
What do you want in a new social network? - feralhog
Looking for your ideas on how to build a better social network
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throwaway156503
The HN crowd always suggests technical aspects they want out of online
communities. No one cares about that crap.

Instead, what about online communities that: don't incentivize shallow
responses, don't incentivize like or karma gaming, do encourage great content,
do encourage participation to a slightly greater degree than most places where
80% lurk.

I think good online communities are actually small. At a particular point in
time, as population scale goes up, you don't find people familiar anymore and
as a result no one has a reputation. The site has a reputation.

How do we create good online communities? Someone has done this homework, yes.
At least, I believe there are studies out there somewhere which talk about the
threshold of people that we can recognize with any meaningful context.

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ScottFree
I agree with everything you're saying, but what you're describing isn't a
social network. It's a private, invite-only community and those have serious
limitations when compared to an open social network.

IMHO, HN and Reddit are at their best when random people whose opinions you
wouldn't ordinarily hear from decide to comment. For example, It's pretty
common here on HN for open source authors to chime in on threads where their
product is being talked about and answer questions. On Reddit, you'll
occasionally get highly detailed comments from people with hands on knowledge
of the topic being discussed. One that stands out in my mind right now is when
an LA city planner commented on a thread about building high rent condos vs
building low rent units. He laid out all of the city building codes around new
buildings and why the finances don't work out for the low rent units. It was
one of the best comments I've ever seen on the topic on Reddit and it would
never have happened had the subreddit been closed off or invite only.

Of course, then the problem becomes how much crap you have to sift through to
find that nugget. But, If you deleted all the crap as "shallow responses",
would the lack of posts still attract those nuggets of great content? I think
a high comment count and a high karma count actually attracts higher quality
commenters because there's a perceived greater chance a lot of people will
read it.

The only solution I can think of is to have a lot of moderators constantly
auditing threads, marking the high quality comments so they stand out at the
top and outright blocking or banning anything too egregious. Crowdsourcing
doesn't work for this because it gets weaponized and/or abused.

Ultimately, what makes or breaks a social network rests entirely on the
decisions the mods make about what kind of content they want on their site.

~~~
throwaway156503
You make some really good points. Thanks for your thoughts.

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CM30
I guess I'd want a social network where people aren't constantly tracked for
monetisation purposes and where their personal information isn't sold to the
highest bidder. Where any creators there can actually do well on the platform,
and where the recommendation systems aren't ridiculously unfairly tilted in
favour of the already super popular types.

And hell, one where the moderation system is fair all round. No preferences,
no biases towards the rich or popular or whatever, just simple rules they
enforce equally for all users, maybe with a nice way to counter the claim and
get a person to listen to your response.

Plus somewhere a bunch of interesting people are posting interesting content
on a regular basis. As in, stuff that isn't purely political in its nature,
and isn't all about cryptocurrencies like bitcoin but about everyday topics
instead.

That's not too complicated is it?

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feralhog
Haha it shouldn't be that complicated! This is a lot of good stuff...thanks
for replying

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Porthos9K
I don't want a new social network. I want Web tech to be accessible enough
that even the least experienced computer user can have their own website with
RSS feed, IM over XMPP, group chat using IRC, and secure, spam-free email.

I want to the internet itself to be a social network using open, standardized
protocols that have been proven to work.

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feralhog
Do you not think these things already exist? Seems like what you're asking for
is solved. But o could be missing something

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Porthos9K
The tech exists, but the average schmuck has no idea how to use it, so it
might as well not exist.

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krapp
Plenty of average schmucks managed in the early days, though.

Granted, it was through services like Geocities and Tripod, no one was
building their own server by intstalling and configuring Linux through a VM or
anything, but "having your own website" has never been _that_ complicated.

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asdkhadsj
Distributed / self hosted. Information pattern like Git or Scuttlebutt. UX
abstracted enough that the underlying infrastructure is never exposed to non-
tech savvy users. _Optionally ephemeral[1]_. No dark patterns.

Also, I don't think I want a social network about humans lives, ala Facebook.
I want a social network that is constructive. I want a social network that is
about storing information, learning, discussing, growing together, etc. With
the attributes I mentioned above.

[1]: I recognize that in almost any distributed system data inherently can't
be truly ephemeral. Yet, I think there's a meaningful distinction between the
system ensuring everything you ever say or do is recorded forever, vs just not
caring to keep anything labeled as "ephemeral" past a month or w/e.

~~~
feralhog
Really like the part about being constructive

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gesman
Decentralized, peer to peer social network.

Basically preventing any platform ownership to go awry or sneaky against
user's or group needs.

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verdverm
How would you deal with misinformation and malicious campaigns under this
situation?

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gesman
I'd steer more toward "use it at your own risk" vs. "we're good because we'll
be policing things for you".

Certain self-policing, engaging communities proven to be quite an efficient in
that. Sort of like multiple downvotes will kill the post quickly.

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psv1
A strictly reverse-chronological feed.

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feralhog
This would be great

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georgeseh
Our mission at overlooked.com is to build the social news network that ends
fake news. We have every major news organization, run all articles through our
Bias Detection Algorithm, and give each user their own personal profile, where
they can like, comment, and rate news articles based on political bias.
Shortly, users will be able to friend one another and tag their friends in
news articles in a much safer, more efficient platform than Facebook or
Twitter. Let me know what you guys think! We hate bots too

~~~
ScottFree
How do you define "Fake News" or political bias? How do you protect against
malicious users who will flag anything they don't like as "politically
biased"?

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drngdds
It should have more in common with traditional forums than Twitter or Reddit.
It should also be decentralized to avoid monopoly-producing network effects.

~~~
feralhog
Decentralized seems to be a big one

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feralhog
I want less bots

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feralhog
Bots are fine

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buboard
friends that expire. that's where the trend is, private social groups where
people come and go. perhaps its reflective of a broader social trend , dunno

Alternatively built on top of urbit:
[https://urbit.org/primer/](https://urbit.org/primer/)

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bjourne
Ownership of my own data: It is not ok that Facebook gets control of
everything i upload and write to the site and I have a hard time getting it
back.

Censorship resistance: Even Nazis should have free speech. Also slippery
slope, censoring Nazis and then more and more people also gets censored.

Decentralization: Trusting a single party to "be nice" is, as experience
proves, unwise.

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prepend
Downvotes and RSS.

~~~
feralhog
Thanks

