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I think the obstacle there is momentum and critical mass. Nobody uses askjeeves.com because Google has mindshare. If you were to build this hypothetical pure s

I think the obstacle there is momentum and critical mass. Nobody uses askjeeves.com because Google has mindshare. If you were to build this hypothetical pure social media communication platform we'd still have to find it, it'd have to be funded, maintained, and improved. Even then it's useful only if you can get your network on it. Money is the root of all evil and will pervade into whatever is next. It's only human nature. You can see examples of this with https://diasporafoundation.org/ https://diasporafoundation.org/ and https://gab.ai/ https://gab.ai/ -> these platforms and ideas exist but they have a raindrop in a bucket of usershare. I'm not an expert in this field but I think about it a lot. Thanks for discussion, HN.

crispyambulance 9y ago
Maybe we're all thinking about this in a way that's too constrained? The theoretical dream of cyberspace, back in the 60-80's, before "the web" (as we know it) was that merely being "online" automatically put you in a global community: a place where distance no longer mattered, and where _all_ text is part of one giant hypertext. This was roughly the idea as described by Ted Nelson (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Nelson https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Nelson). I think there's a way for this theoretical concept to be realized without dependence on exploitative commerce-oriented websites, and perhaps, without dependence on websites period. Unfortunately, I have no idea what that will be like in reality.