elov8

Escape the Algorithm. Elevate Conversation

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I started working on this app around the time Elon purchased Twitter.  Not because of anything he did, but because of the mass polarization I saw happen. Thanks to LLMs, I was able to get an incredible amount done in a very short amount of time (Compose Multiplatform helped a lot, too).  I’ll write a separate post at a later time where I go in-depth on the tech. It’s strange that we talk so much about lizard brain & executive function; how as a society we are proud of the latter.  At the same time, it seems just about every site has optimized for lizard-brain - the like button is made for gut-reactions with no friction, no attempt to try to engage executive function. The like button has, I believe, been the downfall of society: everyone chases it, every site tries to optimize for more of it.  More engagement, more interactions - quantity instead of quality. UX designers frequently take the path of reducing the friction for a user to take an action.  I took the opposite approach: how do we engage people’s executive function, bring out the best in them? Sometimes a little bit of friction is a good thing: it makes us think. That’s precisely the goal with voting on elov8: a 2nd click on exactly what is liked (or disliked) about the post, to get everyone to take a step back & think a little. Another feature which I think is incredibly important is the ability to choose “follow level”.  Sometimes we’re more interested in what some people have to say than others, and it’d be nice to give extra weight to them.  Follow levels are a simple way to do that - this borrows from a concept my first social networking site (Yuniti) had.  I’ll post more about that later. A minor but fun one is profile customization - it’s a hark back to the MySpace days!  Choose your favorite colors, a custom background image.  Make you profile your own & add a little style to the internet (things have become so bland!) Lastly, to bring it all together (literally), cross-posting.  I explained that I started the app because I saw discussions spread out into their own little echo-chamber islands: one app for each of the “tribes”.  Complete polarization is no good for humanity.  Cross-posting allows you to write your post on elov8 & have it cross-post to the other sites (X, LinkedIn, and Threads for now; more later).  Most importantly, they’re all linked together - your elov8 post has links to the respective cross-posts.