reallyread.it & the future of social media

reallyread.it is the world’s first online community built by and for people who really read articles on the internet.

The single biggest problem with internet media and journalism is that most people don’t read.

The average amount of time spent on an article is 2.5 seconds.

This is the source of countless internet frustrations: clickbait, trolls, echo-chambers, and fake news. It’s why a vast majority of people who get their news from social media (which is almost everyone) say they don’t enjoy the experience. And they don’t trust it.

Two years ago we set out on a quest to fix the comment section, everyone’s least favorite part of the web. We accomplished that. And so now we’re taking it a step further — we’re building a social media network powered by reading.

And we’re live. Come join us.

In our community, people can’t comment on articles they haven’t really read. Our homepage algorithmically organizes the best articles from web based on what people are reading — really reading. There are no moderators or human curators.

We’re on reallyread.it every day, reading and commenting on articles from our favorite publications like The New York Times and The Economist as well as our favorite blogs from all around the world. Pretty much anything can be read and shared with the community.

So — how does it work?

For now, community members add a chrome extension which enables them to track their reading progress and get credit for things they’ve really read.

Our solution is simple and effectively addresses all of the worst aspects of the web:

• Clickbait. People on Facebook, Twitter and Reddit are liking and sharing things they haven’t actually read. So when you look at your feed, what you’re seeing are people’s knee-jerk reactions to headlines. The defining characteristic of clickbait is that people don’t spend time reading it. Our algorithm crushes it and promotes the opposite kind of content—longer stuff that people are engaging with deeply.
• Trolls. Trolls use internet anarchy to their advantage. In our community, commenting isn’t a right. It’s a privilege that takes some time to earn. Conversations on reallyread.it are more thoughtful and insightful. People are more respectful to one another when they have a shared experience. In this case, the shared experience is that they read the same article.
• Echo-chambers. On reallyread.it, there is exactly one comment thread for every article on the internet. No more and no less. So although you’re still having a conversation with a subset of people, they are only defined by the fact that they really read a given article, not some pre-existing ideology.
• Fake news. Fake news is fake news — it has always existed and always will. We should never trust any corporation or government to do our thinking for us. When people refer to the problem of “fake news,” they are referring to the proliferation of bad information across junk networks where people aren’t reading. Or thinking. Reading is the only solution.

Visit reallyread.it to get started today. Can’t wait to see you in the comment section!