Thinking About the Internet
Articles on social media, reputation, online discourse, and what it looks like to build a healthier corner of the internet.
Why Social Media Rewards Outrage — And What We Can Do About It
Every platform optimizes for engagement. The problem is that outrage is the most engaging emotion of all. Here's why the algorithm keeps making us angry, and how reputation-based systems offer a way out.
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Why We Built TownSquare
Social media showed you what people engaged with, but never why. That gap — between a number and a reason — is where TownSquare began.
Why We Chose ELO: A Reputation System That's Actually Fair
Likes, upvotes, and follower counts all fail as reputation signals. Here's why a formula invented for chess turns out to be exactly right for social media.
The Problem With Social Media Today (And Why Nobody's Fixing It)
Echo chambers and the outrage loop aren't accidents — they're the logical result of how every major platform was designed.
What "Quality-Driven Social Media" Actually Means
It's easy to say a platform prioritizes quality. Here's what that means in practice — the concrete definition we hold ourselves to.
Building TownSquare: From Idea to Launch
The stack decisions, the hard parts, and what we learned going from a frustrated idea in mid-2025 to a fully-deployed platform.
The Community TownSquare Is For
Not every platform is for everyone — and pretending otherwise is one of the ways platforms make themselves worse. An honest picture of who we're building for.
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