
Proposition: a better model for social networks - dgudkov
Current social networks won&#x27;t survive because of two reasons:<p>First, they are effectively dictatorships. It means that the users (&quot;citizens&quot;) don&#x27;t have any vote in anything related to how the network (&quot;society&quot;) operates.<p>Second, current social networks are monetized though ads which incentivizes them to create added value for advertisers rather than for users.<p>Therefore, the next generation of social networks should operate in a very different way. It should be a platform for creating self-governed &quot;tribes&quot; where each tribe decides by voting how it is governed. For example, accepting new members into a tribe can be completely open in some tribes, or by recommendation of N existing members in other tribes, or by paying X amount of money to the tribe&#x27;s budget, or by accomplishing a task, or something else.<p>The goal of such social network would be not to govern the tribes, but to provide a variety of options and means for self governance in tribes. Tribes should configure their own rules, choosing from options provided by the network. Some tribes want to have a benevolent dictatorship model? No problem, a new update gives tribes the ability to assign a dictator that overrules any possible decision. A large tribe wants to have its own senate for delegated decision making? Here we go, the next update now offers this capability too.<p>Monetization for such social network is simple: free users don&#x27;t have the right to vote. Paid users can vote or have the right delegate their vote. No advertisement ever.
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all2
Federated and decentralized social media platforms are already a thing. The
ones I know of right off the top of my head are

[https://joinmastodon.org/](https://joinmastodon.org/)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18370208](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18370208)
(Aether)

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dgudkov
Yes, but neither of them has a mechanism for self-governance which is the
point.

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all2
Aether has self-governance built in. [0] See the bottom of the page on the
right:

> Communities can elect and impeach their own mods by voting. If a mod behaves
> inappropriately, users can disable that mod locally as well. Doing so
> reverts all changes by that moderator for the user, and counts for one
> impeachment vote.

[0] [https://getaether.net/](https://getaether.net/)

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dgudkov
That's nice to know, although I'm not talking about just selecting a mod. The
point is to configure all policies of a social network -- enrolling, banning,
messaging, posting, collective decision making, connections to other
societies, etc.

