
Openbook social network - MzHN
https://www.open-book.org
======
reacharavindh
I'm actually fine that it is not de-centralized. It is true that federated
systems are too complicated for practical use. However, to go against
Facebook, we need something like Wikipedia, not Facebook by some other guy who
pinky promises that he will be good.

This right here kills it for me, and hopefully others too.

"Why is Openbook not a non-profit?

Making Openbook a for-profit was a hard choice to make. We love Wikipedia, the
Ghost Foundation, Founders Pledge, Mozilla and many more. However we see the
same struggle repeated over and over again. These companies struggle to grow
beyond their profitability. These companies struggle to grow to the size and
resources needed to compete with for-profit businesses.

When we need to grow exponentially, we need to be able to raise the large
amounts of money needed to do so. Therefore we are officially a for-profit
company.

But do note that when we do this, we will make sure the people investing in
the company will be people with real interest on the platform, its core values
of privacy, security, freedom, openness and its humanitarian nature."

NO NO NO NO NO!!! Why do you have to exponentially grow to be useful. Be the
right service, and growth comes by that virtue. People love Wikipedia for what
it is, not because it "grows exponentially". You're just another guy with good
motives until you succumb to investor pressure.

I've been hoping for a Mozilla/Wikimedia like foundation to come up with a
modern centralized alternative to Facebook, that just has it in their bylaws
that prevents any creepy tracking from being implemented in the first place.

As they say, "False pretence of security is worse than no security because it
makes you let your guard down". Don't dilute the community driven foundations
by profit driven projects like this, please.

~~~
koboll
>People love Wikipedia for what it is, not because it "grows exponentially".

That's because Wikipedia is not a social network. A social network is only
worthwhile if it gains a critical mass of users such that there are enough
friends on it (or sometimes, i.e. Twitter, enough interesting people on it) to
make spending time there worthwhile. Massive growth is more important to the
survival of a social network than to any other business model.

~~~
dalbasal
Wikipedia is not a social network, but it definitely does get better as more
people use it. Users-editors grow together, and wikipedia is a massive
collaborative effort. It takes millions to make a wikipedia.

~~~
neuromantik8086
Define "better". On what metrics are you evaluating Wikipedia? Factuality,
writing quality, etc? Wikipedia's process has driven away some of the most
knowledgeable subject-matter experts into creating rival publications like
Scholarpedia, and pre-Wikipedia incumbents like the Stanford Encyclopedia of
Philosophy remain stronger imho, despite having fewer (but more qualified)
editors.

------
laurent123456
Not sure they have their priorities right. The last item in the list of goals
(at $500,000, no less) are iOS and Android apps. I would think that should
come first as without this very few people will want to use the service at
all.

~~~
naravara
I am tired of Apps that really should just be websites. Unless you have some
kind of real, functional need to access my phone's hardware or software I
don't need you taking up space on my device. I'd much rather just save a book
mark to my home screen and launch from there.

------
starbugs
First of all, kudos for trying this.

So far I've only read comments that have a strong tendency towards the
destructive or even pejorative end of the spectrum. I think that's unfair
considering all the effort they are putting into this.

Having said that, I'd like to know what distinguishes this from e.g. Facebook
in the long term. It's easy to put out a manifesto and pledge that you are
never going to do bad things. It's also easy to come up with a vague
theoretical business model that doesn't really say how it will work.

Let's assume they succeed with this – there is nothing that enforces these
early statements anymore and soon investor pressure will lead to an outcome
similar to the established success stories.

That's why I think you have to be much more different if you really aim to
make a difference at scale.

~~~
bko
They're not just trying this. They're asking for money from regular folks with
no real sustainable revenue model apart from "we're crowd-funding" [0]. People
are free to donate as they like, but I think the whole pitch is not entirely
honest.

[0] [https://www.open-book.org/en/faq](https://www.open-book.org/en/faq)

~~~
class4behavior
You should read their FAQ on Kickstarter [1]. There they answer why their
project is not federated, what revenue model they aim for, and why they aren't
a non-profit.

Here's their take on the business model:

>Our business model is not and will never be advertisements.

>We will have a transparent revenue model based on a generic way for people to
securely transact physical and digital goods and services inside the network.
This will be done through an atomic digital unit of value. Although this
initially reflected as a marketplace, our ambitions go way beyond that.

>Apart from this, we’re also planning to help enterprise customers setting up
their own internal, self-hosted and secure social networks with extra
functionality such as projects, identity and access management.

[1]: [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1520156881/openbook-
the...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1520156881/openbook-the-honest-
open-source-and-awesome-social/faqs)

~~~
r3bl
> There they answer why their project is not federated, what revenue model
> they aim for, and why they aren't a non-profit.

No, they don't.

Federation-wise, there's not a single word on federation. They talk about
decentralization, not federation. To quote my other comment:

> Instead of "Will I be able to run my own instance?", think: Will I be able
> to follow an Openbook account from my Mastodon account?

As for the business model, I really need more than "atomic digital units of
value" and "our ambitions go way beyond that". The last sentence does tell me
something, but that something directly contradicts their stand on
decentralization.

As for why they aren't a non-profit, they generalize pretty much every non-
profit and say that they "don't grow exponentially" (without defining what
they mean), and they mention names that do indeed grow year after year.

At the end, none of those three questions are answered for me.

~~~
rapnie
In their (now archived) ideas repo, one guy suggested ActivityPub. But they
rejected that specification as not fitting with their requirements. See:
[https://github.com/OpenbookOrg/ideas/issues/1](https://github.com/OpenbookOrg/ideas/issues/1)

~~~
edraferi
Very interesting that their main reason for rejecting ActivityPub is GDPR.
Basically, you can't delete information after its been federated out.

This seems to go to far. Give the users control over their data in your system
AND give them control over how their data is sent to other systems.

Edit: In the linked issue, OpenBook CEO said that you can't delete mastodon
accounts, but Mastodon got that feature a couple weeks after his post:

[https://github.com/tootsuite/mastodon/pull/3728](https://github.com/tootsuite/mastodon/pull/3728)

~~~
Kalium
> This seems to go to far. Give the users control over their data in your
> system AND give them control over how their data is sent to other systems.

Depending on how you define "system", being unable to track and/or delete data
federated out might put you in a hazardous position around GDPR. It's not just
about users controlling their own data. It's also about system operators being
able to enumerate who they shared data with, what safeguards and processes
they follow, and so on.

------
logcat
It is worth mentioning that protocol-based social networks exist. Like
[https://www.scuttlebutt.nz/](https://www.scuttlebutt.nz/)

~~~
iaml
Until they can work without installing additional app they will never be
mainstream.

~~~
logcat
Snapchat is counterexample

~~~
icebraining
Also Whatsapp.

------
drngdds
Might be interesting if it was federated. Federation is AFAICT the only way to
avoid network effects, which are why we're in this whole mess to begin with.
(Many more people would have left Facebook after all the scandals if they
could interact with their Facebook friends from another site.) There's no way
of ensuring that Openbook wouldn't become as evil as Facebook once it had a
big userbase.

------
discordianfish
Today, everybody can build a social network. Apparently though building a
social network that's actually used is quite hard and many failed. So I'd
expect somebody who tries again to have some novel approach but it doesn't
look like it. How does this compare to disapora or mastodon except the lack of
federation?

I really wish them to succeed since I'd like to see somebody breaking the
facebook monopoly, yet I'm quite sure this won't end any different than
disapora, mastadon, app.net and the several ones I can't even remember
anymore.

There is this common mistake of seeing these platforms as a technical
challenge but in reality, unless you have a novel approach that people crave
for, it's a lot of non-technical hustle.

~~~
rainbowmverse
I can't speak for the others, but Mastodon hasn't ended. I use it every day
and still meet lots of new people.

------
phoe-krk
Does it federate with other services? I have not seen anything mentioning this
on the website and I consider it to be crucial for me backing the idea of this
service. I don't want or need yet another centralized *book.

~~~
MzHN
Based on the FAQ I'd say it will not be federated, at least not initially, and
in the FAQ they explain why. In short, they think that's where other
initiatives fall short, and they want to sidestep the issue completely, and
come back to it once they're profitable.

~~~
r3bl
I don't think that FAQ entry answers the question asked by the parent comment.

They say that they don't want to decentralize the service (as in, everyone can
run their own instance), and I can understand their stand on that. However,
they say nothing about federation with other similar attempts that are popping
up.

Instead of "Will I be able to run my own instance?", think: Will I be able to
follow an Openbook account from my Mastodon account?

~~~
rainbowmverse
This is something I didn't know I cared about until I followed Blender's
PeerTube instance account from a Mastodon instance. Pixelfed is working on it,
and Plume, and...

It's something I've come to expect. If your hot new app doesn't federate, I
don't care about it.

------
newscracker
If it's not ad supported, how do they plan to keep the lights on once the
Kickstarter funding gets exhausted and when they don't get any institutional
funding? Somehow the following paragraph form the manifesto doesn't sound very
convincing (it sounds like some messaging services that have said that they'll
make money selling stickers):

> "We will have a transparent revenue model based on a generic way for people
> to securely transact physical and digital goods and services inside the
> network. This will be done through an atomic digital unit of value. Although
> this initially reflected as a marketplace, our ambitions go way beyond that.

> Apart from this, we’re also planning to help enterprise customers setting up
> their own internal, self-hosted and secure social networks with extra
> functionality such as projects, identity and access management."

This should also be listed in the FAQ.

------
mgkimsal
"drag and drop your old social media archive... import all your photos,
videos, chats and more".

Photos/videos I can sort of understand, but 'chats' \- they're done _with
other people_ , none of whom would have been granting permission for their
content to be migrated to openbook. Am I being too literal here, or is this a
privacy violation being promised on day one?

~~~
wilsonnb2
I don't think all parties of a chat need to consent for that information to be
shared, aside from specific cases like doctor-patient and lawyer-client.

------
edhelas
Here we go, another Social Network engine :) Just following the NIH syndrome,
once again.

> OpenBook is OpenSource

Yeah awesome. Like many other projects. Having the OpenSource stamp is not
really an advantage anymore. Building and maintaining a community around it,
with strong support and integration is something way more difficult to do.

> On Openbook you will not only be able to personalise your profile, but the
> entire network itself! From changing the color of your homepage to adding
> plugins, you can make it as unique as yourself.

So basically I can customize everything. On my instance? Is it
federated/decentralized (doesn't seems so)?

> We don’t track anything you do, neither monetize your information nor share
> it without your explicit and informed consent.

Hopefully the GDPR has already cover all those things :)

> All applications will be reviewed by us. We will make sure they: only
> request the needed information, have the exact location of your data
> available for you, at all times, delete all your information if you’d revoke
> the permission...

GDPR

> Some examples of the technology we'll be researching and developing: >
> Cryptographically enforced data sharing policies > End to end encryption,
> even on the browser > Public key cryptography on the browser > Post-quantum
> cryptography algorithms and protocols

NIH syndrom, all those things are already covered by many other projects, why
not reusing that? Also, "post-quantum" cryptography, looks like a nice
buzzword thrown in there.

> Migrating to Openbook will be easy-peasy, with our simple drag-and-drop
> system. Just download your data from your old social network1 and transfer
> them to Openbook. Shazam!

Good luck with that. GDPR is indeed forcing social platforms to have a Data-
Portability politic. Facebook is exporting the user content in HTML flat file
with no proper identifiers or easy way to reconstruct the data structure.

> ...we’re also planning to help enterprise customers setting up their own
> internal, self-hosted and secure social networks with extra functionality
> such as projects, identity and access management.

So basically they are developing another centralized Social Network engine.

~~~
catwell
I don't disagree with everything you said, but if this thing gets traction,
this is the HN DropBox thread of the future :)

(
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863)
)

~~~
wilsonnb2
Even that thread itself was the "No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame."
thread of the future.

It's an interesting phenomenon that in the age of the internet there are
easily accessible public records of how hard it is to tell what is going to be
a big deal.

[https://slashdot.org/story/01/10/23/1816257/apple-
releases-i...](https://slashdot.org/story/01/10/23/1816257/apple-releases-
ipod)

------
ssdspoimdsjvv
A nearly empty webpage that lags like crazy is very bad promotion and makes me
question whether they have the knowledge to create a high-traffic social
network. Also, the quote of the founder:

Openbook is not only an evolutionary step for social networks, it's also a
humanitarian project at world scale.

Makes me want to vomit. You're making a website, not feeding hungry children.

~~~
pavs
From their website:

>In partnership with FoundersPledge, we'll be giving 30% of our revenue
towards projects for education, sanitization, climate change prevention and
more.

~~~
bko
From the FAQ on their page:

>Who's paying for everything so far?

> So far we have been completely self funded. However, this has proven to be
> very hard. With most of us working full-time jobs apart from Openbook, it
> could take us long time till we release the first version and even then, we
> would not be able to afford the IT infrastructure needed to compete with any
> of the established networks. As we wanted the project to be driven by people
> and not capital, we decided to go for crowd-funding. We'll be launching our
> Kickstarter campaign on the 17th of July.

They don't appear to have a revenue model. I'm not sure if they consider
donations from kickstarter revenue, but so far its their only source. I don't
think passing on 30% of donations to FoundersPledge is really changing the
world

~~~
pavs
They are talking about future revenue generation. Kickstarted is being used as
a fundraiser.

They are probably trying something similar to ghost blogging platform.

Whether they are successful or not is to be seen, but I am not enjoying how
some people are unnecessarily shitting on their effort.

------
yeleti
A long long time ago (in 2010), Facebook sued a start-up called Teachbook for
using 'book' in its name. Hope you don't get into that muddle.

[https://money.cnn.com/2010/08/26/technology/teachbook/](https://money.cnn.com/2010/08/26/technology/teachbook/)

~~~
lioeters
I hadn't heard about this. They've sued several companies whose names end with
"book". Apparently a lawsuit coming from FB is scary enough that they've
acquiesced and changed their names, without standing up in court. Replacebook!

------
throwawayqdhd
Not knocking this effort, but why are all decentralized, open social networks
that hope to compete against Facebook and Instagram so...dull?

Their marketing is all the same wholesomeness and positive messaging. There's
no "rebellious" streak to it at all.

But wholesomeness didn't help Facebook, Snapchat and Instagram grow. Facebook
was the "adults only" social network that required a .edu address when it was
challenging MySpace. Snapchat was pretty much a sexting app. Instagram is
basically semi-nude models in its search feed.

I get what these people are trying to do, but you're not going to do that by
being boring and corporate.

~~~
tomcooks
I'd rather have a functioning, 'dull' project than an edgy 2kool4skool meme
disappearing in a couple of months because the hipster userbase moved to the
next cool socnet.

------
lcnmrn
I built two working, bug free social sites and yet nobody cares about them. At
the end of the day someone else comes with a vaporware manifesto and takes the
discussion away from actual products.

~~~
pweissbrod
Hi I'd be curious to see what youve built. Can you supply links?

~~~
prab97
I see two links in his HN bio.

~~~
reitanqild
Seems not everyone is aware so I'll just point it out:

The bio can be found by clicking peoples username.

From the bio you can also navigate to their comment history and also see what
stories they have submitted.

~~~
jameskegel
If someone isn’t aware of this they are not my preferred peer.

~~~
reitanqild
To add to my answer from yesterday: there is also no obvious way to see that
usernames are links (at least for me, somewhat colorblind on a mobile device.)

~~~
g-b-r
If it's any comfort to you, it's the same for normal-sighted (everything's
gray).

They probably think that users like to have to hunt for the features of the
site.

------
Reedx
> helping make the world a better place.

It's hard to take anyone seriously who uses that phrase... Especially in this
sort of context.

That's been a joke for a long time now, everyone knows it's nonsense.

~~~
codeafin
Same with

> Good for the planet

It all almost looks ironically done.

------
DyslexicAtheist
as much as I applaud the effort, the next Uber or Facebook won't be a better
Uber or Facebook but something totally different. I wish companies would stop
trying to be better copies of existing services. Facebook had traction because
it was radically different from anything that was before.

Also they have no idea how to finance and fund their growth:

 _> Our business model is not and will never be advertisements.

We will have a transparent revenue model based on a generic way for people to
securely transact physical and digital goods and services inside the network.
This will be done through an atomic digital unit of value. Although this
initially reflected as a marketplace, our ambitions go way beyond that.

Apart from this, we’re also planning to help enterprise customers setting up
their own internal, self-hosted and secure social networks with extra
functionality such as projects, identity and access management._

~~~
cmorgan8506
> Facebook had traction because it was radically different from anything that
> was before.

How was Facebook radically different than other social media sites? In my
opinion, it was almost exactly the same as the rest. They just leveraged some
clever marketing.

~~~
addicted
The only major difference with FB was it limited your network to your college.

In terms of features it was a static page with the only dynamic capability
being the ability to poke someone.

------
hurtwed
The splash page is hideously slow and stuttering even on desktop. Is the
CSS/JS just this bad, or is this site trying to mine cryptocurrency in the
background?

~~~
g-b-r
I think it's that "typewriter" effect, probably some endless loop without any
sleep.

It doesn't help that javascript is required

------
_bxg1
At this point I don't trust the sunny promises of any for-profit that wants me
to give them my data. Data is the new oil. If an organization can get it and
legally profit from it, be assured that they will.

------
shiburizu
While it's easy to point out at moral level that nothing is guaranteed that if
this sort of project gets big it cannot just run off with investor money to go
off on Zuckerberg hijinks which has no good reason to even exist at this point
-- the notion that it is "too difficult" to implement federated social
networking is not going to sway me away from my advocacy of it.

The most important identity system in the world -- the one that even the
biggest websites in the world want you to identify yourself with is definitely
your email. The protocols underlying your email are my vision for social
networking: A common format that accurately sends a message to feature-
complete implementations. There's really not any reason we can't have your
federated social media be your email replacement barring that the W3C standard
doesn't call for any sort of secure mailbox (Mastodon doesn't have REAL
"private messages") but it's still a damn good solution to the problem of
trying to work in the social media space: you need users. What if the users
are already there?

Perhaps as the APub standard and implementations grow we can see them become
standardized to the sort of SSO that we are used to when we "connect with
Facebook/Twitter" but another closed-loop timeline-based for-profit social
media won't ever have my attention because there's not a market.

Unless it's Vine.

------
wll
_«Making Openbook a for-profit was a hard choice to make. We check all the
non-profits boxes and we love non-profits. We love Wikipedia, the Ghost
Foundation, Founders Pledge, Mozilla and many more. However we see the same
struggle repeated over and over again. These companies struggle to grow beyond
their profitability. These companies struggle to grow to the size and
resources needed to compete with for-profit businesses. When we need to grow
exponentially, we need to be able to raise the large amounts of money needed
to do so. Therefore we are officially a for-profit company. But do note that
when we do this, we will make sure the people investing in the company will be
people with real interest on the platform, its core values of privacy,
security, freedom, openness and its humanitarian nature.»_ [0]

As a for-profit corporation’s legal operational boundaries end at the
financial interests of its shareholders, any corporation-defined “core value”
may not and does not benefit from legal guarantees.

While a benefit corporation [1] may allow to balance the interests of
shareholders and stakeholders, any form equal to a UK company limited by
guarantee with “limited” exemption [2] [Section 60, Section 62] binds, secures
a corporation’s objects (or “core values”) to interest-free legal
requirements.

For trust to ensue and persist, any “for-benefit” alternative to existing for-
profit corporation- or nation state-controlled platforms must state its “core
values” as the controlling corporation’s objects.

[0] [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1520156881/openbook-
the...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1520156881/openbook-the-honest-
open-source-and-awesome-social/faqs#project_faq_255412)

[1]
[http://benefitcorp.net/sites/default/files/Benefit_Corporati...](http://benefitcorp.net/sites/default/files/Benefit_Corporation_White_Paper.pdf)

[2]
[http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2006/46/part/5/chapter/2...](http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2006/46/part/5/chapter/2/crossheading/required-
indications-for-limited-companies)

------
TomMarius
I have high end computer (i7-7700 with 32GB of empty RAM) with pretty good
graphics card (GeForce GTX 1060)... and this site is lagging. I can't even
scroll properly.

~~~
walty8
Based on wappalyzer, webpack & jquery are used on the website. But no other
framework (React, Vue, Ionic) is detected... So it's just jquery + webpack?

~~~
g-b-r
I don't know what you're looking at, but for sure they're using vue.

Most likely suspect is the typewriter animation, which ought to be done with
[https://github.com/tameemsafi/typewriterjs](https://github.com/tameemsafi/typewriterjs)
(but maybe it's just how they used it - or maybe something entirely different,
I just had a quick look).

------
Shank
There's a lot of marketing on here about honesty, fun, and being personal.
That being said, none of these attributes are being applied to the social
network part of the social network. In their current form, they're just
buzzwords about the project.

For once, I'd like to see a project use these words in a meaningful way. Build
a manifesto that isn't just "we are building a platform." Focus on actual
social interactions and social behaviors that the platform should have. Build
something that actually encourages honesty, openness, and fun posts over
lying, fake personalities, and cynicism.

Normal users don't see benefits in switching away from Facebook to an
equivalent platform with more honest caretakers. That's the sad reality of it.
But if a social network pledged to only allow posts that are positive about
things, or actively banned people for spreading lies, that would be totally
different. It's an execution thing -- people would need to see policy in
action -- but if pulled off, it would result in a fundamentally different and
easily comparable platform to Facebook.

------
wuliwong
I was thinking about making an open source social-network just this morning.
I'm all about "for profit" in general but as has been echoed a bunch in the
comments already, a lot of corporations start off on a good trajectory but
ultimately wind up in a place we don't like. I don't want to stoke any
political flames, so I'll just leave it at that. :)

The reasons I would like to see a project like this succeed would be to have a
network that better protects privacy and has very transparent censorship. I'm
not super well versed in open source and non-profit but my current thinking is
that making an organization of similar style to wikipedia would be the best
strategy. Open source the code, own the hardware and raise money through
donations.

Do you think I'm missing something or would this be the best strategy? Also,
is there already a project(s) like this?

------
_RedPanda
I can't click on any links, am I doing something wrong? The only links that
are working for me, are the ones on the right side of the page.

Website looks like this for me:
[https://i.imgur.com/7OkVlUz.png](https://i.imgur.com/7OkVlUz.png)

I am using Google Chrome on Windows 10

~~~
hutattedonmyarm
Same with Vivaldi, FF, and Edge on Win 10. Works in Safari on Mojave though

------
rcar1046
I'm not sure I can imagine any path to success here. Maybe focus on a small
interest group or locale to begin with, then look to spread outward from
there. A small college campus perhaps. ;) Still...this needs a hook other than
the privacy angle, and a big one at that.

------
azatris
If it made any sense to the common person, the front page shouldn't have "open
source" in its description. Because your average grandma has no idea what that
means.

It's an insanely hard market to chew into and thus I can say they've already
lost.

~~~
catwell
It does not matter that the average grandma has no idea what that means. New
products need early adopters, and the average grandma is not a potential early
adopter, neither is the average grandpa or anyone average, really.

Any argument, including being Open Source, is good to get early adopters.
Communication can change later on.

Too many products try to appeal to the general public too soon. This is not
how user acquisition works.

~~~
ljw1001
> It does not matter that the average grandma has no idea what that means.

My 23 year old son and 18 year old daughter didn't know what open-source
meant.

If you could build a social network around tech people we'd all be using
Google Plus.

~~~
catwell
You don't build a social network around tech, you bootstrap it with a
community. Bootstrapping it with Open Source enthusiasts is fine. If you say
"we're yet another social network" you have no value proposition. Not that I
think that "we're yet another Open Source social network" is good either...

Also, the fact that a grandma doesn't know what Open Source means doesn't
really concern me, but the fact that the children of someone who posts on HN
and works at Google don't, does. Maybe that's part of the reason why
proprietary, centralized services are winning.

Anyway, I do have concerns along the same line, not because "Open Source" is
on the front page but because:

\- The team is not diverse enough in terms of experience. The COO is an
"information-security expert"; the CMO is a "security and international
relations expert"; the Chief of Product is a "pragmatic software engineer" and
"crypto-geek". This is a problem, even though not necessarily deadly.

\- They plan to allocate 70 % of the budget to software engineering, and
basically 0 % to marketing / user acquisition / community management. This is
the biggest red flag for me.

~~~
richardawk1
Just googled the COO, she is pretty big in the security community. Also was
CISO at a Dutch Telecom, and they have Phil Zimmerman!

Im not worried about the budget for marketing, they seem to have managed to
get themselves into a few leading publications already and the early backers
will provide initial beta users + word of mouth marketing.

What remains to be seen is if the team can execute, I guess only time will
tell. Overall good initiative though.

------
onyva
I like it that there are attempts to change the status quo and not accept
Facebook in our lives as a fact, and push back against the monetization of
personal information. But shouldn’t this be backed up by an organization with
some trackrecord in the domain of user's digital rights, free and open
standards? EFF, FSF... join existing umbrella projects, even if not leveraging
existing code...
[https://www.gnu.org/software/social...](https://www.gnu.org/software/social...)?
Like someone else said here already, today everybody can build a social
network.

Btw they don’t seem to even own openbook.org ...

~~~
laurent123456
It's a for-profit company so I doubt the EFF, etc. would want to back them.
They might be open now, but as they grow and more and more investors own the
company there's no reason to think they'll be any better than Facebook.

~~~
rement
Take reddit for example. They used to release there code to the open but that
is no longer true.

------
have_faith
What's the monetisation model?

edit: found this

"We will have a transparent revenue model based on a generic way for people to
securely transact physical and digital goods and services inside the network.
This will be done through an atomic digital unit of value. Although this
initially reflected as a marketplace, our ambitions go way beyond that.

Apart from this, we’re also planning to help enterprise customers setting up
their own internal, self-hosted and secure social networks with extra
functionality such as projects, identity and access management."

~~~
briandear
I think your question still stands.

”Atomic digital unit of value?”

Who writes this stuff?

~~~
have_faith
If I didn't know I would have guessed it was an ICO for a new crypto.

~~~
g-b-r
They're raising money so as to put together an ICO?? That's a new height..

------
overcast
I don't get it. Who is asking for another Facebook? Except for a few vocal
minority carrying on over privacy and decentralization, none of which will
even bother. The rest of the world doesn't care, Facebook is there for them
already. When everyone inevitably tires of it, they'll move to a new idea, not
another clone. Facebook knows this, that's why they continue purchasing
upcoming services like Instagram.

------
omk
If it's not federated, there is little control already. If the business models
for centralized networks are not aggressive right now, nothing stop them from
evolving once there's more money on the table.

I wonder what folks here think about ActivityPub. I been craving for a
federated protocol since Google Wave. I'm yet to go through it in detail and
see if it really stands.

~~~
edhelas
If you're looking for a real-time federated social-network (that is what I
understood by "Google Wave") solution have a look at solutions based on the
industry standard XMPP. I'm building one (Movim
[https://movim.eu/](https://movim.eu/)) and started to explain how is made the
architecture in this blog post
[https://nl.movim.eu/?blog/edhelas%40movim.eu/how-s-made-
movi...](https://nl.movim.eu/?blog/edhelas%40movim.eu/how-s-made-movim-part-i-
the-architecture-CCA7If).

------
quantumwoke
How are openbook going to fund this? It costs a lot of money to run a social
network. I read through the material and the only thing I saw was a pi-chart,
nothing explained their revenue model. Not to mention their privacy model
seems exactly the same as facebook's.

~~~
privacygeek445
I guess thats why the kickstarter! And if they get traction they can always
later go for venture capital. I know its an uphill task but I'm overall
positive. Kickstarter will also get them a lot of beta users right out the
door so that was a smart move if you ask me

I think I saw something about their revenue model on their website FAQ.

~~~
quantumwoke
The kickerstarter will only bring in a finite amount of money. Long term
operations will surely require more than that. Why would anyone want to invest
in this? Twitter/facebook etc can at least collect advertising information.
There is some discussion about what seems to basically be a cryptocurrency,
but its surely not sustainable.

------
stockkid
Interesting project. But when I try the website in Firefox on Anddroid or
macOS, scroll is jagged and links & css animations are slow to respond.

------
rascul
Scrolling is choppy and slow on my phone. Haven't checked my laptop, though.
But such screwed up scrolling means I'm not interested.

~~~
Uberphallus
It was choppy on my beefy desktop on Firefox as well.

~~~
davidhyde
Me too. All they needed to do was profile their webpage in modern browser to
see the glaring performance problems. Doesn't bode well for a more complex
piece of software like a social network.

~~~
privacygeek445
not sure why everyones complaining about performance, it seems to work fine on
my macbook air. Plugins perhaps?

~~~
g-b-r
It might work fine but (the homepage) is most likely draining your battery.
Have you looked at your cpu usage?

------
godelski
This site made my fan spin up like crazy (FF61). Happen to anyone else?
(reproducible on my end)

------
osrec
The website caused my tab in Chrome on mobile to crash each time I tried to
open it.

------
juhq
How do I sign up? Odd that a social network does not have registration form

~~~
eevilspock
It's a kickstarter. i.e. it's being built. The minimal €1 contribution will
give you "early access".

------
akuji1993
Site is crashing and throws a million errors on the console.

------
dielan
For profit and centeralized. Hard pass.

Is this the next Ello?

------
pasta
Looks like there is something wrong with the site. Javascript crashes and
nothing is visible.

------
maartn
site doesn't work

------
maartn
doesn't work

------
AnabeeKnox
A domain name with a - dash in it. This product fails at the very first step.

~~~
catwell
They address this in the Kickstarter FAQ.

[https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1520156881/openbook-
the...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1520156881/openbook-the-honest-
open-source-and-awesome-social/faqs#project_faq_255412)

~~~
barking
They are going to buy openbook.com with the money they raise from kickstarter.
Seems like a complete waste of money to me.

Who types in a url any more?

------
katakuchi
Valiant effort, I don't understand why the community is responding so toxic.
Rather than assuming that growth will lead to this social network becoming the
next corrupted Facebook, why don't we focus on the unique aspects that make
this open-sourced network worthwhile to begin with?

Security - Privacy - Customisability - Compatibility with status quo. We can
all agree that we lost faith in the monstrosity that Facebook has become, it
doesn't mean that we can't place faith in other technology to produce a
different outcome.

~~~
_bxg1
The code being open-source accomplishes very little in this case. It's what
they do with your data after they get it that matters. Data is the new oil,
and if a for-profit company can get it, rest assured they will use or sell it.

~~~
privacygeek445
I get where you're coming from but data is the new oil in conjunction with
machine learning/ big data algorithms. Thats the true evil. that part at least
will be transparent with the open-source model IMO

~~~
_bxg1
Once they have the data, they can do whatever they want with it. They can run
it through closed-source ML, they can sell it to other companies. I suppose
people would know if they meddled with the news feed order, but that's about
it.

~~~
privacygeek445
Thats rather cynical... Sure!! The team of privacy and security activists
backed by internet hall of fame member Phil Zimmerman who created PGP and
fought the US govt are all actually closeted evil capitalists just out to get
everyones data..

