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Blind and Visually Impaired Community

Full History - 2016 - 04 - 18 - ID#4fcfcl
2
I Miss Blink Nation - Cool Blind Tech (coolblindtech.com)
submitted by rkingett
fastfinge 1 points 7y ago
I deeply disagree. I never liked custom platforms like blinknation, Klango, The Zone, and so-on. I find my most valuable interactions tend to come from places not meant specifically for the blind, but where blind people developed groups and a large population anyway. Audioboo, before they turned it into audioboom and ruined everything forever, was one of those places. Something about being on a popular, well maintained platform, where sighted people could pop in if they liked, or ignore us if they wanted, seems to promote much more value in my mind. Maybe it's because these places tend to draw in blind people from outside the blind subculture, so we get more of a variety of people. If I can toot our own horn for a minute, I find /r/blind is a near perfect platform for exactly the kind of interaction I want. Most of the people who post here are involved in other subs on Reddit, not just this one. We get interested sighted folk popping in and out regularly. So we have a huge variety of topics here, with input from people in all walks of blindness, and all walks of life. The sort of people who go out of there way to sign up for Klango or Blinknation tend, honestly, to be the kind of people I don't find particularly interesting. I'm not insulting you or anything, I'm sure you're an interesting person. I'm just speaking on average. And anyway, you're here, aren't you? And even people who would rather just talk to other blind people all day...I have nothing against them, and I don't think they're bad people. I'm just not interested in talking to them.
rkingett [OP] 2 points 7y ago
whatever happened to audioboom, anyway? I still use it myself, sometimes. Although, I wish you did not have to login to hear posts
fastfinge 1 points 7y ago
Basically, audioboom wants to be an app like stitcher, because that's where all the money is. So instead of featuring and supporting the community content they used to have as audioboo, during the shift to audioboom they began signing agreements with big-name podcasters, and large radio organizations like the BBC and NPR. So now they no longer feature community content, and they use there AI to force feed you content from the big commercial broadcasters via autoplay, no matter what you actually want. So, of course, the community pretty much dried up.
rkingett [OP] 1 points 7y ago
so basically like what happened to YouTube, kind of
fastfinge 1 points 7y ago
No, YouTube doesn't go out of it's way to recommend commercial content. The Google AI will still recommend uploads from small noncommercial/single person channels, if that's what you've been watching lately. The audioboom algorithm will never recommend uploads from individuals, only from large organizations. So if you're a small guy on YouTube, you've still got a chance to get discovered by people, show up in trending lists, etc. On audioboom, they'll do whatever they can to actually hide your content, because it doesn't fit the new professional image they want.
rkingett [OP] 2 points 7y ago
Thanks for commenting! I am a mainstream journalist, so totally get where you are coming from! Lately, I have been hanging around sighted people a lot more than the blind populace, if only because I attend so many press events, and the like... I almost rarely go on the Zone, ETC. I am on reddit, a lot, or, well, writing, but thank you for commenting! I have a shorter piece coming out next month that will talk about power cords and outlets, which will be way more interesting
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