ideas, and for those in a position to execute them they will regardless of authorship… there’s no maestro, no conductor, the ‘auto-organisation’ within the community is also not happening the best way in my opinion (like build up the conversation positively, sharing knowledge, connecting, etc), all I see is a bunch of nonsense, i.e. better apps?! Most seem not to be even aware how this ‘new’ digital environment is designed… You can easily see that people are more interested in selling their products or finding a good information source than sharing critical knowledge - just look at the reading list thread, only 50 posts for 1.5k views!

Also, conversations are a two-way thing… I haven’t heard (participating in the discussion) from CHT staff so far!!!

To be fair my eyes have been opened by a moderator that having a place to discuss what might be good and not. If it’s closed to some peoples opinions this is what technology does today, it funnels our thinking in one direction. This forum may be trying to provide an example of what technology should be in the social experience.

A serious look and differentiation of health consequences should be taken. To let humanity do this without leadership in this area may take too long for our young kids.

And it’s ok for you to scratch your head and say something isn’t right here… this is how great ideas and healthy innovation happen.,

Why moderates are deleted my post. You pretending to be fighting with Facebook, you are worse than Facebook. Because if moderator don’t like somebody he can delete this person posts. Or maybe this post is irrelevant to the topic? It was about the problems that Technology will bring in the future. And it was “politically correct”.
I asked 3 times simple question what you want to achieve this movement what are the goals. I didn’t receive any answer. Of course When users Don’t understand What are your goals and want you want to achieve, Everything could be be irrelevant.

That is sometimes what happen here you have a relevant posts which were related with each other and relevant to the topic. But you found out later on that the link was no longer had the content which was important to your post. But instead of doing something to explain what was the post all about. The moderator limited your ability to post some clarification. As I see it the post in time well spent in facebook and the reactions are more lively and informatie too. We need more people from the masses who are the most affected most by the negative effect of technologies to post their views and experience here.

I really enjoy the Take Control page. There are many, many excellent suggestions there which will help many people so thank you.

One thing that’s sorely missing from this page is reducing the number of apps and services. For me humane tech has always started with, “how many apps and services can I delete” which are of little use to me?

For example, I’ve deleted my Microsoft and Linkedin accounts long ago, and have never used Twitter, Snapchat or posted on Instagram. I’m a bit shocked that according to the Take Control page Tristan has 7 additional messaging apps installed on his phone. His phone is buzzing him during an interview I watched. Understandable, but I think we’re better off by having less.

Instead of using apps, we should encourage users to use the web browser in every case where that’s possible. Some mobile browsers have a “desktop” mode, and this is critical since many websites are screwing over all users on mobile devices. I would suggest open-source Firefox + uBlock Origin.

This is also really the golden secret to peace. Check your messages like they are mail. Take control and instead of messages hijacking your life, you check your messages once a day like you’d check your postal mail.

It’s best to keep phone and computer apps to a practical minimum.

I have even found a way to delete most of the system bloatware on my Mac, but it isn’t easy. It is impossible to delete the so-improperly-called “system apps” on my phone without hacking. So I put all the crApple bloatware in one “spam” folder. Perhaps we should support legislation forcing the easy removal of all bloatware (iTunes, QuickTime Player, Messages, iBooks, Reminders, Android Browser, Safari, and so on) from every operating system.

We need a “humane tech” app ecosystem. People can live in this ecosystem from now on. :slight_smile:

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@metasj, I would love pinned topics to stay pinned even after I visit them, and not automatically unpin. Then I can click the Unpin button if I’d like to, while now I have to remind myself after every visit to a topic to re-Pin it.

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