I'm experimenting with building the social network I want to see at https://postbelt.com https://postbelt.com It's designed to be a place where discussion with

I'm experimenting with building the social network I want to see at https://postbelt.com https://postbelt.com It's designed to be a place where discussion within your network is front and center, with distractions kept to a minimum. This means no ads, no images or video, no upvoting of posts, no rearranging of your feed based on what you may find more instantly appealing or to see certain people's posts more frequently, complete control over your own data and the ability to silently edit and delete posts even at the expense of others' UX, and privacy focused rather than the alternative broadcast-focused behaviour being encouraged. The problem, as you say, is really in the business model. There are two confounding factors that make it almost impossible to implement a free social network in this style: growth, and profit from advertising by having control over what a lot of people are exposed to. They feed into each other in a positive feedback loop, and implementing any of the features I mentioned above will hinder you where the competition won't be. A way to short circuit this is to charge a small subscription fee for a centralised service, free up to a certain number of connections to bootstrap the growth of the network into something populated enough to be interesting. With the subscription, you have a very clear incentive structure and people can trust that you can prioritise the user's (customer's) interests above all else. That's what I'm trying with postbelt to see if there's any appetite for it. If it sounds interesting to you please check it out. Thanks by the way for the very interesting links.