alt Hacker NewsThere's nuance between wanting to build something people use regularly vs "chasing engagement". Even if he decides to run this as a non-profit, individuals are more likely to donate to something they use regularly and institutions are more likely to fund something with active usage. I would assume that the costs to make all these LLM-API costs are not insignificant. I agree with the previous comment that the policy is the differentiator though and hopefully there's a way to drive usage without devolving into a just another news aggregator.
That doesn't make sense to me. I don't need to "engage" daily with MSF to feel like my donation is valuable. I can go days or weeks at a time without using or even thinking much about the Internet Archive, Wikipedia, or my local classical radio station. I almost never hear or see anything about my local food bank/drive organization except when I begrudgingly check a local Facebook group and happen to scroll past a post showing off whatever community dinner they just did.
There is no legitimate reason for a project like this to prioritize a general newsfeed, as opposed to a very specific newsfeed focused on legislation, regulation activity, and court cases. I can think of many interesting and useful ways to integrate the news into a government activity tracker. Yet another slopfeed of whatever nonsense is trending in the news, is not one of them.
It's a shame because I love the idea, but I can't say I trust the creator much at all. I guess now with AI it's easy enough for me to go whip up my own.