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Yes. It's absolutely about four simple steps: 1. Going to a mobile-first website or app. 2. Clicking a link. 3. Typing in your new e-mail and password. 4. B

by jug 9y ago

Yes. It's absolutely about four simple steps: 1. Going to a mobile-first website or app. 2. Clicking a link. 3. Typing in your new e-mail and password. 4. Being able to add anyone in the world as friends. It cannot be about local "hubs" vs the global "public" / federation, being forced to make that distinction would feel like a step backwards for the users. It can be distributed in the back end, but not in the front end. It also needs to look beautiful.

pnutjam 9y ago
Anybody check out https://mewe.com https://mewe.com
- corobo 9y ago
  > No spying. No cookies. No data sharing. How do you stay logged in if there's no cookies? It also looks like they try to do too much. Cure-alls cure nothing (thanks for the quip, Sawbones podcast!)
  - catach 9y ago
    From their privacy page: "We don’t track you personally and we never sell your personal data. Here is what we track: we track how users use our site in general so that we can make it better. We are monitoring traffic, usage activity, site performance, and we use general analytic tools so that we can improve your experience. We do not associate any of this data with you personally. We never sell or share your personally identifiable information unless required to do so by law."
    - corobo 9y ago
      Honestly it might have just been a first impression tripup. When you first visit the site it looks extremely busy then you scroll through the FAQ and they have a competitor to and "far superior to" slack, a competitor to Google Drive/Dropbox, obvious one is a competitor to Facebook I'm going to give it a try but for the sole reason Tim Berners-Lee is an advisor[1] and seems to still vouch for it[2] 3 years on [1] https://twitter.com/timberners_lee/status/590726480696573952 https://twitter.com/timberners_lee/status/590726480696573952 [2] https://twitter.com/timberners_lee/status/976553383564840962 https://twitter.com/timberners_lee/status/976553383564840962
  - cgoughnour 9y ago
    You can implement sessions with session ids in URLs in a relatively straightforward way.
    - corobo 9y ago
      I was being somewhat pedantic in my previous reply, I realise they mean tracking cookies and the likes As for putting session IDs in URLs I would not advise that in any way, that's one unsanitized href away from Google being logged in as and indexing your user's private account data if done badly and a nasty bout of session fixation if done less badly. More information here: https://security.stackexchange.com/a/14094 https://security.stackexchange.com/a/14094
  - OldSchoolJohnny 9y ago
    > How do you stay logged in if there's no cookies? In my mind, when I read HN comments, I assume all the people who post here know what I know and more but then there's a post that comes along that reminds me of the sheer gulf of knowledge that can exist even between people on such a speicalized site as this one.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - corobo 9y ago
      I'm glad I was able to bolster your ego with my plebeian mind. Have a great day :)
catach 9y ago
I'd say Reddit is good evidence that the beauty element is optional, for the goal of Many Users.
- criley2 9y ago
  Reddit is a perfect example of a tech-focused product for a minority of young, white, tech-oriented men (and a minority of others) that while it influences the outside world, is mainly invisible to it. If you want to build a reddit, you'll never end up with a facebook, that's just reality, the target demo is completely different.
  - davvolun 9y ago
    I don't think that's true. I don't think I know anyone who doesn't at least occasionally use Reddit; my aunt told us a story at the family get-together that started "I saw this on AskReddit...". Certainly anecdotal evidence, and I'm inclined to believe the largest user base may still match your description, but personally I feel like you're describing 4chan, not Reddit.
    - criley2 9y ago
      Sure let's use your anecdote: Ask your Aunt if she has a reddit account. Ask your aunt if she knows ANYONE AT ALL her age that has a reddit account. I'd love to explore your anecdote further because while I know that many non-redditors get linked to AskReddits and AMA's through blogs and webpages, I also know that the 90-9-1 rule of the internet means that it's highly, highly, highly unlikely she is a member of reddit or contributes at all. On the other hand, ALL LURKERS ON FACEBOOK HAVE AN ACCOUNT. Biiiiiiiiiiiig difference.
      - davvolun 9y ago
        1) It's anecdotal evidence, so I'm not trying to argue you're wrong with it; it's simply not convincing enough even to me to try to do so. 2) You're making a lot of assumptions. I can tell you without asking her that she has an account because she was talking about the subs she likes the most, such as AskReddit and IAmA. As for commenting and contributing, she -- this specific person -- is extremely introverted (but not tech-savvy -- I know because "family tech support"), so I would be inclined to think not. As for asking her any of those questions, because she is introverted, I don't feel comfortable asking her -- she definitely doesn't want to hear she was being talked about on the internet, even anonymously. One thought though...I think you have to look at the way she started the discussion "I saw this on AskReddit..." not I saw this on Reddit, or "the internet, this site called Reddit", that sort of thing. She not only expected us (of which I am probably the most tech-savvy and near to the youngest) to understand wtf she was talking about, but to understand she was talking about a subreddit. And I know one person (looking at my mother-in-law) who had no clue, but there were other people probably 5-15 years older than me who did at least a passable job of looking like they understood.
nine_k 9y ago
I see two assumptions: (1) Everyone's identity is their email. (2) The person whose email you're typing in has already signed in to the service (or meta-service if it's a federation), and agrees to communicate with you. If you squint just right, this exact thing already exists; it's called email, and adding to friends means adding to a mail list. I wonder why there were no (known to me) attempts to actually use the email infrastructure (fast, reliable, ubiquitous, near zero-cost) to distribute social network updates. It could use a custom pretty frontend app that makes posting or reading updates easier than e.g. gmail. (As a bonus point, the actual emails can be reasonably human-friendly, as an extra archive of all of your updates.)
- zaarn 9y ago
  EMail has it's problems. ~~Abusing~~ Using it for social media updates doesn't sound like something Email can solve well. It's not necessarily fast, delivery may take only 1 second but I've also had email take days until it was delivered successfully. Reliability is meh, it has some resilience to services being offline for a bit, so I'll give you that. The near-zero cost is also not quite true. It's only true if you sell your data to the provider of your choice, gmail or yahoo or AOL. If you want privacy on email, you'll have to pay for it, otherwise you pay by other means first. There is a chat app that uses email to function, it also features encryption but IIRC the userbase is very small and last i tried it for testing, it did quite spam my inbox.

by jug 9y ago

pnutjam 9y ago

Anybody check out https://mewe.com https://mewe.com

corobo 9y ago
> No spying. No cookies. No data sharing. How do you stay logged in if there's no cookies? It also looks like they try to do too much. Cure-alls cure nothing (thanks for the quip, Sawbones podcast!)
- catach 9y ago
  From their privacy page: "We don’t track you personally and we never sell your personal data. Here is what we track: we track how users use our site in general so that we can make it better. We are monitoring traffic, usage activity, site performance, and we use general analytic tools so that we can improve your experience. We do not associate any of this data with you personally. We never sell or share your personally identifiable information unless required to do so by law."
  - corobo 9y ago
    Honestly it might have just been a first impression tripup. When you first visit the site it looks extremely busy then you scroll through the FAQ and they have a competitor to and "far superior to" slack, a competitor to Google Drive/Dropbox, obvious one is a competitor to Facebook I'm going to give it a try but for the sole reason Tim Berners-Lee is an advisor[1] and seems to still vouch for it[2] 3 years on [1] https://twitter.com/timberners_lee/status/590726480696573952 https://twitter.com/timberners_lee/status/590726480696573952 [2] https://twitter.com/timberners_lee/status/976553383564840962 https://twitter.com/timberners_lee/status/976553383564840962
- cgoughnour 9y ago
  You can implement sessions with session ids in URLs in a relatively straightforward way.
  - corobo 9y ago
    I was being somewhat pedantic in my previous reply, I realise they mean tracking cookies and the likes As for putting session IDs in URLs I would not advise that in any way, that's one unsanitized href away from Google being logged in as and indexing your user's private account data if done badly and a nasty bout of session fixation if done less badly. More information here: https://security.stackexchange.com/a/14094 https://security.stackexchange.com/a/14094
- OldSchoolJohnny 9y ago
  > How do you stay logged in if there's no cookies? In my mind, when I read HN comments, I assume all the people who post here know what I know and more but then there's a post that comes along that reminds me of the sheer gulf of knowledge that can exist even between people on such a speicalized site as this one.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - corobo 9y ago
    I'm glad I was able to bolster your ego with my plebeian mind. Have a great day :)

catach 9y ago

I'd say Reddit is good evidence that the beauty element is optional, for the goal of Many Users.

criley2 9y ago
Reddit is a perfect example of a tech-focused product for a minority of young, white, tech-oriented men (and a minority of others) that while it influences the outside world, is mainly invisible to it. If you want to build a reddit, you'll never end up with a facebook, that's just reality, the target demo is completely different.
- davvolun 9y ago
  I don't think that's true. I don't think I know anyone who doesn't at least occasionally use Reddit; my aunt told us a story at the family get-together that started "I saw this on AskReddit...". Certainly anecdotal evidence, and I'm inclined to believe the largest user base may still match your description, but personally I feel like you're describing 4chan, not Reddit.
  - criley2 9y ago
    Sure let's use your anecdote: Ask your Aunt if she has a reddit account. Ask your aunt if she knows ANYONE AT ALL her age that has a reddit account. I'd love to explore your anecdote further because while I know that many non-redditors get linked to AskReddits and AMA's through blogs and webpages, I also know that the 90-9-1 rule of the internet means that it's highly, highly, highly unlikely she is a member of reddit or contributes at all. On the other hand, ALL LURKERS ON FACEBOOK HAVE AN ACCOUNT. Biiiiiiiiiiiig difference.
    - davvolun 9y ago
      1) It's anecdotal evidence, so I'm not trying to argue you're wrong with it; it's simply not convincing enough even to me to try to do so. 2) You're making a lot of assumptions. I can tell you without asking her that she has an account because she was talking about the subs she likes the most, such as AskReddit and IAmA. As for commenting and contributing, she -- this specific person -- is extremely introverted (but not tech-savvy -- I know because "family tech support"), so I would be inclined to think not. As for asking her any of those questions, because she is introverted, I don't feel comfortable asking her -- she definitely doesn't want to hear she was being talked about on the internet, even anonymously. One thought though...I think you have to look at the way she started the discussion "I saw this on AskReddit..." not I saw this on Reddit, or "the internet, this site called Reddit", that sort of thing. She not only expected us (of which I am probably the most tech-savvy and near to the youngest) to understand wtf she was talking about, but to understand she was talking about a subreddit. And I know one person (looking at my mother-in-law) who had no clue, but there were other people probably 5-15 years older than me who did at least a passable job of looking like they understood.

nine_k 9y ago

I see two assumptions: (1) Everyone's identity is their email. (2) The person whose email you're typing in has already signed in to the service (or meta-service if it's a federation), and agrees to communicate with you. If you squint just right, this exact thing already exists; it's called email, and adding to friends means adding to a mail list. I wonder why there were no (known to me) attempts to actually use the email infrastructure (fast, reliable, ubiquitous, near zero-cost) to distribute social network updates. It could use a custom pretty frontend app that makes posting or reading updates easier than e.g. gmail. (As a bonus point, the actual emails can be reasonably human-friendly, as an extra archive of all of your updates.)

zaarn 9y ago
EMail has it's problems. ~~Abusing~~ Using it for social media updates doesn't sound like something Email can solve well. It's not necessarily fast, delivery may take only 1 second but I've also had email take days until it was delivered successfully. Reliability is meh, it has some resilience to services being offline for a bit, so I'll give you that. The near-zero cost is also not quite true. It's only true if you sell your data to the provider of your choice, gmail or yahoo or AOL. If you want privacy on email, you'll have to pay for it, otherwise you pay by other means first. There is a chat app that uses email to function, it also features encryption but IIRC the userbase is very small and last i tried it for testing, it did quite spam my inbox.