2025-12-30 20:04:00
I browse the discovery feed on Bear daily, both as part of my role as a moderator, and because it's a space I love, populated by a diverse group of interesting people.
I've read the posts regarding AI-related content on the discovery feed, and I get it. It's such a prevalent topic right now that it feels inescapable, available everywhere from Christmas dinner to overheard conversation on the subway. It's also becoming quite a polarising one, since it has broad impacts on society and the natural environment.
This conversation also raises the question about popular bloggers and how pre-existing audiences should affect discoverability. As with all creative media, once you have a big-enough audience it becomes self-perpetuating that you get more visibility. Think Spotify's 1%. Conveniently, Bear is small enough that bloggers with no audience can still be discovered easily and it's something I'd like to preserve on the platform.
In this post I'll try and explain my thinking on these matters, and clear up a few misconceptions.
First off, posts that get many upvotes through a large pre-existing audience, or from doing well on Hacker News do not spend disproportionately more time on the discovery feed. Due to how the algorithm works, after a certain number of upvotes, more upvotes have little to no effect. Even a post with 10,000 upvotes won't spend more than a week on page #1. I want Trending to be equally accessible to all bloggers on Bear.
While this cap solves the problem of sticky posts, there is a second, less pressing issue: If a blogger has a pre-existing audience, say in the form of a newsletter or Twitter account, some of their existing audience will likely upvote, and that post has a good chance of feature on the Trending page.
One of the potential solutions I've considered is either making upvotes available to logged in users only, or Bear account holders receive extra weighting in their upvotes. However, due to how domains work each blog is a new website according to the browser, and so logins don't persist between blogs. This would require logging in to upvote on each site, which isn't feasible.
While I moderate Bear for spam, AI-generated content, and people breaking the Code of Conduct, I don't moderate by topic. That removes the egalitarian nature of the platform and puts up topic rails like an interest-group forum or subreddit. While I'm not particularly interested in AI as a topic, I don't feel like it's my place to remove it, in the same way that I don't feel particularly strongly about manga.
There is a hide blog feature on the discovery page. If you don't want certain blogs showing up in your feed, add them to the hidden textarea to never see them again. Similarly to how Bear gives bloggers the ability to create their own tools within the dashboard, I would like to lean into this kind of extensibility for the discovery feed, with hiding blogs being the start. Curation instead of exclusion.
This post is just a stream of consciousness of my thoughts on the matter. I have been contemplating this, and, as with most things, it's a nuanced problem to solve. If you have any thoughts or potential solutions, send me an email. I appreciate your input.
Enjoy the last 2 days of 2025!
2025-12-30 14:46:00
disclaimer: part of this post contains an off the cuff conversation about gen AI, and its effects on bear's discovery page.
It's been slightly less than a year since I started reading blogs including the ones on bear as part of my reduced internet consumption habits. I wanted a more casual reading diet away from my usual academic article spree, that makes me read more for the times I'm just tired want to relax but still have some fun, without reaching for another youtube video. This thankfully became into several other habits of me just making tiny doodles and even writing blog posts about the things I'm into. I was encouraged by the various people to just start writing and have a place for yourself. I'm sure this is a similar experience to many of you who joined bear.
Everything felt great, but as the year went on, I found myself backing away from the discovery page. I thought I started reading fewer blog posts as I got busier with other hobbies, but going through my history, it seems I've been reading a lot more posts than ever. Just fewer new blogs, I've been sticking with the people I've already been reading from my rss feed and less so from powRSS and bear's discovery. I've found more blogs from people participating in the bear blog carnival than the recents and trending page. I'd love to find more people in more ways other than the discovery pages, but I couldn't put my finger on why I wanted to move away from it in the first place. It was a great place to be, to find out what the people of bear were interested in, reading both the flashy trending things, and the calmer recents page.
This brings me to my slow moving away from both these discovery sites. This happened with Hacker News several years ago too. I moved away from Hacker News from all the weird corporate tech glazing despite their unaccounted sins, distorted discussions of techno optimism that was happening and the weird directions academic AI was moving towards. This was not all what Hacker News was, but it was definitely a small but growing portion of it. I wish I had some examples of my distaste, but it's been such a long time. I kept finding really thoughtful and interesting things, but despite the good stuff, that discomfort really puts a dent on the time when you just want to read something fun. This isn't a new revelation, that you have to filter through some things to find the fun ones, but when your filtering makes you scroll more and flip through pages just to start reading, you slowly but eventually don't want to go back, just find things you like by yourself.
I had no stake in moving away from Hacker News, but it's hard to see similar symptoms of my distaste creep in the course of a year, slowly, on a platform and community I cherish and felt welcomed in our shared need of wanting a safe online personal space. This isn't to say that both these sites are responsible for curating stuff that I like - I think that is ridiculous. I'm not looking for a solution nor asking anyone to moderate and curate away the posts that contribute to my personal distaste, this is simply a lament. A lament I think that needs to expressed. I am yet another person on bear who is tired of gen AI and techno optimist things being pushed into places in less well-motivated and sometimes harmful ways, both academically and culturally. It, to me, reads as out of touch and as snake oil. Even if the tech is really good, even if it contributes to my thinking in terms of methodology, workflow or simply new theory, these good stuff often goes the way of the boy who cried wolf. My scepticism is becoming more and more a rejection instead of appreciation of the nuances. I don't find this healthy for myself, and I'm not sure that I appreciate bear blog as a reading platform as much as I'd like. I think that's okay, but I also think it's better said than having to move away from it silently.
If you have any other ways of discovering blogs that filters out mainstream AI stuff or have a postroll/blogroll, please do send them to me, I'd love to look at it. In the meanwhile, you should go check out the other blogs I link to on my extra page.
Reply via email
Licensed under CC BY NC ND 4.0
2025-12-30 02:47:00
I wasn't going to write about AI, but just before I went to bed last night I saw Suliman's post on the subject "How does Bear Blog view AI". A few days ago, Absurd Pirate made quite a strong commentary with "I'm Tired of Hacker News Slop" too. Both articles made the top spot on Trending.
This morning, I saw a further response from Moonlamp Station "Should We Stop Talking About AI" on the discovery feed. Clearly there's plenty of feeling on this.
I must admit it's been popping into my mind recently, but I'm not going to tell people what to write or which posts to upvote and I guess it just feels like something we're going to have to live with, like it or not.
However, after reading those posts, I realised other Bear bloggers are equally uncomfortable with AI-related content infiltrating this community. Suliman also calls for other authors to speak out if they feel this way - hence this post.
It's not that all posts on AI are inherently bad, worthless or clickbait. It's just that, to be brutally honest, I'm sick of hearing about it. It pops up everywhere - on my social media feeds, in the news, in the apps I use. Everyone's jumping on the bandwagon, whether it suits their business model or not.
But there's one place I don't hear about it much at all. Right here in the Bear community and to a similar degree in other small "indie" blogs. Our little blogosphere seems to have created a buffer protecting us from this invasion.
But things are changing. I've seen quite a few posts on AI appear on Trending this last week and they seem to behave differently. When I see Trending posts from other popular Bear bloggers, like Ava and Robert, they move fluidly up/down/out which is how the Trending algorithm is designed to work. But these hyper-popular posts seem to settle for days at a time, making the feed look stagnant - as I write this, one such post has been drifting around the top 10 for 5 days! I've filtered some of them out, but new ones ultimately appear.
These posts may be gaining traction by the parent site having a very large audience, by being shared to a high-traffic platform, or by someone deliberately trying to game the system. We all know that, sadly, the latter is common and where there's potential for abuse it will be taken advantage of. The indie blogging community may be flying under the radar, but it's growing "market-share" so to speak has made it an attractive target to bad actors.
Also, while a website shouldn't be criticised for having achieved a high level of success, it does beg the question of whether this makes it a good fit for Bear. When I read posts about how much people like Bear, the small community and the ability to be discovered is usually a major plus point. If high-traffic sites start swamping the discovery feed and disrupting the balance (even unintentionally), then the little blogs will disappear and one of the things that makes Bear so special will be gone.
So I suppose the difficult question is how to deal with this problem? I don't envy Herman as he works to banish the slop whilst keeping authentic content from indie bloggers visible. Perhaps simply an adjustment to the feed algorithm will hold back the tide, at least for now, though it won't stop an incoming flood of low-quality slop from drowning the Recent page.
One thing is certain. Bear will need to continuously adapt to preserve and protect the fragile ecosystem that makes it such a wonderful place to be.
2025-12-29 23:53:00
Starting a Substack was a catalyst to write again. That was a great. Until it wasn’t. Because Substack came with extras: A mobile app, their Notes feature, and an algorithm that pushes for monetization. All good things, right?
My goal with Substack was to encourage myself to write every Monday, no matter what. It worked at first. I was only using Substack on my browser, so I though downloading it to my phone would help me engage with the platform more.
The app felt empty and the navigation wasn’t entirely clear. I didn’t understand the point of Notes. It was their version of Twitter, but there wasn’t much going on. I posted a few Notes myself just to try it out, but it didn’t seem meaningful.
Then, I paid for my first subscription. Upon subscribing, you’re automatically subscribed to 5 other blogs that the blogger recommends. Suddenly, I became bombarded with notifications and my Notes page was filled with content from likeminded creators. What started as a casual, 10 minute scroll turned into what I wanted to avoid: ==The scroll of endless doom.==
I denied it at first. “It’s not the same as Instagram!” I told myself. This was inspiring content. People wrote funny, witty things and shared images of delightful home decor, elegantly collaged journals, and moody analog photography. I felt like I was 15 again, living in suburbia and wanting more out of life.
Then came the holiday season. My feed became filled with an ungodly amount of gift guides, each boasting to be the ultimate one. Creators shared their extravagant dinner parties, complete with champagne towers, intricately decorated pies, and expensive outfits.
==How did I end up here?== I consoled myself again by stating it was all worth the one or two interesting articles I would discover from the feed. But my motivation dimmed and I began to feel the quiet dread of comparison.
In late November, as social events picked up, I told myself that I didn’t have time to write. But one Monday, I remember thinking clearly, “I don’t have anything to say. I shouldn’t write for the sake of writing.”
Another week passed. I started to suspect that Substack wasn’t good for me anymore. I put a 30 minute timer on it, but somehow, it still felt too long. After talking about this with some friends, I deleted the app from my phone.
During our annual Christmas video hangout, Vince asked if I had heard of Bear Blog dot Dev. I had not. “It’s like blogging back in the day,” he said*, “No algorithms. No feed. Even the website is really basic.”
Since I just started my Substack journey, I felt reluctant to move. But I figured, why not check it out? I had planned to write a post about my holidays, so I decided to write on Bear Blog.
==As a person who is motivated by nice-looking things, it frustrated me.== I kept switching the themes AS I was writing, which wasn’t great for my creative process. Bear Blog has some themes that look very dated (which is the whole point, the old school internet look), but with basic HTML and CSS you can customize the hell out of it.
Since I was getting too distracted, I finished my blog post on Substack and decided to give Bear Blog another shot the following day.
I ended up staying up until 3 AM. I couldn’t stop customizing. I thought I would find the process tedious, but I forgot how much I enjoyed doing this stuff. This was my HOBBY as a teen, customizing my blogs with HTML and crying when it didn’t work. But I didn’t cry this time, because that was 20+ years ago and I’ve improved quite a bit.
In the following days, I have migrated all of my posts from Substack and customized it to my heart’s content. It’s done, ready to be shared with the world. And I’ve learned a lot, not just about coding, but about the blogging community. ==It never went away.== There are SO many amazing blogs out there, just hiding in plain sight, out of reach from the algorithms and newsfeeds that we’re so dependent on these days.
I found an amazing blog while searching for coding help. Some guy out there is making cool music and jaw-droppingly awesome Bear Blog templates. He has a guestbook so people who randomly stumble upon his corner of the internet can say hi.
“How do I save his blog?” I wondered frantically. “How will I know when he posts something new?!” I am unfamiliar with RSS feeds and how they work. I’ve never used them, even in my youth.
It dawned on me that algorithms and newsfeeds have robbed my ability to search, discover, and explore. The internet used to be so much fun.
So, like I said, I’m moving. At first I thought I was going to trial Bear Blog for a bit, that this might not be a permanent goodbye, more like a “See ya later, Substack!”
But no. THIS IS IT. My blog is my corner of the internet. And guess what? ==I couldn’t stop writing for three days straight.== I had so much to say. Because it’s my world. My rules. Everything I want to say matters.
==And to my five loyal subscribers:== Bear Blog, being the old-school blogging platform that it is, does not send my posts direct to email! Nope, you’ll be getting old-fashioned NEWSLETTERS written by yours truly, instead! I’ll be sending them out once a month with my latest posts.
Bookmark it and check it back once in a few days, like we did back in the day. I don’t want to go overboard on here (because I have so many other things I need to do!), but since it’s new I have a hard time keeping my hands off of it.
Oh, there’s also no commenting feature either, as the creator of Bear Blog believes that comments aren’t the most meaningful way to engage with the blogger and suggests directly emailing them instead. And since most of you are my friends, just Whatsapp me or something if you want to reply to a post!
However, I will consider adding a commenting feature if there is a demand for one (lol), because I found the comments on Substack to be very meaningful from you, my dear reader. :)
Alright, Peige out. See you in my neck of the woods. ✌︎
2025-12-29 15:41:00
This is hopefully the only time I'll be addressing AI directly on this blog. I appreciate this recent post on the topic and resonate with what was said there. I'm oversimplifying for the sake of brevity, but I'll say that I only actively use AI in a very limited capacity—mainly as an advanced search engine. Every other feeling I have toward its usage is primarily negative.
That said, for those of us who don't like AI infesting everything, I think we're all just talking about it way too much. They say the opposite of love isn't hate, but indifference. If there are those out there that think they can change the course of the world and curb the adoption of AI, I wholeheartedly support them! As for myself, I think the best attention I can give AI is none at all. And I expect I'll be happier for having done so.
{{ previous_post }} | {{ next_post }}
2025-12-29 09:08:00
In Burger Town all citizens love hamburgers. There are two hamburger chains: McDoGood's and Burger Prince. The citizens happily enjoy these options, as they are both reliable, providing burgers at a consistent rate, and are different enough to give all citizens a sense of choice.
Not many people question why there are only two burger places, but some do. When people like this dig a little deeper, they may discover their own community of question-askers. In fact, there are quite a few of them; they just don't meet much in real life, as the town is big and not well organised.
These question-askers may eventually discover that there is a third alternative restaurant. This establishment is called Layers, and it can be found only in one location in a difficult-to-find underground parking lot. Layers burgers serves a reliable product, just like Burger Prince and McDoGood's do, but Layers has an additional twist: their burgers are healthier for the citizens than the competitors' are. Most people do not worry about eating healthy burgers, but for those who do, Layers has turned out to be an excellent third option.
There is a problem, however. Any new customer needs to fork out some additional cash for a Layers Pixel Token. This is a one-time cost, but many health-seekers who discover Layers turn back after discovering this extra cost. Additional to that, it isn't all that easy to find the underground parking lot. Not having tried the Layers burger for themselves, these interested citizens have to rely on the assurances and directions from existing Layers enjoyers, and for some, that isn't compelling enough. This does not bother the Layers crew one bit, as their motto 'If not with us, then back to them (i.e. McDoGood's and Burger Prince)' reinforces. Layers employees are in many ways right, as hygiene and reliability are good across all three burger joints.
All of this would have created a nice balance of supply and demand in the town, were it not for the fact that smaller joints have begun to appear in similarly difficult-to-find places in the disorganised town. These, like Layers, also aim to serve healthy burgers to the populace, but because they are small, experimental affairs, they cannot deliver the level of hygiene and reliability that the three others can deliver. What's more, some of the employees of the alternative shacks are either unaware or deliberately vague about the lower health value of their products, when compared to Layers, which often ends up confusing interested citizens.
McDoGood's and Burger Prince have kept relatively quiet about these experimental joints, but Layers is vocal, adamant in their 'If not with us, then back to them' motto, arguing, understandably, that it would be better to return to of one of the two dominant (but less healthy) burger providers rather than risk the experimental joints.
Their reasons are valid and well-intended. After all, the aim should be to provide reliable, hygienic, and, in Layers' case, healthy burgers, and any deviance from that standard should be treated with caution, even if these experimental burger places essentially have the same goal in mind.
Layers suffers from one blind-spot. Being so entrenched in the business of providing reliable, hygienic and healthy burgers, they have forgotten what the world looks like to people who only know McDoGood's and Burger Prince.
To those people—and especially they who cannot afford a Layers' Pixel Token—the smaller experimental restaurants offer a taste of something different to the established DoGood/Prince duopoly. Eating at these places may not be totally risk-free, but many citizens have robust immune systems and can handle the occasional lower quality meal; for most this does not dramatically impact their lives. But for many, the little restaurants are an eye-opener to the fact that there is more to burger eating than McDoGood's and Burger Prince, and by exploring these smaller, less reliable restaurants, they might one day truly understand for themselves what is so good about Layers, and why the Pixel Token is totally worth the price.
I am a citizen of Burger Town. I've tasted the duopoly and I know about some of the smaller joints and I have even paid the Pixel token and tasted for myself why Layers burgers are so good. Burger Town citizens often ask me for advice, knowing I've tasted all the options. What do I tell them?