That is the topic I'm opening, yes. We're clearly amplifying it right now. How can that be changed?
At the very least, we could take notes from this interface for social interaction: things like 1) lack of notifications, for anything, 2) lack of PMs, 3) lack of any sort of 'personalized' stream of information. We have to pick and choose what we consume, rather than being spoon fed.
Coming from the other side: what allows these storms to form? I think part of the root cause is the ease of sharing information. It is very easy to re-blog/tweet/share on many platforms. In some cases (like Twitter or Facebook) a person doesn't even have to interact with the stuff they're passing on. The act is nearly passive.
I think my thesis is this: things are better here (in part) because it is more difficult to interact with content and people.
A partial solution could then be: add friction to things you don't want to see (or disallow them outright, like HN). Alternatively, make the stuff you want to see very easy.
In order to post a comment on Hacker News, you simply cannot avoid seeing hundreds of other words around it, dozens of comments. It is much harder to read and reply to a single comment out of context.
today, I notice that people are mainly sharing posts from prominent figures with tens of thousands of comments on them. there's simply no way to have a productive conversation when everyone's contribution is immediately buried. all you can really do is agree or disagree emphatically. the result is that now any person with a bunch of followers can say "fuck this guy" and thousands of people will pile on in an instant.
aside from stuff like deliberately curating all the most inflammatory content for our feeds, I think one of the biggest issues with current communities is just scale. if you could only talk to people by joining a small group focused on a locality/hobby/occupation, I bet the experience would be a lot better.
