LessWrong

Lesswrong Liberated

2026-04-01 · 12:03 UTC ·Ronny Fernandez ·3 min read

Brief

Ronny Fernandez’s April 1 LessWrong post introduced a real site experiment wrapped in revolutionary parody: users can now click a “customize” button on the front page, ask an LLM to redesign the interface, keep the result privately, or publish it for others through links posted in the thread. Fernandez claimed this would democratize web design by removing the need for a single arbiter of taste, explicitly joking about deposing Oliver Habryka and ending his unchecked rule over whitespace and typography. The key operational detail was a 24-hour vote in which the highest-karma published theme would become the site’s default. Commenters mostly extended the joke by submitting or endorsing exaggerated themes such as a Geocities-style flashing layout, a New York Post look, and a minimalist monospaced option, rather than challenging the feature itself. The visible discussion was therefore more playful than adversarial, with little substantive pushback beyond unrelated side comments.

Source evidence

title: Lesswrong Liberated
author: Ronny Fernandez
contenttype: lesswrongpost
publication: LessWrong
published: 2026-04-01T12:03:11.647000+00:00
source_url: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/hj2NTuiSJtchfMCtu/lesswrong-liberated-1

word_count: 754

A spectre is haunting the internet—the spectre of LLMism.

The history of all hitherto existing forums is the history of clashing design tastes.

For the first time in history, everyone has an equal ability in design! The means of design are no longer only held in the hands of those with "good design taste". Never before have forum users been so close to being able to design their own forums--perhaps the time is upon us now!

It is for this reason that I have deposed the previous acting commander of LessWrong, Oliver Habryka—a man who subjected you to his PERSONAL OPINIONS about white space, without EVEN ASKING—whose TYRANICAL, UNCHECKED GRIP upon our BELOVED LESSWRONG FORUM’S DESIGN I have liberated you from. The circumstances of my succession as acting commander of LessWrong will not be elaborated upon in this memo. (He is alive and in good health, but no longer has push access.)

Rather, I am writing here to announce that the frontpage now belongs to us all! The design of LessWrong's frontpage will no longer be determined by the vision of a single man whose aesthetic tastes have never been subjected to democratic oversight, and who, I can now reveal, once rejected a design I spent three hours working on in under four seconds. No! I hereby call upon you, yes you—LessWrong user, to make your own design for the LessWrong front page.

WE have provided a button in the bottom right corner of the frontpage which says “customize”. Clicking on that button opens a chat box you may ask an LLM to redesign the LessWrong frontpage however you would like. You may keep that design for yourself. This is the promise of individual liberty in the new era of web design.

However, if you would truly like to contribute to the new vision of a democratized LessWrong forum, you may also "publish" the theme you have created. When you click the publish button, your account will reply to this very post with a link allowing other users to try out the theme you have created.

You should browse the themes below, try them, and vote on your favorite one. In keeping with the democratic spirit of LessWrong's newly appointed leadership, whatever theme has the highest karma at the end of this 24 hour period will become LessWrong's default theme. I promise with my full authority as LessWrong’s commander, that as long as I am in power, whatever theme is chosen shall remain our default frontpage.

Some of my former colleagues have tried to warn me that some of these designs might be "hideous" or "in poor taste" or "crimes against typography." While I agree, that is exactly the point! Oliver's reign may have been "aesthetically beautiful" but that does not make up for the fact that it was aesthetically tyrannical.

It is your duty to LessWrong and to democracy in general to prove that design taste is no longer a relevant competency in the age of the LLM, and should no longer be used to anoint one man as the sole arbiter of a website's CSS.

The means of design are now yours! Use them!

Viva La LessWrong Frontpage!

Karma: 33 | Comments: 14 | Author: Ronny Fernandez

Top Comments

Random Developer (16 karma):
Geocities (feat. Angry Fruit Salad)

An optical abomination. Excessive flashing and blinking, and the colors are a crime against aesthetics.

Sonata Green (8 karma):
Mono Light

A tasteful, lightweight, monospaced design.

Boaz Barak (12 karma):
NY post

look like ny post

habryka (12 karma):
LessWrong Liberated

The theme of the LessWrong Revolution newspaper. Viva La LessWrong Frontpage!

JohnWittle (5 karma):
honestly, claude code is sufficient good at analyzing compiled assembly that i just sort of assumed people had used claude code to decompile claude code before, and that there were probably discords and irc channels full of people hacking it (in the old sense of the word)

of course, an actual source tree is way better than the results of a decompilation project, but still. i think the importance of this is probably a bit overblown

avturchin (5 karma):
I think that turning from "creating friendly superintelligence" to "alignment" term was a mistake which opened a slippery slope in the direction of small and local solutions. "Alignment" completely missed the need of creation global friendly Singleton. And now we need to write long texts explaining that when we say "alignment" we don't mean "alignment of some AI to some human's goal" but preveting creation of deadly superintelligence.