Show HN: Seven39, a social media app that is only open for 3 hours every evening

[mklyons]

https://www.seven39.com

I built this site as a quick test if a time boxed social media experience feels better than an endless one. So far I've just been using it with friends and it feels nice, but it seems like it is time to bring it to a larger audience.

Let me know what you think! It is just based on EST for now, sorry.

[simonkagedal]

I think it's a really cool idea. I signed up because I had a brain fart and thought that "EST" was "European Standard Time" (I was of course thinking of CET).

So yeah, the current window wouldn't work for me, but that's fine. Everything doesn't have to be for everyone. We all live in our bubbles anyway; creating artificial rules could actually be ways of creating new, unexpected interactions.

This being said – if you were to adjust the rules to accommodate more people, I don't think it should be "open from 7:39 to 10:39 in whatever your local time zone is", because that feels like it would just destroy the whole idea – that everyone is there at the _same_ time. Also, it would still exclude people who work evenings.

An alternative solution would be to have multiple windows. For example, if you have one starting at 7:39 PM EST and another one at 7:39 AM EST, there would be more chances that there is some time during the day for people around the globe to check in. Depending, of course, on many things: time zones, sleep habits, work schedule, ability to briefly slack off during work, etc. It would remain true to the idea while opening up for some more people. Just a thought.

I also think each window could be smaller, maybe like just one hour?

[josephg → simonkagedal]

> So yeah, the current window wouldn't work for me, but that's fine. Everything doesn't have to be for everyone. We all live in our bubbles anyway; creating artificial rules could actually be ways of creating new, unexpected interactions.

I like the idea that something like this could be open for 3 hours in the evening local time. Like, you'd get totally different communities coming on at different times, and having completely separate experiences together. But some other people would bridge the gap.

While you're online, every hour some people would be forced to leave and some other people could join.

[usrusr → josephg]

A moving window would be just like what you already get with somewhat global communities. E.g. hn while Europe and Africa is mostly sleeping vs hn while the Americas are mostly sleeping. As I understand it, seven39 is not so much about only being allowed to chime in during a specific time window, but about it being offline outside that window. You could have multiple instances from date line to date line, but they'd have separate content and user identities (even if some people might have accounts in different timezones).

What I really don't get, it completely blows my mind: why hasn't this concept been completely chewed through, explored to hell and back, back in the days when everybody and their dog tried to invent some new variation of social media website (and get bought up by Yahoo when they ran out of runway or grew tired of it)? Age of the yo app? Feels almost as if the convertible wasn't invented before 100 years after the automobile.

[intrasight → usrusr]

> why hasn't this concept been completely chewed through,

Perhaps because it would be self-defeating from a profit perspective

[twic → josephg]

One approach might be to have many instances, like we do with Discord etc, and have the admins choose a timezone, so an instance for French people would be on Paris time, etc.

Or even just choose the start of the time range directly. French joggers might prefer a different time to French Counter-Strike players.

[notpushkin → twic]

A complete opposite approach: same instance for everybody, but you can choose the hours when you sign up. Changing is allowed once every 4 weeks or something.

[unsupp0rted → josephg]

This happens on Reddit- you'll make a comment that makes sense to Europeans or Asians, and it gets n upvotes. Then America wakes up and all of a sudden it gets n downvotes.

It's especially interesting in local expat communities: in Asia local time, you'll make a comment that is the ground truth and it gets n upvotes from locals and other foreigners in-country. But then the children of immigrants in America who are associated with that country wake up, and suddenly 8 hours later you're a monster.

[notpushkin → unsupp0rted]

This happened to me in Twitter a lot of times (back when it was good). I’ve seen different parts of my time wake up at different times – a very peculiar effect.

[quesera → unsupp0rted]

This happens on HN too of course!

[StefanBatory → josephg]

It was always a small source of joy on Discord to see Americans getting on the server while East Asians would go to sleep, with us Europeans being in the middle. It always feels so cute for some reason I can't explain, but I do love that every time.

[josteink → StefanBatory]

You had this on IRC and the good old phpBB forums back in the days too.

Definitely remembering the appearance of the "morning crew" looking for whatever recent stuff they had missed out on ;)

[johncoltrane → josteink]

s/had/have

[hiergiltdiestfu → josephg]

I can see the addicts rewinding their clocks already :)

[miroljub → hiergiltdiestfu]

Allow everyone to choose their time windows, but require at least 24 hours span between the two time window changes.

[m_mueller → hiergiltdiestfu]

are you a frontend engineer? cause I'd hope the time checking happens on the server ;-)

[aaronbasssett → m_mueller]

Where is the server getting information about the user's timezone from pray tell?

It doesn't matter if it's being checked on the client or the server. If the user controls what your code sees, they can fake it.

[anamexis → aaronbasssett]

The user can choose their time zone when they sign up, and the service can prevent them from changing it (or heavily limit how often it can be changed)

[recursive → aaronbasssett]

It doesn't matter if they fake it. They're only getting one window per 24 hours.

[phowat → m_mueller]

What about using vpns to connect through different timezones ?

[sph → hiergiltdiestfu]

The sibling comments are a perfect demonstration why projects tend to balloon in complexity and ever-increasing requirements just to deal with rare corner cases.

YAGNI. A niche tool whose selling feature is time-restricted usage shouldn't have to account for weirdos that miss the point of it and cheat with their clock.

[mentalgear → josephg]

like a tavern

[Pamar → mentalgear]

Or Second Life in 2006...

[rrr_oh_man → mentalgear]

like a third place

[shaky-carrousel → simonkagedal]

An isolated subdomain for each timezone, with no way to interact between them, cet.seven39, est.seven39, etc.

[op00to → shaky-carrousel]

They could be allowed to interact but only with a delay that caches interactions until the next window. If I post at 8pm my time, it should wait until 8pm your time to make it appear on your instance.

[sschueller → simonkagedal]

Why not let the user pick the 3 hour window and not let them change it for another period after it was just changed?

[diggan → sschueller]

Or, have N available 3 hour windows, and if you've interacted (viewed the website/posted) in any way with the website during one of those periods, you cannot use the other periods for that day.

So basically the same idea, but letting the decision be more dynamic.

[jofzar → simonkagedal]

I think a good alternative would be it's open twice, 7:39am and 7:39pm.

Makes it available for other regions but also the same (silly) idea.

[leke → simonkagedal]

I think there could be different sites for different continents like https://www.seven39.eu

[greg_V → leke]

you could have the same site, but running different servers to serve different timezones / locales. kind of like old-school video game servers

[jbd0 → greg_V]

Or different instances of the site on the same server, serving different locales. Only one instance would be running at a time.

[croisillon → simonkagedal]

now i want to see a map with all timezones called EST but meaning something else in each one

[simonkagedal → croisillon]

It was a total brain fart though – I know what EST is and I know that my time zone is CET; just had some neurons misfiring!

[7bit → croisillon]

WDYM? There is exactly one time zone called EST.

[latexr → 7bit]

The “real” EST means “Eastern Standard Time”. The top commenter thought it was “European Standard Time” which could for instance be equivalent to WET (“Western European Time”). What your parent comment is suggesting is a joke to come up with other definitions which would fit EST to other time zones. E.g. MST (“Mountain Standard Time”) could be EST (“Eagle Summer Time”).

[croisillon → latexr]

thanks for explaining, i meant something like xkcd would do

[stronglikedan → simonkagedal]

A window based on region is like free load balancing.

[deadbabe → simonkagedal]

You could also just use a different time zone each day.

[simonkagedal → deadbabe]

Yeah. There are many fun experiments one could do. Now I got this idea instead: what if it opened up on 07:39 PM on January 1st, but then the window moved forward 3 minutes and 56.7 seconds each day so that it was back on 07:39 PM a year later. That sounds like it would be extremely useless, but fun.

[0xdeadbeefbabe → simonkagedal]

I came to say the same, and also why not let it wander around looking for an optimal time.

[nocobot]

reminds me of this image board that has been around for a while. similar idea, it’s only open every 12 hours

https://chakai.org/tea/

[caseyy]

I wish someone made social media where everyone gets one post every day. Almost no person on this planet has more than one bit of news to share daily with their extended social network — probably not even the countries' leaders. When accounts share every 10 minutes, it's often spam or some inorganic agenda.

Oversharing in natural social networks is penalized heavily, and for good reason - with too much noise and little signal, people get overwhelmed, fear missing out, and cannot agree on anything. Communication becomes a detriment and a chore to the social group. The social group expects everyone to think before they speak, not just blabber endlessly, which is healthy.

Also, replacing the "Like" button/signal with a "Thanks" signal would be good because it'd be better to build a social network based on what people find helpful rather than on what people approve of. I think this was originally Jack Dorsey's idea, not my own.

[rvense → caseyy]

I'm actually part of a site like this, just a thing a friend of a friend made:

- You can write and edit one post at a time.

- This post, in whatever form it has then, gets published at 8 in the morning.

- You can only see posts for today. All old content gets deleted.

- No comments or feedback is possible.

- Only symmetric relationships are possible: you can add someone, but they won't see your posts and you won't see their posts until they add you back.

- All "friend" discovery is out of band. There are no recommendations, no boosting/retweeting, nothing.

This is obviously not a mass medium, but its reductionism gives it some interesting properties that have made me consider what a good social network would be. One post a day is a fantastic idea.

(I don't know if they intend for it to be named in public, so I'll refrain.)

[CobaltFire → rvense]

With a few differences this is a well established type of site in Japan.

I've mentioned it before, but my wife posts about our life there. People can follow you, but there is no feedback aside from you seeing how many people read your post and how many followers you have. There are no recommendations; you have to organically check out the people who read your article to see if you like their writing (if they have any), or add people from an out of band source. Content is as ephemeral as you make it. It's very common for people to only leave a post up for a day or two, but it's up to the author.

If you are interested it's called ameba (www.ameba.co.jp). It's not the only one like this, just the one my wife uses.

[conductr → rvense]

As a “never post, but catch up on my feed every month or two” type user the lack of an archive makes this product useless but I realize it’s not for me and wouldn’t complain just saying it’s stated as low touch but kind of requires daily use.

[freedomben → conductr]

I agree, in fact I think the ephemeral approach incentivizes unwanted behavior. i.e. to me social media needs to become less addictive. If you force someone into a habit that they have to check every day lest they miss something, you get a FOMO-driven reinforcement of habit and/or even addiction.

[kevinventullo → conductr]

Agreed. I actually don’t think removing old content is strictly necessary for a pleasant experience. Looking at friends’ or even my old posts on conventional social media is one of the more enjoyable/less toxic experiences.

In fact, on the topic of posting less, I know first-hand that the introduction of the ephemeral “story” format in conventional social media was done precisely in order to reduce friction in getting people to post more.

[caseyy → rvense]

It sounds quite minimal and pleasant. I hope the project develops into something available more broadly.

[rightbyte → rvense]

Sounds like a early classic blog?

[freedomben → rightbyte]

Possibly, although I don't know any classic blogs that deleted their posts after a day or two. That makes a pretty massive difference in how it's used. For example, I wouldn't put much effort into a post that will only be around for a day or two.

[boutell → caseyy]

I had the same idea and built:

onepostwonder.com

It's been running for over a decade, although the community has always been small.

It's currently invite-only, similar to how LiveJournal used to be, but drop tommybgoode@gmail.com a line and mention this post if you'd like to give it a try and I'll send you an invite, which will include invites to give others you'd like to hang out with.

[skizm → caseyy]

One of the things that launched snapchat to popularity when it was first out was when DJ Khaled got lost on his jet ski and was posting updates every few minutes to the stories feature (which was a new thing at the time). Real time updates are definitely a feature that people want, for better or worse.

[Pedro_Ribeiro → caseyy]

I think you're just describing BeReal, which went viral but kind of died out.

[paavope → Pedro_Ribeiro]

At least in my clique in Finland, BeReal is alive and kicking. Definitely nothing like Instagram in terms of popularity, but quite active

[lutoma → paavope]

My German circle of friends is also still very active on BeReal.

[caseyy → Pedro_Ribeiro]

I think BeReal was too restrictive. Considering all the types of content on social media, very little of it is selfies. The goal of that platform is authenticity in a very narrow sense, which is a noble goal.

[Cthulhu_ → caseyy]

But it being too restrictive was its unique selling point, like how Twitter's limited post length was.

[cyanydeez → Pedro_Ribeiro]

The "problem" with most social media is the same with F2P games: they require whales to keep them relevant

[caseyy → cyanydeez]

The critical mass problem is only insurmountable for social media that seeks to connect people globally. Locally, you never notice this problem.

For example, in your typical gaming clan Discord server, a tenement building's WhatsApp/email group, or a small town's quarterly town hall meeting. It only takes a handful of people in such social groups for the group to serve its purpose.

Indeed, TheFacebook easily reached its critical mass when it was limited to Harvard College. Hacker News would work just as well with 500 monthly readers as it does with 5,000,000+ currently.

Whales, celebrity influencers (whether from out-of-network or homegrown celebrities), and other such things are only needed to compete with the social media giants today. But if you don't wish to compete and want to serve a small community, then this is not a problem.

[mikedelfino → caseyy]

> social media where everyone gets one post every day

That was Fotolog at the beginning of the century.

[yieldcrv → caseyy]

There are, the founder is on this site

I know people that have used it for years

I forgot the name but its an app that sends you a notification at a random time each day, and it gives you 1 minute of use. If you miss it, you miss it.

In that 1 minute you can take a photo where you are right then, and can use the rest of the minute to browse someone else’s series of photos. Just the 1 person you were connected to that day.

It just shows how people are living.

In real life. I know its changed someone’s trajectory. All of their pictures were in an office cubicle and it pushed them to pursue other things sooner. Retirement in their case, to pursue drum circles and new age things because this was always fulfilling for them, they just kept delaying it beyond the rationality to delay it.

After 3 years of doing this, they send you a book of your memories.

No timelines or “algorithm” aside from whatever selects the person you get to see.

[angryGhost → yieldcrv]

sounds similar to BeReal

[xj]

Interesting experiment! Have you considered splitting it into three 1-hour blocks spread throughout the day? That way, people in different time zones would always have at least one convenient slot, and it might also feel more intentional-spending a focused hour instead of a longer 3-hour window.

[nicgrev103]

I wish someone made a social media site that has no news feed or any feed, like the facebook of old. Only get notifications and updates from actual people who you have friended. I genuinely think this would be popular, it wouldn't drive the engagement that the feeds and algos do but it would be a more wholesome experience the one we all bought into at the dawn of the social network, only for our friends to be swapped out for a constant drip of 'engaging' content.

[edwin2 → nicgrev103]

I'm convinced something like this will happen one day, probably more than once. If Facebook is the "McDonald's" market segment (the widely popular, wildly unhealthy option), there will eventually be a segment of the market where there is unrelenting demand for a significantly healthier product. Like this: https://www.foodnetwork.com/restaurants/photos/healthy-fast-...

The "health food" of social media will be a product category where there will be market share to capture and whoever gets it right will be rewarded. Those users, like the health nuts of today, will know what there are looking for.

[immy → nicgrev103]

Past: Path, Basement.

[AlienRobot → nicgrev103]

I think that social media will never work so long as people can post politics/news/drama/celebrity gossip in it. These are topics that NEVER run out of content. People engaged with it will never find peace and will never let others have peace.

I used to think it was only politics, but I visited a social media like Reddit that filtered politics by default--I forgot what it was called--and it still looked terrible because of all the drama.

It's a colossal waste of time. If you spend 20 hours learning Regex, that will help you for your lifetime. If you spend 20 hours talking about the latest disaster, in 20 hours that is all obsolete because there is a new disaster. And those 20 hours will make you angry and fill you with indignation while even gaming for 20 hours would have a more positive impact on you.

I'm not saying these things aren't important, but they are really not that important compared to how much of the Internet has become soaked with them.

[gryn → nicgrev103]

what would It do, that WhatsApp currently doesn't ?

[corytheboyd → gryn]

Facebook gave you access to friends of friends, which was huge when EVERYONE was on it. That coupled with the Events system was pretty awesome. I don’t know if WhatsApp does this TBH, but it’s something you don’t get with typical messengers.

[stronglikedan → gryn]

I don't use WA, but perhaps there could be better discoverability if you have many friends, where the algo could try to prioritize the posts for you.

[mosquitobiten → nicgrev103]

Defeat the feed

[TiredOfLife → nicgrev103]

So exactly what twitter/bluesky followed tabs are?

[furyofantares]

Going perhaps even further in this direction, the 3 hour window could shift by an hour every day. All the other solutions I see to the time zone problem are pushing the idea in the opposite direction, back a little toward normalcy, and have their own problems anyway (eg power users who just run multiple accounts and are the ones doing a lot of posting).

A shifting window would be even more "slow internet". Of course it would be a different vibe; you'd have stuff to catch up on the days it's in prime time for you. As-is it seems like it'd have more of a real-time vibe.

[nicce → furyofantares]

First we create the problem with modern social media and then we solve it with old-school forums.

[Waterluvian → furyofantares]

I love this idea. The eclipse is coming around again. Don’t miss it!

[SoftTalker]

Yeah I have thought about websites having "business hours" also. So support staff don't have to worry about getting a call or text message at 0200 that something isn't working... just fix it in the morning.

[ac29 → SoftTalker]

I recall this occurring with college registration websites ~25 years ago. In retrospect, I suspect it was so students registering online didn't have an advantage over those registering in person (at the time, home internet access was common but nowhere near 100%).

[bl4ckneon → ac29]

I had this happen at a local community College but it also was where you would access your grades. Shut down over winter break, was awkward to tell my internship coordinator that I couldn't access the website for 2 weeks to get my grades because the website was closed over break... Fricken crazy (and they where using a pretty popular platform, this was not some home spun system)

[qw → bl4ckneon]

My guess is that it was hosted on a physical server on campus, and they didn't want to pay IT to support it during winter break.

It is probably easier to just close it down to avoid handling all the angry phone calls if it would happen to have an issue during the break.

[INTPenis → SoftTalker]

Some Swedish government agency websites and services do this, for the reason already mentioned, to avoid having to monitor the service or maintain it during out of business hours.

But this social media actually reminded me of old phone line BBS. I believe life was better when we had to wait for our enjoyment, and even stand in line for it.

[jwalton → SoftTalker]

One of the largest camera stores in the US is https://www.bhphotovideo.com/. Since B&H was founded in NYC by Orthodox Jews, you can’t event place an order on their website on Saturdays.

[kyledrake → SoftTalker]

One of the most popular sites hosted on Neocities would be closed on Mondays, so you would have to come back to see the site. https://melonking.net

[ambarp2 → SoftTalker]

I literally can’t place Costco Mexico orders and perform other tasks on Sundays because payment gateways are down (?). It’s quite frustrating. If it fails every weekend, they should in fact just shut down.

[eru → SoftTalker]

This sucks for anyone in a different timezone.

[wruza → eru]

Good for them that the internet is big.

I don’t share this thread’s ideas about making it accessible for everyone. I think people are too fixated on scale and inclusion.

It’s absolutely fine to work for three evening hours in a fixed timezone. Every timezone has enough people to not meet every one of them in a lifetime.

If someone wants this in their timezone, they can just llm-php it into existence. Or ask OP about sharing source codes.

[jader201 → eru]

This feels more like a feature, not a bug.

Local communities all operate in the same time zone. No reason small online communities couldn’t operate in the same time zone, allowing each time zone to have their own separate communities.

[myself248 → jader201]

It's one of the main things I miss about BBSs. I've thought about trying to start a BBS that requires a low ping, using the speed of light to encourage locality.

Expensive long-distance phone calls sucked, but the side-effect was that nearly everybody on a given board was in the same or one-adjacent local calling area. They were strangers behind a screen only to a degree; they were also your neighbors, schoolmates, and coworkers. If someone needed something, someone else could bike or drive over and help. We had parties, we had picnics, we organized camping weekends. They didn't stay strangers for long.

Yes the global internet was big and shiny and it let you talk to anyone anywhere. So far away that they might in fact be a dog, and you'd never know. But for all we gained, we lost that sense of local connection, and I didn't appreciate that aspect until it was gone.

[netsharc → myself248]

My guess is the locality helped with civility, we wouldn't call anyone offensive names if there's a chance we run into them "IRL".

Then again the drama of Nextdoor communities probably means this is largely dead...

[eru → jader201]

The time zone restriction does nothing to keep out people who live far north or south of you, but does keep out people far east or far west.

[paradox460 → eru]

Unless you live in Indiana, Idaho, Oregon, or parts of Florida

[gibolt → jader201]

If you are traveling and need to deal with something that happens at home, too bad. There are plenty of timezones that make it quite difficult to manage, especially if they have phone wait times that exceed 30min.

[nottorp → jader201]

> No reason small online communities couldn’t operate in the same time zone

For example, Finland, Romania, Turkey and South Africa are on the same time zone.

[bloomingkales → jader201]

It’s a late stage feature for a social media app. Initially you need anyone and everyone on the site.

[jjulius → eru]

Depends entirely upon the issue and the urgency. Hell, I'd wager we could all use a bit more patience and a bit less of everything being so instantaneous.

[eru → jjulius]

> Depends entirely upon the issue and the urgency.

You could delay everything by a few hours or a day between submitting a post and publishing it.

I'm talking about the inconvenience of potentially having to get up at 3am to see what your dad posted.

All that said, I think someone should definitely try this idea out, and people can decide for themselves whether they want to us it.

I also thought that Twitter's character limit was stupid, but Twitter really took off.

[pjerem → eru]

> I'm talking about the inconvenience of potentially having to get up at 3am to see what your dad posted.

Maybe if your dad posts something on a website that is only opened at 3am in your own time zone, it’s that their post is not intended for you.

I can’t access op’s website because of my location and I have no fomo at all : I’m just not the target. It’s ok. I still find the idea to be funny.

[sureIy → SoftTalker]

What's wrong with having different hours for website and support? Even restaurants have different hours for drinks, food, and overall opening times.

[KurSix → SoftTalker]

Until someone inevitably creates the -24/7 premium access- tier.

[freedomben → KurSix]

Gotta have those expanded analytics and some fancy "badges" for your user name to drive engagement. We could become influencers!

[solardev → SoftTalker]

Several US and state government sites are like this, e.g. https://freakonomics.com/2012/08/this-website-only-open-duri... or https://old.reddit.com/r/MURICA/comments/rbl4qz/only_the_us_...

...and that was BEFORE the layoffs =/

[adolph → SoftTalker]

B&H famously closes online checkout weekly: Online Checkout Open 24/6

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/find/HelpCenter/StoreInfo.jsp

[Duanemclemore → adolph]

IIRC it's because the owners are Jewish and observing the Sabbath. I grew up in an area with a lot of observant christians who refused to work on Sunday but forced employees to (unless you belonged to their church of course). So making a rule in contrast that what's good enough for me is good enough for my employees is preferable if you ask me!

[danpalmer]

It's an interesting idea, but if it's only open at a convenient time for a particular group, it's going to lack diverse and worldwide perspectives, and those are important for building a welcoming ecosystem. I doubt giving each timezone its own 3 hours would work, but perhaps rotating the 3 hours each day so that it's anchored on a different timezone would encourage that diversity of content and perhaps even encourage creating connections across timezones.

That said, if you've had success with it in a friend group, perhaps that suggests it's a nice mechanism for a group chat app, rather than for a public social media site?

[jasonkester → danpalmer]

For what it’s worth, HN is already a bit like this.

Back when I lived in the ‘states, I’d wake up in the morning and participate in all sorts of interesting discussions on a bunch of fresh posts.

Now, living in Europe, I wake up to a homepage full of “7 hours ago” top comments with 200 points on them. Any contribution we make from here will last maybe a minute or two before getting sorted down out of view.

I spend most of my time now reading what y’all had to say about stuff.

[CWhiting → jasonkester]

Imagine the disadvantage I am at by living in Australia, just about everything is posted while I am asleep. With that said this is a disadvantage across just about all social platforms, not just HN though.

[conductr → CWhiting]

The solution is of course to create a second sun and eliminate our need for sleep. /s

[Shawnj2 → danpalmer]

I kind of like the idea of a regional social media app which literally doesn’t work in other parts of the world. It makes the space a little more special than something trying to reach everyone IMO

[soulofmischief → Shawnj2]

People have completely lost sight of the importance of small forums.

[1propionyl → soulofmischief]

Forums, perhaps. But small group chats (which I suppose are technically "dark") are the bedrock of the current internet writ large and where most of the content that filters up to places like Twitter comes from.

[soulofmischief → 1propionyl]

You're absolutely right and this is something I've studied and thought about quite a lot. The dark aspect of group chats does fundamentally separate them from forums, which had the benefit of searchability, permanence and topic longevity.

At least we will benefit from what forums are left in the form of model training data. People give LLMs a lot of shit, but it's possible one day that a language model ends up becoming a go-to oracle of future archeologists studying the present day.

Sometimes it's easy to take for granted how historic the current times are, and how interested people will be in the minuet and institutional knowledge which few bother to expend considerable resources preserving.

[kbelder → soulofmischief]

Wow, I hadn't made that connection. We should somehow bundle a current state-of-the-art LLM in a timecapsule right now, and maybe another one every decade.

If, a thousand years from now future historians need to study our time, they can just ask the LLM.

There's a SF story in there somewhere.

[omgmajk → soulofmischief]

Local social media used to be huge here in Sweden, we had options for everyone long before facebook or x/twitter was a thing. Great times.

[devilbunny → Shawnj2]

At the extreme level of “regional”, that’s Nextdoor.

[Shawnj2 → devilbunny]

Sure but Nextdoor is still a huge business trying to reach the widest possible audience of local areas. Something limited by if you’re awake when it’s up is different IMO

[mattl → Shawnj2]

Night workers or shift workers would have a different take on it. They’d be the ones posting in your area maybe?

[Shawnj2 → mattl]

I mean night workers also don’t get to do other traditional evening events like go to a concert or bar so this doesn’t bother me. Night workers in nearby time zones would be able to use it either before or after their shift depending on their location

[mattl → Shawnj2]

Some places have bars that open at 7am for people coming off the night shift.

[kelseydh → devilbunny]

Location-based subreddits get close to this also.

[BrenBarn → Shawnj2]

Ironically that's what Facebook initially was.

[Defletter → Shawnj2]

Isn't that just YikYak?

[pogue → Defletter]

YikYak had nothing to do with time, it was geofenced to certain locations. I loved it in college, it was so much fun.

[ad_hockey → danpalmer]

It sounds more like a social network than social media, i.e the pre-timeline, pre-algorithm version of Facebook. Back when the content came from people you know rather than people you don't.

I really like the idea, it sounds like a very healthy way to engage. If you took a photo on holiday you wouldn't be able to share it until the evening, so you'd just put the phone away. It becomes a camera. At the moment I see people take a photo and then for the next hour they're distracted by reactions, comments, feeling obligated to respond to comments... they miss the whole experience. Sharing when your friends are actually online would also be more interactive.

Of course, if you're on holiday then your three hour home time window may be unusable. But then, worst case scenario, you bulk upload everything when you get home. It would be like the old days of returning from a trip and getting friends round to see a slide show - quite charming, really.

[tomcam → danpalmer]

Why should it have “diverse and worldwide perspectives”? Must a Muslim site be open to all Christians? Must a Japanese site admit me even though I don’t know Japanese? Should a site for Ukrainians be forced to allow Russians?

I do think of this as an opportunity for you to create your own site that meets your standards, however.

[scripturial → marxisttemp]

Not everything has to be political. Can we go even 5 minutes without someone turning a discussion to focus on Elon?

[bloomingkales → scripturial]

Alright, but he needs to stay out of the news for about 1 week.

[marxisttemp → scripturial]

Not when the Elon supporter is doing what Elon supporters do best, getting triggered and offended by basic concepts like diversity or peace[0].

[0] https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1510449836633604100

[marxisttemp → tomcam]

Why are you so triggered by the word diversity?

[freedomben → marxisttemp]

What makes you think they are triggered?

As an aside, I'd be very curious to hear your answer to the question. I'm generall very pro-diversity, but I think it's naive to think it's all lollipops and rainbows.

[danpalmer → tomcam]

You've immediately assumed that by "diverse perspectives" I mean controversial perspectives.

Personally, I enjoy reading about world news, hearing about TV shows I might want to watch that aren't in my language. I enjoy reading cross-language puns and seeing photos of food I don't usually eat. I enjoy seeing people who don't worry about the things I worry about.

If you don't want those things, if you don't want to know what's going on outside, then that's up to you, but I think that's a sad way to live life.

[bhaney → danpalmer]

> Personally, I enjoy reading about world news, hearing about TV shows I might want to watch that aren't in my language.

Then go to any of the sites that already exist for that, and stop acting like any new site needs to function exactly according to your personal preferences in order to be acceptable.

> if you don't want to know what's going on outside, then that's up to you, but I think that's a sad way to live life.

You can "want to know what's going on outside" without needing every single website to be globalized. We don't need to completely eradicate local communities in order to be exposed to other cultures. I think an awful lot of people would find your position here to be the "sad" one. I know I do.

[robertlagrant → danpalmer]

> You've immediately assumed that by "diverse perspectives" I mean controversial perspectives.

Where is the controversy in the examples?

[babuloseo → danpalmer]

there is reddit for that, I want to go back to an internet thats just primarily NA, if world of warcraft classics success is anythign to stand by or old school runescape, I think its time we did this with our social networks too.

[devilbunny → danpalmer]

If I’m discussing a local event with people I know, what would diverse and worldwide perspectives add?

I find any “deep” topics to be pretty shallow except on specialist boards that wouldn’t appeal to the layman but nonetheless do vet people before letting them on.

[kevhito → danpalmer]

I like the idea of users being able to pick their 3-hour window and timezone, and maybe only can change your window setting once per day (or maybe only pick a new window that starts at least 24 hours in the future). But crucially, each such 3-hour window and time zone combination has entirely isolated and independent content, as if it is a different site.

So my community could be 7:02-10:02pm EST. And if I instead switch to say 6am-9am IST instead, I can check in with the folks who like to meet in the mornings in india, but I am temporarily gone from my own local community.

[ecshafer → danpalmer]

> It's an interesting idea, but if it's only open at a convenient time for a particular group, it's going to lack diverse and worldwide perspectives, and those are important for building a welcoming ecosystem.

This sounds like a nice sentiment, but I don't think this is strictly true. I would go as far as to say that it is largely untrue. Diverse and worldwide perspectives may damage building a welcoming ecosystem. Whatsapp for example is probably the most popular social media site across the world, and thats because different groups close off themselves into private chat groups.

Take a look at Nairaland, one of the most popular Nigerian social media sites. The content on that site would most certainly not be welcome on any of the silicon valley run sites.

[danpalmer → ecshafer]

> That said, if you've had success with it in a friend group, perhaps that suggests it's a nice mechanism for a group chat app, rather than for a public social media site?

It depends on whether you consider WhatsApp to be social media (is iMessage social media? is one-to-one SMS social media?). I think it's different enough to what the author is attempting here to be considered differently.

[eru → ecshafer]

What's so objectionable about Nairaland to silicon valley?

I had a quick look at https://www.nairaland.com/ and nothing immediately sprang out.

[ecshafer → eru]

If you look in the comments there are often discussion on appropriate levels of disciplining your wife (read: domestic abuse), "traits" of people who believe in certain religions, and ethnic stereotypes that would be banned quite quickly on most platforms.

[recursivecaveat → eru]

The one that immediately jumps out to me is » Man Butchers Wife With A Cutlass In Akwa Ibom (Photos) «. There is some stuff like that on reddit, but I cannot imagine it ever reaching the front page.

[malfist → eru]

Not enough crypto scams for one

[mantas → danpalmer]

It’s easy to have geographically diverse echo chamber. On the other hand, there’s a lot of diversity of thoughts inside pretty much any geographical region.

[TheSpiceIsLife → danpalmer]

Name a social media site that has diverse and worldwide perspectives that also feels welcoming.

Quite the contrary. Welcoming ecosystems are discriminatory because necessarily exclude those who generally aren’t interested, or act in bad faith.

Community is local.

[mattl → TheSpiceIsLife]

Communities like The WELL did and they spawned a million other things.

[falcor84]

This might be an appropriate time to recommend Cory Doctorow's "Eastern Standard Tribe", which is set in a world where people are separated into subcultures based on the time of day they're most active at, regardless of geographical location.

[improbableinf]

Great idea, but it should be open 24/7 with eight 3-hour windows. One account can only use a single window during the 24-hour period. This will handle the timezone differences.

[stevage → improbableinf]

The better way would be to choose a time slot when you sign up. Then you always socialise within that slot. Allowing you to use any time any day kills the concept.

[d1sxeyes → stevage]

I think you could also be allowed to modify your “three hour slot” up to 24 hours in advance somehow. That way you can handle travelling and relocation without allowing people to game the system and extend their slot to 6 hours or some other weird thing you didn’t anticipate.

[stevage → d1sxeyes]

Agreed.

[neumann → improbableinf]

genius!

[edit] I realised as soon as I pressed send that immediately there will be a service that let's you open 8 accounts and seamlessly operate them as a single one.

[improbableinf → neumann]

That can be a paid feature for business accounts

[latexr → improbableinf]

Thus immediately killing anything good about the project. It’s barely been announced and we’re already brainstorming the shortest path to enshittification.

Things are allowed to exist for fun, most things don’t have to (or should) be concentrated on profit.

[huevosabio]

Ahhhh a friend and I created a similar idea for startup weekend back in 2014.

It was called Let's Get Weird.

App would open only from 11p to 4a

You were be able to chat and share pics only with nearby people

Selfies were upside down, because why not

At the end of the day period, pics, chats every thing got deleted and it was a blank slate the next day

[bloomingkales → huevosabio]

You were be able to chat and share pics only with nearby people

I like how this is considered weird. Like, yeah, let’s talk and share our pictures globally in an instant to people we don’t know.

[deceptive-footy → huevosabio]

What did you learn from running that site?

[KurSix → huevosabio]

Did you ever launch it, or was it just a fun weekend project?

[duxup]

When I lost my job the local unemployment office website would “close” outside of real world office hours.

I thought that was annoying but also amusing.

I do really like this idea.

If anything I want more limited, but also more genuine social media.

[jug → duxup]

I know a bank in Sweden that does _not_ do this and apparently runs various batch jobs at something like 1-3 am. So, one night I made a transaction to it and it looked just fine in the app, then it was mysteriously gone in the morning! On the receiving side; my cash had still been withdrawn! I called the support and we eventually realized that no, you shouldn't do transfers at 2 am on a Saturday because it's likely to fail and then we have to wait for the weekend to be over for them to reappear. I was like... "Alright, thanks. But maybe you should close your app these hours..."

The software engineer within me shudders at the thought of running batch jobs in production while there are ongoing transactions, and where conflicts can and are fully expected to happen.

[mklyons → duxup]

My college's class scheduling website also had hours of operation. One of the rumors was that it would stop students from drunkenly dropping all of their classes, but the real truth was that it was based on an old system that needed to process things overnight and they couldn't get funding to modernize it. This was UMD -- it was notorious when I was there for being annoying but still cracks me up.

Thanks! I'm glad you like it. I do think it could have some cool dynamics but that is what I'm testing right now.

[kortilla → duxup]

The US social security administration site did (and still might) do this as well.

Likely to enable batch processing in the evening without dealing with sync issues

[silisili → kortilla]

Wouldn't surprise me at all.

One day we'll have the manpower and brains to figure out how to just have out of hour entries added to the next day's batch.

[ripped_britches → duxup]

Federal EIN registration site does this as well

[uvdn7]

Neat. It certainly makes oncall and maintenance easier! It is likely more resource efficient by e.g. minimizing idle compute, maximizing cache hit rate, etc.

[FrequentLurker]

Time zones are a problem. It will be 5am for me next time this will be open which is too early but since it opens for 3 hours, I might be able to check in for the second half of the remaining time.

[ra → FrequentLurker]

This is a huge problem that could be solved by using local timezones instead of just EST.

[locusofself]

I've definitely considered trying to create a social media website that only allows you to connect with, say 150 people (Dunbar number), and only allows you to make one or two posts per day.

[sksksk → locusofself]

There was a social network called Path, that was this concept, you could only have 50 friends on the network.

It was a really nice app, but they just couldn't make it work.

I have an idea kicking round the back of my head... when I was a teenager I ran a php forum on a shared server. I shared it with my school friends, and we had about 30 regular members on it. It turned into a full blown social network, we'd have our own memes, we'd talk about who's going to the school disco, make jokes etc...

It was really nice, there was no monetization, no ads, the "feed" was chronological, no bots, or spammers.

I also used it to learn programming, reading and modifying the code to add our own features.

My idea is an open source social network. Completely customisable. It wouldn't be designed to scale up past a couple of hundred users. You'd host it yourself (on aws, heroku or similar), and would be completely in control of the instance.

[prmoustache → sksksk]

You can do that already with many open source tools, disabling federation from those using activity pub and blocking new sign ups once the user number has reached you desired limit.

The reality is things do not work like that, even to maintain a small community forum you need a small but constant influx of new users as people regularly just disappear/leave as in any social group.

The real challenge is to let decent human people join without the trolls, bots and scammers.

[_kyran → locusofself]

This was the concept behind Path.

[khimaros → locusofself]

i would pay for this

[askmike]

Reminds me of MSN back in the day. When I was a kid, there was a big trend of rushing home after school to log into this chat messenger on the computer, everyone would be online for a couple of hours at least.

[xnx]

Sounds like a variant of the "BeReal" concept: "Its main feature is a daily notification that encourages users to share photos of themselves with friends in their day-to-day life, given a randomly selected two-minute window every day."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BeReal

[NoPicklez → xnx]

Having used it, BeReal sort've gets close to this, but in reality people are posting the entire day after that two-minute window and people can still react to your photos throughout the day.

Not everyone ends up posting within that two minute window and the only "punishment" for not doing so is that it just says they posted late.

BeReal is a great concept regardless, just pointing out the differences and the realities of it.

[ehsankia → NoPicklez]

Most people I know are definitely not on top of their notifications like that. I'd be lucky if they respond to my texts within an hour. Even I who am on top of my notifications still somehow miss it sometimes, either because the phone was on the table or I just didn't feel the vibration.

That being said, I like it as a way to just journal a picture a day, even without any contacts in the app.

[NoPicklez → ehsankia]

I like the idea that you need to contribute a post before you can see other peoples posts and some of the controls around having to post something in the moment instead of something curated.

[a13o]

I don’t think volume of engagement is the main issue with social media. Rather, it’s the scope of access. Social media exposes us to too many people and we forget their humanity. Instead of information spreading across the globe along a lattice of trusted relationships, it teleports through bias-confirming wormholes.

Funny enough, the time zone restriction acts as a crude proxy for locality and slightly scratches the itch; more than the time window does.

[EchoReflection]

reminds me of the "experimental" social media app "Minus" https://minus.social/ that only allows users to make 100 posts. Both cool ideas, but I feel like they're trying to "sell" limitations (max 100 posts, can only use app at XYZ o'clock) when, unfortunately, limitations are antithetical to what people want (to a certain extent) when it comes to expressing themselves online. Clearly some limitations are necessary (character-limits on X posts, video length on Snapchat videos come to mind). This seems, admirably, different in a new way. Hope it catches on!

[johnisgood]

There should be a tooltip or an element (with text) displaying my current time in comparison to the already specified time, just so I can tell when that window would be in my local time, e.g. if it is at 4 am, then I will probably not even wait.

[bluebarbet]

Great effort.

But I will make the obvious point that does not seem very fashionable these days. What if we chose instead to cultivate self-discipline? This project is a technical fix to a human problem, but human problems can also be addressed with human solutions. Is there no value in doing things the time-honored way?

Personally, I'm not addicted to social media but I do have a sweet tooth. The classic hack here is not to have sugary things in the home, or only in such small quantities as to neutralize the problem. But these technical fixes are expensive. Restaurant desserts are poor value compared to an industrial-sized pot of Nutella, consumed slowly.

Well, I've discovered that, with practice and determination, and of course some rules about quantities and time windows, it is in fact possible to resist temptation, even when it's sitting right in front of me all day. Personally, I find this human solution to be liberating and empowering.

[tr3ntg → bluebarbet]

What about the site led to the assumption that the time limit is related to discipline and social media overuse? The tag-line is "Because social media is better when we're all online together" not "because social media is hard to stay off of and we need boundaries forced on us."

You're making a great point, and one I think most people agree with, but I'm not sure it's relevant. At least, based on what I see of the website in its "offline" status.

[comboy → bluebarbet]

If you have sweets in front of you and some cognitive dissonance in your head about how you both want and don't want them at the same time, this CPU time could be spent on more interesting things.

If you understand you don't want them given a broader context, then it requires no self-dispcipline - you just don't want them.

But if you can't untangle your contradiction, i.e. if self-discipline is required, why would you want to spare any thought on that?

I understand your point about this resisting temptation being a skill, a muscle that you train, that you want to master and that feels empowering. I'm just pointing out that when truly mastered it is 100% effortless - and when it is 100% effortless it means you either can't have it or understand that you don't want to (which is the same as simply not wanting to).

Otherwise it's a cognitive dissonance, a distraction.

[nither → bluebarbet]

I agree with you. People using this kind of service likely already have some self-awareness about their social media habits. In the end, self-discipline and personal boundaries might be a better solution than relying on external tools. But I think we can also consider this as another approach to finding a better solution.

[tossandthrow → bluebarbet]

> What if we chose instead to cultivate self-discipline?

I think that it can not be understated just how much self disciplin moderne people living in moderne societies are possessing.

Try to compare how moderne adult people react to sweets, social media, etc. compared to kids and children.

Continuing pushing this on the individual does not work. This is like saying that you can become multi billionaire by not getting star bucks.

[bluebarbet → tossandthrow]

This makes me feel even more self-satisfied! But yes, very fair point that I had not fully considered.

[mupuff1234 → bluebarbet]

> But these technical fixes are expensive

Maybe if you measure it solely by monetary value, but if you consider will power to be a finite resource as well then the calculation changes.

[pwndByDeath]

Back in the BBS times you didn't want to hog the line so you got in and got out, but sometimes a board would limit your time or activity to encourage you to move on. Maybe not the intent of this site, but an alternative option would be a social site that limited you to N minutes per day.

[nashashmi]

The opposite social network would be office work that happens in the office. Unless you live in a toxic environment, those environments are the best.

[psiconaut]

we're full circle from the 40 meter band!

jokes aside, and perhaps romantizicing noisy channels, but the fact that communication was not guaranteed maybe made it more appealing (thinking 56k modems or long-wave radio).

[qwertox]

This really did put a smile on my face. Though my first thought was the timezone issue.

Maybe have a user register to a timezone which can be changed twice a month or so (for travel) and that will be the time window when that person can enter? Then again, there are so may ways to get around this.

[Tepix]

As a european user, i think you should use the IP address of the user to determin the time zone and have an opening time for every time zone!

[Etheryte → Tepix]

For the love of all that's holy, never ever ever use the user's IP address to determine their locale, language preferences or anything similar. It works for the majority of the users and is an absolute nightmare for the rest. Can't even begin to count the times a site has thought I'm from some random country and then switched languages, leaving me to look for the language picker that's hidden somewhere in the page footer. Don't do that.

[freedomben → Etheryte]

Indeed. I'm on Starlink and am constantly running into issues with this. My egress IP changes every so often from Denver to Salt Lake, occasionally Seattle, but even when static seems to be routinely misclassified. Some websites (most frustratingly GOG) will suddenly think I'm in Canada. Most of the time that's fine, but not when buying stuff. It's ludicrous (and has to be illegal) to force me to pay Canadian taxes, international shipping, and incur an exchange rate fee from the banks when I'm livingin in the US and buying a US product from a US company. It's pretty wild that I have to set up a VPN to fix geolocation so it's more accurate. There are also constant annoyances like Chromecasts and sometimes Android pohones randomly showing Seattle or Denver weather, random geo-locked things (like streaming services telling me the show I'm watching is no longer available in my region, even though it is) and others. So yeah, "nightmare" is not a huge exaggeration.

[998244353 → Etheryte]

I once had to solve a captcha in a foreign language because of that. Wasn't something obvious like motorcycles either, it was something like "click on all hamsters" in a grid full of various rodents.

[tgv → Tepix]

Perhaps it's better to have different frontends for different time zones.

[imdsm → Tepix]

We could go one better and have it open 24/7! /s

[MiddleEndian]

Pretty neat.

I always thought something like this would be a great idea for MMOs. Your account would be limited to a game with a timeslot that's only up 1-2 hours a day. So you could play consistently, but not have to play too long to keep up with other players.

[mtillman]

I love internet concepts like this. Just silly fun experiments. This one appears to exclude anyone in a relationship in almost every US timezone.

[gsky]

"Opens in 35h+"

On what planet a day is 35h long?

[GreenWatermelon → gsky]

38h 30m for me, only seven minutes after you posted your comment.

I guess OP is having some hard time with date calculations :D

[mklyons → GreenWatermelon]

Lol I am honestly. I just changed it to 7:39pm EST tomorrow but that won't even be right in EST for much longer...

[redbell]

> Social media that's only open from 7:39pm to 10:39pm EST.

Hilariously, this reminds me of a governmental department that was hosting its server in-house as a simple PC and available only during working hours (9am-5pm), so when the staff left, they turned it off.

[0xEF]

What if we took a note from the BBS & time-share days of network computing and used a credits system rather than being open for specific hours? Users make content, get credits to spent on minutes of platform use whenever they wish, etc.

[Miraltar → 0xEF]

I think the idea is to bring everyone at the same time more than just restricting uptime

[0xEF → Miraltar]

I'm not sure what the goal of that would be and it seems like it would be taxing on the service, if your target audience is global. Asynchronous platforms make sense in a lot of ways, but I am not a strong developer and just speculating from my own experience as a user.

What are your thoughts on what the benefits would be to having all users active only during certain hours?

[Miraltar → 0xEF]

Having real time interactions gives a very different feel, it's a little like entering a local pub with bustling activity I guess. In my university years I used an anonymous social app called jodel that would show recent posts in your area. And it kinda had this special vibe, everyday around 8am someone would post a weather forecast for the day and people would greet each other and this type of stuff. Having everybody on the same timeline makes interactions different. And you can have real-time conversations too, which makes me less prone to endless scrolling and more proactive in my use of the app

[nout]

I think the timezones issue can be solved by the user just initially picking their timezone and it stays sticky and you can't change it (maybe for a fee you could = some income for hosting...). The nice part would be that people from 3 timezones would be vibing together for 1hr...

[dingaling → nout]

That would be very inconvenient for people on a rotating shift cycle.

[nout → dingaling]

That's true and maybe that's still a worthy compromise. The point that adds any value to this is the time restriction and if the restriction is removed, then what's the point?

[brap]

I've actually been thinking about this concept for a while now! I miss the old days when social networking was actually social and was wondering if placing restrictions like this one can actually make it fun again.

Some other restrictions I think can work:

* No more than 1 post per day

* No more than 500 friends

* No followers

* No public posts

* No posting links

* No commercial pages

[recursive → brap]

What's a follower when there are no public posts?

[Ylpertnodi → brap]

3 upvotes per day.

[conductr → Ylpertnodi]

When there’s no algorithm, just a list view feed, upvotes don’t really serve any purpose. I think people like doing it though, so I’d make it just something the liker can see - like it adds it to your “liked” list. The poster doesn’t get a notification or any indication of the popularity of their content.

[wruza → conductr]

Lack of upvotes (and downvotes) motivates people to post more than usual, cause there's no other way to [dis]agree or feel agreed with. "Don't serve any purpose" this is a claim that will kill your network before you can think how to shape it.

[jeswin]

This is a fantastic idea. It reminded me of the Dispo app (not sure if people use it anymore) where pictures you take show up only the next day morning. It might be alright to let people pick their preferred 3 hours, and maybe they can change it once a week.

Having said that, apps which have tried to slow people down haven't been too successful. People on HN might like it more than the general population.

[thih9]

I prefer to set these kind of constraints on my device and for the hours that work for me. This way I can even pick different hours on different days or not pick hours at all and constrain the time, or do something else. Also, social media platforms are already pretty good for async communication.

[kotik11]

Interesting idea. Among my projects, there's a website blocker, and wasting time on social media is really one of the pain points for many people. I’m curious to see the statistics of your approach over time. It’s hard to believe that people would initially go on social media with restrictions, but who knows. Keep updated!

[asdfman123]

Fwiw, I created a web based two factor authentication app that's open for 30 minute chunks at certain parts of the day, and you're all welcome to use it.

Only downside is you have to share 2FA secrets on my server. I wonder if I should consider making one that's completely encrypted. (I trust me, but you shouldn't trust a stranger.)

(It's web based because I only use my work phone and they won't allow me to put my own apps on it.)

[cb33]

Make a separate instance/subdomain for each timezone

[dostick]

If it’s EST fixed, it is a biggest feature and should be in the name; “for US East Coast”, so you don’t mislead rest of the world.

[lynnharry]

This sort of works like Twitch chat. People in the same community login when the streamer is online.

[bloomingkales → lynnharry]

Almost like the kids are tuning into an episode of Pokemans everyday. I mean, they are mostly kids right? The content creators make children’s tv shows basically, it’s after-school programming.

[Fokamul]

Ughhh, so basically Reddit with time-limit? Even dumb time-limit, because EST. Nice...

[andsoitis]

> test if a time boxed social media experience feels better than an endless one

What is your hypothesis(es)?

That social media would be better if chats were synchronous rather than asynchronous? That the system can help people better balance between time spend in the virtual world and the physical world? Or something else?

[mklyons → andsoitis]

That's pretty close to what I'm thinking. If you remove the endless, always-on nature of social media, could it create better content and better experiences? "Better" is subjective of course, so it is hard to have a tight hypothesis.

[andsoitis → mklyons]

> could it create better content and better experiences? "Better" is subjective of course, so it is hard to have a tight hypothesis.

Worth thinking about what metrics you think reflects “better” (content, experience). Something that measures quality of engagement. Retention should work.

One thing you’ll be up against is that thoughts don’t keep office hours, but someone might still want to share with their circle. You could consider creating a holding pen for things a user comes up with - they can record it, but it doesn’t flow yet. That also gives cooling off period which I bet could simultaneously give the satisfaction of immediate gratification (writing it down) and quality content (reflect before post).

[zeckalpha]

Cozy! Midnight.pub is a Gemini protocol instance with a time in the name (but not the access window).

[magicmicah85]

I had this idea before and thought it’s too silly but as a social experiment this could become a hit. Implement rate limiting asap though. :)

[mklyons → magicmicah85]

haha I'm with you on the too silly side of it, but I have some time to run the experiment and see where I can go with it.

Yes, was not expecting it to hit as much of an audience as it did at the end there. Definitely need some mechanisms to stop the spam it saw at the end.

[allenu]

Neat idea. I always thought it would be interesting to have social media with limitations of some sort, such as limiting number of posts per day per person (to discourage people hanging out on the site too much or overwhelming followers with their posts), but I never considered limiting the time someone can access the feed. Have you experimented with other limitations?

[simultsop]

I don't believe any platform will be able to gain massive trust anymore. After facebook had all possibilities and resources and yet failed to provide. All niche solutions end up on the giant whale's stomach after awhile.

[postalrat]

Divide the earth in four days and each day in four to give each user 3/2 hours to interactive with the past 6.

[setnone]

Not bad, availability is pretty low but how about gratification? Is it delayed enough on there?

[Invictus0]

Why even bother if you're going to half ass it? We don't get an image or even a basic description of what the platform is from your home page. No, "social media" and "3 hours of fun" are not product descriptions.

[melson]

I think its awesome

[nottorp]

The problem is you're deciding when other people have free time for them.

Maybe people spend time with friends/family in the evening :)

[babuloseo]

I made a AskHN thread about building a social network, and one of the things I was asking is that we want to initially keep things constrained to North America or this time region if possible.

[lemax]

It could be interesting to host several isolated versions open at different times, maybe a Nine39, a Five39? But you can only sign up for one.

[julieturner99]

speaking of social media with constraints, Minus (100 posts for life) is still around at https://minus.social

[pogue]

We already have this on Bluesky. Everyone is basically in bed by 9pm!

Why make an entirely new social media network for this and just make it a timed client for ATProto or ActivityPub?

[KurSix]

Curious if it actually helps people feel more connected or if they just end up checking other apps instead

[CamelCaseName]

Alright, back to regular life now. See you all tomorrow.

[xnx]

I'm not sure about the time window, but I am experimenting with an offline once-a-day digest version of Instagram. Might deliver it by email.

[bloomingkales → xnx]

The time window makes it an event. I think this is a sleeper hit. Believe it or not, there is a market for creating eventful lives (especially remote ones).

[ddejohn → xnx]

> I'm not sure about the time window

To me it just sounds like popping down to the pub for a couple pints. I love the idea.

[leonhard → xnx]

do you have a repo or some starting points already? Would love something like that but always found it too annoying to figure out how to scrape it properly. (I’d especially like story summaries.)

[xnx → leonhard]

This is what does all the work: https://instaloader.github.io/ (not my code)

[wenc]

If you’re trying to monetize, realize that a feature is not a product.

The product is the network. The restricted window is a feature. I can already achieve this with screen time and leechblock.

But no quibbles if it’s just hobby project.

[d--b]

A social media app where you can only write with a pen.

Since everyone is pushing their idea of a social media app with some form of constrain. I think only pen would be pretty sweet. It's slow, it's difficult, it's annoying to edit, yet it's also more personal, and you can draw as well.

[exikyut]

It would [still] be really cool if this opened between 7:39-10:39 in the user's local timezone.

[kassairan]

It would also be interesting to have a one-comment-a-day policy for each user, which might extend the novelty of this

[acheron]

That’s fine. Eastern should be the only time zone anyway, all other time zones are just kidding themselves.

[trolleski]

Sounds like X nowadays xD

[imdsm]

Why 7:39? The domain was available.

I feel that!

[vivzkestrel]

you should start with 24 hrs a day of runtime, for every 1000 users cut 1 minute off the operation time so that by the time you reach 1 million users, 1000 minutes are off and it runs only 440 minutes a day

[btbuildem]

Interesting idea!

BTW, it shows now:

> seven39 is currently closed

> Opens in -4h -3m

I think the negative numbers might be a bug?

[mklyons → btbuildem]

Ah, just fixed this! Should say 20h now. It was an issue yesterday but I just let Cursor write something without checking.

[shermantanktop → mklyons]

I think we’ll be seeing this explanation more and more…

[croddin → mklyons]

I think there is still an issue. I think it is counting down to the next 7:39 local time. Right now it says opens in 22h 50m for me (I am in mountain time) (this was at 8:49 MST / 10:49 EST)

[wiseStab → mklyons]

There still an issue, it is showing me 'Opens in 35h 8m'

[conorjh]

or just exercise some self control?

[kelseydh]

Tricky hours for guy like me in Western Australia.

[OccamsMirror → kelseydh]

Ditto here.

Pretty common experience for a Western Australian though. "Hey wow that looks like an amazing webinar!" Instant disappointment when I see the hours.

Isolated in time and distance.

[webcoon]

Not doing it for me here in Germany

[sandboxdev]

I love this idea!

[bitxbitxbitcoin]

Like a bar you can only go to during a weirdly times happy hour. Wishing you luck! Maybe scarcity is what was needed for third spaces to come back.

[Clubber]

Back in the BBS days, SysOps without a second phone line would only have their BBS accept calls at night, after hours. They did this because they used their primary (only) phone line during the day to take and make voice calls. Those BBSes had users but not nearly as many as the people with dedicated BBS phone lines that were open 24 hours. This kinda reminds me of that.

[deadbabe]

I have thought about this concept of websites only available at certain hours, but for people's more prurient interests...

Imagine something like OnlyFans except instead of being accessible 24/7 for anyone to see at any time, it's only accessible at very late hours, possibly midnight to 4 AM, etc, in your time zone or whatever time zone you wish. In some cases, your content might only be available on certain days of the week.

A neat side effect of this is that if for instance you have a respectable job, but also want to do some debauchery online on the side, no one can simply go see your stuff without respecting the time zone. That means employers aren't going to be looking you up during business hours or your grandma isn't going to accidentally open up links in the middle of the day leading to your spicy content. Stalking someone online becomes a little more complicated because you now have to wait for their content to become accessible. And if someone does see your content, you know it's because they put in the effort to be there when it opens, which can be embarrassing for them to admit.

We take it for granted that information about someone is constantly available online once posted but I think the next big trends is going to be these sort of inaccessibility controls, that are not based on money.

Before you go trying to make this a business though, keep in mind a big player like OnlyFans can just make this a feature in a weekend, if they haven't already.

[homodyne]

It is officially EDT.

[mpalmer]

Naturally I show up at 10:38

[worksonmine]

I like the idea of limiting screen time, but not even people living in the same timezone share habits. I can see this becoming more addictive than the alternatives since it might trigger a need to be active during the very specific window.

[jb1991]

I met my now wife (!) on seven39. We got married on a whim in LV after poking around in there. Fun site!

[mhosayny]

Smart naming

[locusofself]

I found myself wasting way too much time, mostly on social media (really disappointing that Instagram, YouTube and Facebook all turned into TikTok-style short form content with endless scroll).

I now use Freedom (freedom.to) on all of my devices to block myself from all of these sites until 8pm every day. I've been getting more work done, and reading more books.

[pbreit]

Restrictions, ftw!

[mklyons → pbreit]

It was only a matter of time before that happened.

[magicmicah85 → pbreit]

lol. I refreshed and suddenly cows everywhere.

[randall]

fun idea!!

[CaffeineLD50]

A clever idea. Has anyone tried it?

[adolph]

> It is just based on EST for now, sorry.

What happens during dailight savings time?

[deathanatos → adolph]

… you know we're in DST right now¹ … right? I still haven't recovered my sleep schedule.

And it appears that it gets the time wrong:

> Current time: 11:56:29 AM EST

It's currently 11:56a EDT, or 10:56a EST.

(¹at least in America. If you're international, well, I guess that's the answer.)

[6stringmerc]

Clever experiment and looking forward to participating, hope it’s educational and a worthwhile undertaking in the short and long term!

[qntmfred]

make it livestream only

[dailykoder]

Fun fact: If you don't open a social media account, then you will most likely not spend hours on their apps. Sounds really fucking crazy, but it's true. I tested it myself!

[truncate → dailykoder]

I didn't go as far as deleting my account, but just deleting Instagram/YT apps from my phone pretty much got my reel/shorts scrolling to 0/day (I already had notifications off for years). And by just deleting apps on my phone, I'm somehow don't end up using them on laptop as well. I think phone makes it easy for brain to remember and keep the habit.

[bcraven → truncate]

By using ReVanced[0] I have completely patched Shorts, adverts, and Comments from YouTube. It's even added SponsorBlock. I can open YT, watch a video, then close it again without all the attention-diverting crap that's usually present.

I'd _highly_ recommend it to anyone with an Android phone.

[0]https://revanced.app/

[hashmush → dailykoder]

You know what? I've noticed the same thing with eating snacks etc., if you don't buy any, you won't eat any. It's amazing!

[zhshdbdb → hashmush]

Doesn't work that way for me. Not having snacks in the house reduces the average amount of snacks to a minimum.

It however causes cravings sometimes which result in binges

[forrestthewoods → dailykoder]

HN is basically social media.

[dailykoder → forrestthewoods]

True. And I try to avoid it. Gladly it's not as addictive as others.

[jessekv → dailykoder]

I'm not so sure about that ;)

I learn something every time though.

[KurSix → dailykoder]

Wild experiment! I've heard rumors that deleting the apps also helps, but that might just be a conspiracy theory

[ehecatl42]

> based on EST for now

LOL.

Keep it that way. It's always some time at some point on the planet (so I've been told).

[blogabegonija]

It's a bit like making a rave with headphones instead of soundsystem. Feels like missing the point of sociality.

[AndrewKemendo]

I’m East Coast so that works for me

I love the idea if time boxed experiences so I signed up.

[jsfunfun]

i hate this idea. 3hrs a day? go live in a 3rd country and spin this as a benefit cool idea

[anti-soyboy → jsfunfun]

Sure in the third world you can fuck much more without expending so much time talking nosense on apps

[idop → jsfunfun]

> i hate this idea

lol

> 3rd country

lol

> benefit cool idea

lol