Agreed. They didn't really point out anything new or different that they will be doing. That's one of the hardest problems in development. though. It's easy to just reimplement things and mash them up, it's tough to write new stuff. Developers can waste years just rewriting Hacker News with Git logins and stronger moderation (moderation is already pretty harsh here, by the way, with far more people than spammers being ghosted) like they are doing.
Personally, I far prefer Slashdot's model where I can build up a stable of friends and enemies and have their contributions filtered differently. I can filter out the useless cheerleaders while other people can show only them. Yay. It sounds like this thing's focus on pre-caching for performance and forcing the whole community to only say happy things will prevent them from user customized responses and views, though. So I don't expect them to break any new ground in showing more useful stuff and less chaff.
Personally, I far prefer Slashdot's model where I can build up a stable of friends and enemies and have their contributions filtered differently. I can filter out the useless cheerleaders while other people can show only them. Yay. It sounds like this thing's focus on pre-caching for performance and forcing the whole community to only say happy things will prevent them from user customized responses and views, though. So I don't expect them to break any new ground in showing more useful stuff and less chaff.