23 ms·

Openbook social network

167 points by MzHN 8y ago

quantumwoke 8y ago
How are openbook going to fund this? It costs a lot of money to run a social network. I read through the material and the only thing I saw was a pi-chart, nothing explained their revenue model. Not to mention their privacy model seems exactly the same as facebook's.
- privacygeek445 8y ago
  I guess thats why the kickstarter! And if they get traction they can always later go for venture capital. I know its an uphill task but I'm overall positive. Kickstarter will also get them a lot of beta users right out the door so that was a smart move if you ask me I think I saw something about their revenue model on their website FAQ.
  - quantumwoke 8y ago
    The kickerstarter will only bring in a finite amount of money. Long term operations will surely require more than that. Why would anyone want to invest in this? Twitter/facebook etc can at least collect advertising information. There is some discussion about what seems to basically be a cryptocurrency, but its surely not sustainable.
maartn 8y ago
doesn't work
- privacygeek445 8y ago
  sites working just fine! find some other thread to troll..
maartn 8y ago
site doesn't work
DyslexicAtheist 8y ago
as much as I applaud the effort, the next Uber or Facebook won't be a better Uber or Facebook but something totally different. I wish companies would stop trying to be better copies of existing services. Facebook had traction because it was radically different from anything that was before. Also they have no idea how to finance and fund their growth: >Our business model is not and will never be advertisements. We will have a transparent revenue model based on a generic way for people to securely transact physical and digital goods and services inside the network. This will be done through an atomic digital unit of value. Although this initially reflected as a marketplace, our ambitions go way beyond that. Apart from this, we’re also planning to help enterprise customers setting up their own internal, self-hosted and secure social networks with extra functionality such as projects, identity and access management.
- cmorgan8506 8y ago
  > Facebook had traction because it was radically different from anything that was before. How was Facebook radically different than other social media sites? In my opinion, it was almost exactly the same as the rest. They just leveraged some clever marketing.
  - zmix 8y ago
    Social networks, back then, was to bring minds together, not people.
  - addicted 8y ago
    The only major difference with FB was it limited your network to your college. In terms of features it was a static page with the only dynamic capability being the ability to poke someone.
- JacKTrocinskI 8y ago
  Facebook is just another social media site, not really much different than Myspace was before it.
- flabbergast 8y ago
azatris 8y ago
If it made any sense to the common person, the front page shouldn't have "open source" in its description. Because your average grandma has no idea what that means. It's an insanely hard market to chew into and thus I can say they've already lost.
- catwell 8y ago
  It does not matter that the average grandma has no idea what that means. New products need early adopters, and the average grandma is not a potential early adopter, neither is the average grandpa or anyone average, really. Any argument, including being Open Source, is good to get early adopters. Communication can change later on. Too many products try to appeal to the general public too soon. This is not how user acquisition works.
  - ljw1001 8y ago
    > It does not matter that the average grandma has no idea what that means. My 23 year old son and 18 year old daughter didn't know what open-source meant. If you could build a social network around tech people we'd all be using Google Plus.
    - catwell 8y ago
      You don't build a social network around tech, you bootstrap it with a community. Bootstrapping it with Open Source enthusiasts is fine. If you say "we're yet another social network" you have no value proposition. Not that I think that "we're yet another Open Source social network" is good either... Also, the fact that a grandma doesn't know what Open Source means doesn't really concern me, but the fact that the children of someone who posts on HN and works at Google don't, does. Maybe that's part of the reason why proprietary, centralized services are winning. Anyway, I do have concerns along the same line, not because "Open Source" is on the front page but because: - The team is not diverse enough in terms of experience. The COO is an "information-security expert"; the CMO is a "security and international relations expert"; the Chief of Product is a "pragmatic software engineer" and "crypto-geek". This is a problem, even though not necessarily deadly. - They plan to allocate 70 % of the budget to software engineering, and basically 0 % to marketing / user acquisition / community management. This is the biggest red flag for me.
phoe-krk 8y ago
Does it federate with other services? I have not seen anything mentioning this on the website and I consider it to be crucial for me backing the idea of this service. I don't want or need yet another centralized *book.
- MzHN 8y ago
  Based on the FAQ I'd say it will not be federated, at least not initially, and in the FAQ they explain why. In short, they think that's where other initiatives fall short, and they want to sidestep the issue completely, and come back to it once they're profitable.
  - r3bl 8y ago
    I don't think that FAQ entry answers the question asked by the parent comment. They say that they don't want to decentralize the service (as in, everyone can run their own instance), and I can understand their stand on that. However, they say nothing about federation with other similar attempts that are popping up. Instead of "Will I be able to run my own instance?", think: Will I be able to follow an Openbook account from my Mastodon account?
    - rainbowmverse 8y ago
      This is something I didn't know I cared about until I followed Blender's PeerTube instance account from a Mastodon instance. Pixelfed is working on it, and Plume, and... It's something I've come to expect. If your hot new app doesn't federate, I don't care about it.
osrec 8y ago
The website caused my tab in Chrome on mobile to crash each time I tried to open it.
rascul 8y ago
Scrolling is choppy and slow on my phone. Haven't checked my laptop, though. But such screwed up scrolling means I'm not interested.
- Uberphallus 8y ago
  It was choppy on my beefy desktop on Firefox as well.
  - davidhyde 8y ago
    Me too. All they needed to do was profile their webpage in modern browser to see the glaring performance problems. Doesn't bode well for a more complex piece of software like a social network.
    - privacygeek445 8y ago
      not sure why everyones complaining about performance, it seems to work fine on my macbook air. Plugins perhaps?
      - g-b-r 8y ago
        It might work fine but (the homepage) is most likely draining your battery. Have you looked at your cpu usage?
have_faith 8y ago
What's the monetisation model? edit: found this "We will have a transparent revenue model based on a generic way for people to securely transact physical and digital goods and services inside the network. This will be done through an atomic digital unit of value. Although this initially reflected as a marketplace, our ambitions go way beyond that. Apart from this, we’re also planning to help enterprise customers setting up their own internal, self-hosted and secure social networks with extra functionality such as projects, identity and access management."
- quantumwoke 8y ago
  Buzzword salad. Basically meaningless.
- briandear 8y ago
  I think your question still stands. ”Atomic digital unit of value?” Who writes this stuff?
  - have_faith 8y ago
    If I didn't know I would have guessed it was an ICO for a new crypto.
    - g-b-r 8y ago
      They're raising money so as to put together an ICO?? That's a new height..
  - g-b-r 8y ago
    Hardly one who has a definite plan and wants to make it known Hard to believe that Phil Zimmermann is on board. Assuming that's true...
- leavenotracks 8y ago
  ico??
AnabeeKnox 8y ago
A domain name with a - dash in it. This product fails at the very first step.
- selectnull 8y ago
  Of course, they should've gone with the "the" prefix and drop it later because it's cleaner.
- catwell 8y ago
  They address this in the Kickstarter FAQ. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1520156881/openbook-the-honest-open-source-and-awesome-social/faqs#project_faq_255412 https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1520156881/openbook-the...
  - barking 8y ago
    They are going to buy openbook.com with the money they raise from kickstarter. Seems like a complete waste of money to me. Who types in a url any more?
TomMarius 8y ago
I have high end computer (i7-7700 with 32GB of empty RAM) with pretty good graphics card (GeForce GTX 1060)... and this site is lagging. I can't even scroll properly.
- walty8 8y ago
  Based on wappalyzer, webpack & jquery are used on the website. But no other framework (React, Vue, Ionic) is detected... So it's just jquery + webpack?
  - TomMarius 8y ago
    Well, I'm not a part of the SPA hating crowd since my job is making fast SPAs. It's very easy to mess up (scroll) performance even without jQuery.
  - g-b-r 8y ago
    I don't know what you're looking at, but for sure they're using vue. Most likely suspect is the typewriter animation, which ought to be done with https://github.com/tameemsafi/typewriterjs https://github.com/tameemsafi/typewriterjs (but maybe it's just how they used it - or maybe something entirely different, I just had a quick look).
edhelas 8y ago
Here we go, another Social Network engine :) Just following the NIH syndrome, once again. > OpenBook is OpenSource Yeah awesome. Like many other projects. Having the OpenSource stamp is not really an advantage anymore. Building and maintaining a community around it, with strong support and integration is something way more difficult to do. > On Openbook you will not only be able to personalise your profile, but the entire network itself! From changing the color of your homepage to adding plugins, you can make it as unique as yourself. So basically I can customize everything. On my instance? Is it federated/decentralized (doesn't seems so)? > We don’t track anything you do, neither monetize your information nor share it without your explicit and informed consent. Hopefully the GDPR has already cover all those things :) > All applications will be reviewed by us. We will make sure they: only request the needed information, have the exact location of your data available for you, at all times, delete all your information if you’d revoke the permission... GDPR > Some examples of the technology we'll be researching and developing: > Cryptographically enforced data sharing policies > End to end encryption, even on the browser > Public key cryptography on the browser > Post-quantum cryptography algorithms and protocols NIH syndrom, all those things are already covered by many other projects, why not reusing that? Also, "post-quantum" cryptography, looks like a nice buzzword thrown in there. > Migrating to Openbook will be easy-peasy, with our simple drag-and-drop system. Just download your data from your old social network1 and transfer them to Openbook. Shazam! Good luck with that. GDPR is indeed forcing social platforms to have a Data-Portability politic. Facebook is exporting the user content in HTML flat file with no proper identifiers or easy way to reconstruct the data structure. > ...we’re also planning to help enterprise customers setting up their own internal, self-hosted and secure social networks with extra functionality such as projects, identity and access management. So basically they are developing another centralized Social Network engine.
- catwell 8y ago
  I don't disagree with everything you said, but if this thing gets traction, this is the HN DropBox thread of the future :) ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863 )
  - 8y ago
pasta 8y ago
Looks like there is something wrong with the site. Javascript crashes and nothing is visible.
omk 8y ago
If it's not federated, there is little control already. If the business models for centralized networks are not aggressive right now, nothing stop them from evolving once there's more money on the table. I wonder what folks here think about ActivityPub. I been craving for a federated protocol since Google Wave. I'm yet to go through it in detail and see if it really stands.
- edhelas 8y ago
  If you're looking for a real-time federated social-network (that is what I understood by "Google Wave") solution have a look at solutions based on the industry standard XMPP. I'm building one (Movim https://movim.eu/ https://movim.eu/) and started to explain how is made the architecture in this blog post https://nl.movim.eu/?blog/edhelas%40movim.eu/how-s-made-movim-part-i-the-architecture-CCA7If https://nl.movim.eu/?blog/edhelas%40movim.eu/how-s-made-movi....
laurent123456 8y ago
Not sure they have their priorities right. The last item in the list of goals (at $500,000, no less) are iOS and Android apps. I would think that should come first as without this very few people will want to use the service at all.
- drchaos 8y ago
  Why that? A decent mobile site should be fine, there are quite some people (including me) who even prefer this over apps.
- naravara 8y ago
  I am tired of Apps that really should just be websites. Unless you have some kind of real, functional need to access my phone's hardware or software I don't need you taking up space on my device. I'd much rather just save a book mark to my home screen and launch from there.
akuji1993 8y ago
Site is crashing and throws a million errors on the console.
hurtwed 8y ago
The splash page is hideously slow and stuttering even on desktop. Is the CSS/JS just this bad, or is this site trying to mine cryptocurrency in the background?
- g-b-r 8y ago
  I think it's that "typewriter" effect, probably some endless loop without any sleep. It doesn't help that javascript is required
yeleti 8y ago
A long long time ago (in 2010), Facebook sued a start-up called Teachbook for using 'book' in its name. Hope you don't get into that muddle. https://money.cnn.com/2010/08/26/technology/teachbook/ https://money.cnn.com/2010/08/26/technology/teachbook/
- lioeters 8y ago
  I hadn't heard about this. They've sued several companies whose names end with "book". Apparently a lawsuit coming from FB is scary enough that they've acquiesced and changed their names, without standing up in court. Replacebook!
rcar1046 8y ago
I'm not sure I can imagine any path to success here. Maybe focus on a small interest group or locale to begin with, then look to spread outward from there. A small college campus perhaps. ;) Still...this needs a hook other than the privacy angle, and a big one at that.
ssdspoimdsjvv 8y ago
A nearly empty webpage that lags like crazy is very bad promotion and makes me question whether they have the knowledge to create a high-traffic social network. Also, the quote of the founder: Openbook is not only an evolutionary step for social networks, it's also a humanitarian project at world scale. Makes me want to vomit. You're making a website, not feeding hungry children.
- pavs 8y ago
  From their website: >In partnership with FoundersPledge, we'll be giving 30% of our revenue towards projects for education, sanitization, climate change prevention and more.
  - bko 8y ago
    From the FAQ on their page: >Who's paying for everything so far? > So far we have been completely self funded. However, this has proven to be very hard. With most of us working full-time jobs apart from Openbook, it could take us long time till we release the first version and even then, we would not be able to afford the IT infrastructure needed to compete with any of the established networks. As we wanted the project to be driven by people and not capital, we decided to go for crowd-funding. We'll be launching our Kickstarter campaign on the 17th of July. They don't appear to have a revenue model. I'm not sure if they consider donations from kickstarter revenue, but so far its their only source. I don't think passing on 30% of donations to FoundersPledge is really changing the world
    - pavs 8y ago
      They are talking about future revenue generation. Kickstarted is being used as a fundraiser. They are probably trying something similar to ghost blogging platform. Whether they are successful or not is to be seen, but I am not enjoying how some people are unnecessarily shitting on their effort.
    - leavenotracks 8y ago
      Can't even get to their FAQ page at the moment, no links on their homepage seem to be working.
_RedPanda 8y ago
I can't click on any links, am I doing something wrong? The only links that are working for me, are the ones on the right side of the page. Website looks like this for me: https://i.imgur.com/7OkVlUz.png https://i.imgur.com/7OkVlUz.png I am using Google Chrome on Windows 10
- billabul 8y ago
  the website is spitting js errors like crazy
- hankhill 8y ago
  Same here with Firefox on Linux.
- Sekhmet 8y ago
  Same on FF on Windows 10.
- dezzeus 8y ago
  Me too with Opera (Beta 54) on MacOS (10.13) :/
- hutattedonmyarm 8y ago
  Same with Vivaldi, FF, and Edge on Win 10. Works in Safari on Mojave though
logcat 8y ago
It is worth mentioning that protocol-based social networks exist. Like https://www.scuttlebutt.nz/ https://www.scuttlebutt.nz/
- iaml 8y ago
  Until they can work without installing additional app they will never be mainstream.
  - logcat 8y ago
    Snapchat is counterexample
    - icebraining 8y ago
      Also Whatsapp.
- wuliwong 8y ago
  This is random, but I believe browser navigation is broken on sucttlebutt.nz (at least on chrome os-x).
starbugs 8y ago
First of all, kudos for trying this. So far I've only read comments that have a strong tendency towards the destructive or even pejorative end of the spectrum. I think that's unfair considering all the effort they are putting into this. Having said that, I'd like to know what distinguishes this from e.g. Facebook in the long term. It's easy to put out a manifesto and pledge that you are never going to do bad things. It's also easy to come up with a vague theoretical business model that doesn't really say how it will work. Let's assume they succeed with this – there is nothing that enforces these early statements anymore and soon investor pressure will lead to an outcome similar to the established success stories. That's why I think you have to be much more different if you really aim to make a difference at scale.
- bko 8y ago
  They're not just trying this. They're asking for money from regular folks with no real sustainable revenue model apart from "we're crowd-funding" [0]. People are free to donate as they like, but I think the whole pitch is not entirely honest. [0] https://www.open-book.org/en/faq https://www.open-book.org/en/faq
  - class4behavior 8y ago
    You should read their FAQ on Kickstarter [1]. There they answer why their project is not federated, what revenue model they aim for, and why they aren't a non-profit. Here's their take on the business model: >Our business model is not and will never be advertisements. >We will have a transparent revenue model based on a generic way for people to securely transact physical and digital goods and services inside the network. This will be done through an atomic digital unit of value. Although this initially reflected as a marketplace, our ambitions go way beyond that. >Apart from this, we’re also planning to help enterprise customers setting up their own internal, self-hosted and secure social networks with extra functionality such as projects, identity and access management. [1]: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1520156881/openbook-the-honest-open-source-and-awesome-social/faqs https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1520156881/openbook-the...
    - 8y ago
juhq 8y ago
How do I sign up? Odd that a social network does not have registration form
- eevilspock 8y ago
  It's a kickstarter. i.e. it's being built. The minimal €1 contribution will give you "early access".
stockkid 8y ago
Interesting project. But when I try the website in Firefox on Anddroid or macOS, scroll is jagged and links & css animations are slow to respond.
lcnmrn 8y ago
I built two working, bug free social sites and yet nobody cares about them. At the end of the day someone else comes with a vaporware manifesto and takes the discussion away from actual products.
- pweissbrod 8y ago
  Hi I'd be curious to see what youve built. Can you supply links?
  - prab97 8y ago
    I see two links in his HN bio.
    - reitanqild 8y ago
      Seems not everyone is aware so I'll just point it out: The bio can be found by clicking peoples username. From the bio you can also navigate to their comment history and also see what stories they have submitted.
      - jameskegel 8y ago
        If someone isn’t aware of this they are not my preferred peer.
        reitanqild 8y ago
        The XKCD "Ten Thousand" might be interesting for some https://xkcd.com/1053/ https://xkcd.com/1053/
        deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
        reitanqild 8y ago
        To add to my answer from yesterday: there is also no obvious way to see that usernames are links (at least for me, somewhat colorblind on a mobile device.)
drngdds 8y ago
Might be interesting if it was federated. Federation is AFAICT the only way to avoid network effects, which are why we're in this whole mess to begin with. (Many more people would have left Facebook after all the scandals if they could interact with their Facebook friends from another site.) There's no way of ensuring that Openbook wouldn't become as evil as Facebook once it had a big userbase.
discordianfish 8y ago
Today, everybody can build a social network. Apparently though building a social network that's actually used is quite hard and many failed. So I'd expect somebody who tries again to have some novel approach but it doesn't look like it. How does this compare to disapora or mastodon except the lack of federation? I really wish them to succeed since I'd like to see somebody breaking the facebook monopoly, yet I'm quite sure this won't end any different than disapora, mastadon, app.net and the several ones I can't even remember anymore. There is this common mistake of seeing these platforms as a technical challenge but in reality, unless you have a novel approach that people crave for, it's a lot of non-technical hustle.
- rainbowmverse 8y ago
  I can't speak for the others, but Mastodon hasn't ended. I use it every day and still meet lots of new people.
onyva 8y ago
I like it that there are attempts to change the status quo and not accept Facebook in our lives as a fact, and push back against the monetization of personal information. But shouldn’t this be backed up by an organization with some trackrecord in the domain of user's digital rights, free and open standards? EFF, FSF... join existing umbrella projects, even if not leveraging existing code... https://www.gnu.org/software/social... https://www.gnu.org/software/social...? Like someone else said here already, today everybody can build a social network. Btw they don’t seem to even own openbook.org ...
- laurent123456 8y ago
  It's a for-profit company so I doubt the EFF, etc. would want to back them. They might be open now, but as they grow and more and more investors own the company there's no reason to think they'll be any better than Facebook.
  - rement 8y ago
    Take reddit for example. They used to release there code to the open but that is no longer true.
reacharavindh 8y ago
I'm actually fine that it is not de-centralized. It is true that federated systems are too complicated for practical use. However, to go against Facebook, we need something like Wikipedia, not Facebook by some other guy who pinky promises that he will be good. This right here kills it for me, and hopefully others too. "Why is Openbook not a non-profit? Making Openbook a for-profit was a hard choice to make. We love Wikipedia, the Ghost Foundation, Founders Pledge, Mozilla and many more. However we see the same struggle repeated over and over again. These companies struggle to grow beyond their profitability. These companies struggle to grow to the size and resources needed to compete with for-profit businesses. When we need to grow exponentially, we need to be able to raise the large amounts of money needed to do so. Therefore we are officially a for-profit company. But do note that when we do this, we will make sure the people investing in the company will be people with real interest on the platform, its core values of privacy, security, freedom, openness and its humanitarian nature." NO NO NO NO NO!!! Why do you have to exponentially grow to be useful. Be the right service, and growth comes by that virtue. People love Wikipedia for what it is, not because it "grows exponentially". You're just another guy with good motives until you succumb to investor pressure. I've been hoping for a Mozilla/Wikimedia like foundation to come up with a modern centralized alternative to Facebook, that just has it in their bylaws that prevents any creepy tracking from being implemented in the first place. As they say, "False pretence of security is worse than no security because it makes you let your guard down". Don't dilute the community driven foundations by profit driven projects like this, please.
- koboll 8y ago
  >People love Wikipedia for what it is, not because it "grows exponentially". That's because Wikipedia is not a social network. A social network is only worthwhile if it gains a critical mass of users such that there are enough friends on it (or sometimes, i.e. Twitter, enough interesting people on it) to make spending time there worthwhile. Massive growth is more important to the survival of a social network than to any other business model.
  - class4behavior 8y ago
    >Massive growth is more important to the survival of a social network than to any other business model. Growth is. Massive growth is only relevant if you want to compete on the largest, global scale.
hankhill 8y ago
Firefox says "InternalError: too much recursion" and none of the links work on the front page of the site. Not sure what's going on but not a good start.
ommunist 8y ago
Can I import my FB data to Openbook?
wll 8y ago
«Making Openbook a for-profit was a hard choice to make. We check all the non-profits boxes and we love non-profits. We love Wikipedia, the Ghost Foundation, Founders Pledge, Mozilla and many more. However we see the same struggle repeated over and over again. These companies struggle to grow beyond their profitability. These companies struggle to grow to the size and resources needed to compete with for-profit businesses. When we need to grow exponentially, we need to be able to raise the large amounts of money needed to do so. Therefore we are officially a for-profit company. But do note that when we do this, we will make sure the people investing in the company will be people with real interest on the platform, its core values of privacy, security, freedom, openness and its humanitarian nature.» [0] As a for-profit corporation’s legal operational boundaries end at the financial interests of its shareholders, any corporation-defined “core value” may not and does not benefit from legal guarantees. While a benefit corporation [1] may allow to balance the interests of shareholders and stakeholders, any form equal to a UK company limited by guarantee with “limited” exemption [2] [Section 60, Section 62] binds, secures a corporation’s objects (or “core values”) to interest-free legal requirements. For trust to ensue and persist, any “for-benefit” alternative to existing for-profit corporation- or nation state-controlled platforms must state its “core values” as the controlling corporation’s objects. [0] https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1520156881/openbook-the-honest-open-source-and-awesome-social/faqs#project_faq_255412 https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1520156881/openbook-the... [1] http://benefitcorp.net/sites/default/files/Benefit_Corporation_White_Paper.pdf http://benefitcorp.net/sites/default/files/Benefit_Corporati... [2] http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2006/46/part/5/chapter/2/crossheading/required-indications-for-limited-companies http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2006/46/part/5/chapter/2...
throwawayqdhd 8y ago
Not knocking this effort, but why are all decentralized, open social networks that hope to compete against Facebook and Instagram so...dull? Their marketing is all the same wholesomeness and positive messaging. There's no "rebellious" streak to it at all. But wholesomeness didn't help Facebook, Snapchat and Instagram grow. Facebook was the "adults only" social network that required a .edu address when it was challenging MySpace. Snapchat was pretty much a sexting app. Instagram is basically semi-nude models in its search feed. I get what these people are trying to do, but you're not going to do that by being boring and corporate.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- tomcooks 8y ago
  I'd rather have a functioning, 'dull' project than an edgy 2kool4skool meme disappearing in a couple of months because the hipster userbase moved to the next cool socnet.
- have_faith 8y ago
  Diaspora tried being edgy, I don't think it helped them. They're still around thought as far as I know.
mgkimsal 8y ago
"drag and drop your old social media archive... import all your photos, videos, chats and more". Photos/videos I can sort of understand, but 'chats' - they're done with other people, none of whom would have been granting permission for their content to be migrated to openbook. Am I being too literal here, or is this a privacy violation being promised on day one?
- tzfld 8y ago
  they may refer when both users are registered and agreed with this, but it's not easy to do
- wilsonnb2 8y ago
  I don't think all parties of a chat need to consent for that information to be shared, aside from specific cases like doctor-patient and lawyer-client.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
katakuchi 8y ago
Valiant effort, I don't understand why the community is responding so toxic. Rather than assuming that growth will lead to this social network becoming the next corrupted Facebook, why don't we focus on the unique aspects that make this open-sourced network worthwhile to begin with? Security - Privacy - Customisability - Compatibility with status quo. We can all agree that we lost faith in the monstrosity that Facebook has become, it doesn't mean that we can't place faith in other technology to produce a different outcome.
- _bxg1 8y ago
  The code being open-source accomplishes very little in this case. It's what they do with your data after they get it that matters. Data is the new oil, and if a for-profit company can get it, rest assured they will use or sell it.
  - privacygeek445 8y ago
    I get where you're coming from but data is the new oil in conjunction with machine learning/ big data algorithms. Thats the true evil. that part at least will be transparent with the open-source model IMO
    - _bxg1 8y ago
      Once they have the data, they can do whatever they want with it. They can run it through closed-source ML, they can sell it to other companies. I suppose people would know if they meddled with the news feed order, but that's about it.
      - privacygeek445 8y ago
        Thats rather cynical... Sure!! The team of privacy and security activists backed by internet hall of fame member Phil Zimmerman who created PGP and fought the US govt are all actually closeted evil capitalists just out to get everyones data..
- 8y ago
_bxg1 8y ago
At this point I don't trust the sunny promises of any for-profit that wants me to give them my data. Data is the new oil. If an organization can get it and legally profit from it, be assured that they will.
Shank 8y ago
There's a lot of marketing on here about honesty, fun, and being personal. That being said, none of these attributes are being applied to the social network part of the social network. In their current form, they're just buzzwords about the project. For once, I'd like to see a project use these words in a meaningful way. Build a manifesto that isn't just "we are building a platform." Focus on actual social interactions and social behaviors that the platform should have. Build something that actually encourages honesty, openness, and fun posts over lying, fake personalities, and cynicism. Normal users don't see benefits in switching away from Facebook to an equivalent platform with more honest caretakers. That's the sad reality of it. But if a social network pledged to only allow posts that are positive about things, or actively banned people for spreading lies, that would be totally different. It's an execution thing -- people would need to see policy in action -- but if pulled off, it would result in a fundamentally different and easily comparable platform to Facebook.
- taylorswift_ 8y ago
  What kinds of social interactions or behaviors would encourage honesty, openness etc? While I commend their enthusiasm, I don't think the audience they (or any large social network) needs cares a lick about privacy, openness, honesty, or goodwill. If they did then Facebook & Instagram wouldn't have 1+ Billion Users, not to mention Twitter, Reddit, Twitch, Baidu etc etc. People want to engage with a product that is interesting and suits their social/personal needs more than anything else. While I agree with most of what you said, "But if a social network pledged to only allow posts that are positive about things, or actively banned people for spreading lies, that would be totally different. ", I disagree with this line. Heard of Imzy? Who is the police for stopping the spread of "lies"? I take a more Libertarian stance and think we need the opposite and rather less censorship, less thought policing, less handholding, but within a context of a set of rules.
dielan 8y ago
For profit and centeralized. Hard pass. Is this the next Ello?
overcast 8y ago
I don't get it. Who is asking for another Facebook? Except for a few vocal minority carrying on over privacy and decentralization, none of which will even bother. The rest of the world doesn't care, Facebook is there for them already. When everyone inevitably tires of it, they'll move to a new idea, not another clone. Facebook knows this, that's why they continue purchasing upcoming services like Instagram.
Reedx 8y ago
> helping make the world a better place. It's hard to take anyone seriously who uses that phrase... Especially in this sort of context. That's been a joke for a long time now, everyone knows it's nonsense.
- codeafin 8y ago
  Same with > Good for the planet It all almost looks ironically done.
wuliwong 8y ago
I was thinking about making an open source social-network just this morning. I'm all about "for profit" in general but as has been echoed a bunch in the comments already, a lot of corporations start off on a good trajectory but ultimately wind up in a place we don't like. I don't want to stoke any political flames, so I'll just leave it at that. :) The reasons I would like to see a project like this succeed would be to have a network that better protects privacy and has very transparent censorship. I'm not super well versed in open source and non-profit but my current thinking is that making an organization of similar style to wikipedia would be the best strategy. Open source the code, own the hardware and raise money through donations. Do you think I'm missing something or would this be the best strategy? Also, is there already a project(s) like this?
Proven 8y ago
Wants to fund climatism with revenue made from me using their product. That's 10 times worse than staying with FB. Like giving your money to the government.
newscracker 8y ago
If it's not ad supported, how do they plan to keep the lights on once the Kickstarter funding gets exhausted and when they don't get any institutional funding? Somehow the following paragraph form the manifesto doesn't sound very convincing (it sounds like some messaging services that have said that they'll make money selling stickers): > "We will have a transparent revenue model based on a generic way for people to securely transact physical and digital goods and services inside the network. This will be done through an atomic digital unit of value. Although this initially reflected as a marketplace, our ambitions go way beyond that. > Apart from this, we’re also planning to help enterprise customers setting up their own internal, self-hosted and secure social networks with extra functionality such as projects, identity and access management." This should also be listed in the FAQ.
godelski 8y ago
This site made my fan spin up like crazy (FF61). Happen to anyone else? (reproducible on my end)
shiburizu 8y ago
While it's easy to point out at moral level that nothing is guaranteed that if this sort of project gets big it cannot just run off with investor money to go off on Zuckerberg hijinks which has no good reason to even exist at this point -- the notion that it is "too difficult" to implement federated social networking is not going to sway me away from my advocacy of it. The most important identity system in the world -- the one that even the biggest websites in the world want you to identify yourself with is definitely your email. The protocols underlying your email are my vision for social networking: A common format that accurately sends a message to feature-complete implementations. There's really not any reason we can't have your federated social media be your email replacement barring that the W3C standard doesn't call for any sort of secure mailbox (Mastodon doesn't have REAL "private messages") but it's still a damn good solution to the problem of trying to work in the social media space: you need users. What if the users are already there? Perhaps as the APub standard and implementations grow we can see them become standardized to the sort of SSO that we are used to when we "connect with Facebook/Twitter" but another closed-loop timeline-based for-profit social media won't ever have my attention because there's not a market. Unless it's Vine.

167 points by MzHN 8y ago

How are openbook going to fund this? It costs a lot of money to run a social network. I read through the material and the only thing I saw was a pi-chart, nothing explained their revenue model. Not to mention their privacy model seems exactly the same as facebook's.

privacygeek445 8y ago
I guess thats why the kickstarter! And if they get traction they can always later go for venture capital. I know its an uphill task but I'm overall positive. Kickstarter will also get them a lot of beta users right out the door so that was a smart move if you ask me I think I saw something about their revenue model on their website FAQ.
- quantumwoke 8y ago
  The kickerstarter will only bring in a finite amount of money. Long term operations will surely require more than that. Why would anyone want to invest in this? Twitter/facebook etc can at least collect advertising information. There is some discussion about what seems to basically be a cryptocurrency, but its surely not sustainable.

maartn 8y ago

doesn't work

privacygeek445 8y ago
sites working just fine! find some other thread to troll..

maartn 8y ago

site doesn't work

DyslexicAtheist 8y ago

as much as I applaud the effort, the next Uber or Facebook won't be a better Uber or Facebook but something totally different. I wish companies would stop trying to be better copies of existing services. Facebook had traction because it was radically different from anything that was before. Also they have no idea how to finance and fund their growth: >Our business model is not and will never be advertisements. We will have a transparent revenue model based on a generic way for people to securely transact physical and digital goods and services inside the network. This will be done through an atomic digital unit of value. Although this initially reflected as a marketplace, our ambitions go way beyond that. Apart from this, we’re also planning to help enterprise customers setting up their own internal, self-hosted and secure social networks with extra functionality such as projects, identity and access management.

cmorgan8506 8y ago
> Facebook had traction because it was radically different from anything that was before. How was Facebook radically different than other social media sites? In my opinion, it was almost exactly the same as the rest. They just leveraged some clever marketing.
- zmix 8y ago
  Social networks, back then, was to bring minds together, not people.
- addicted 8y ago
  The only major difference with FB was it limited your network to your college. In terms of features it was a static page with the only dynamic capability being the ability to poke someone.
JacKTrocinskI 8y ago
Facebook is just another social media site, not really much different than Myspace was before it.
flabbergast 8y ago

azatris 8y ago

If it made any sense to the common person, the front page shouldn't have "open source" in its description. Because your average grandma has no idea what that means. It's an insanely hard market to chew into and thus I can say they've already lost.

catwell 8y ago
It does not matter that the average grandma has no idea what that means. New products need early adopters, and the average grandma is not a potential early adopter, neither is the average grandpa or anyone average, really. Any argument, including being Open Source, is good to get early adopters. Communication can change later on. Too many products try to appeal to the general public too soon. This is not how user acquisition works.
- ljw1001 8y ago
  > It does not matter that the average grandma has no idea what that means. My 23 year old son and 18 year old daughter didn't know what open-source meant. If you could build a social network around tech people we'd all be using Google Plus.
  - catwell 8y ago
    You don't build a social network around tech, you bootstrap it with a community. Bootstrapping it with Open Source enthusiasts is fine. If you say "we're yet another social network" you have no value proposition. Not that I think that "we're yet another Open Source social network" is good either... Also, the fact that a grandma doesn't know what Open Source means doesn't really concern me, but the fact that the children of someone who posts on HN and works at Google don't, does. Maybe that's part of the reason why proprietary, centralized services are winning. Anyway, I do have concerns along the same line, not because "Open Source" is on the front page but because: - The team is not diverse enough in terms of experience. The COO is an "information-security expert"; the CMO is a "security and international relations expert"; the Chief of Product is a "pragmatic software engineer" and "crypto-geek". This is a problem, even though not necessarily deadly. - They plan to allocate 70 % of the budget to software engineering, and basically 0 % to marketing / user acquisition / community management. This is the biggest red flag for me.

phoe-krk 8y ago

Does it federate with other services? I have not seen anything mentioning this on the website and I consider it to be crucial for me backing the idea of this service. I don't want or need yet another centralized *book.

MzHN 8y ago
Based on the FAQ I'd say it will not be federated, at least not initially, and in the FAQ they explain why. In short, they think that's where other initiatives fall short, and they want to sidestep the issue completely, and come back to it once they're profitable.
- r3bl 8y ago
  I don't think that FAQ entry answers the question asked by the parent comment. They say that they don't want to decentralize the service (as in, everyone can run their own instance), and I can understand their stand on that. However, they say nothing about federation with other similar attempts that are popping up. Instead of "Will I be able to run my own instance?", think: Will I be able to follow an Openbook account from my Mastodon account?
  - rainbowmverse 8y ago
    This is something I didn't know I cared about until I followed Blender's PeerTube instance account from a Mastodon instance. Pixelfed is working on it, and Plume, and... It's something I've come to expect. If your hot new app doesn't federate, I don't care about it.

osrec 8y ago

The website caused my tab in Chrome on mobile to crash each time I tried to open it.

rascul 8y ago

Scrolling is choppy and slow on my phone. Haven't checked my laptop, though. But such screwed up scrolling means I'm not interested.

Uberphallus 8y ago
It was choppy on my beefy desktop on Firefox as well.
- davidhyde 8y ago
  Me too. All they needed to do was profile their webpage in modern browser to see the glaring performance problems. Doesn't bode well for a more complex piece of software like a social network.
  - privacygeek445 8y ago
    not sure why everyones complaining about performance, it seems to work fine on my macbook air. Plugins perhaps?
    - g-b-r 8y ago
      It might work fine but (the homepage) is most likely draining your battery. Have you looked at your cpu usage?

have_faith 8y ago

What's the monetisation model? edit: found this "We will have a transparent revenue model based on a generic way for people to securely transact physical and digital goods and services inside the network. This will be done through an atomic digital unit of value. Although this initially reflected as a marketplace, our ambitions go way beyond that. Apart from this, we’re also planning to help enterprise customers setting up their own internal, self-hosted and secure social networks with extra functionality such as projects, identity and access management."

quantumwoke 8y ago
Buzzword salad. Basically meaningless.
briandear 8y ago
I think your question still stands. ”Atomic digital unit of value?” Who writes this stuff?
- have_faith 8y ago
  If I didn't know I would have guessed it was an ICO for a new crypto.
  - g-b-r 8y ago
    They're raising money so as to put together an ICO?? That's a new height..
- g-b-r 8y ago
  Hardly one who has a definite plan and wants to make it known Hard to believe that Phil Zimmermann is on board. Assuming that's true...
leavenotracks 8y ago
ico??

AnabeeKnox 8y ago

A domain name with a - dash in it. This product fails at the very first step.

selectnull 8y ago
Of course, they should've gone with the "the" prefix and drop it later because it's cleaner.
catwell 8y ago
They address this in the Kickstarter FAQ. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1520156881/openbook-the-honest-open-source-and-awesome-social/faqs#project_faq_255412 https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1520156881/openbook-the...
- barking 8y ago
  They are going to buy openbook.com with the money they raise from kickstarter. Seems like a complete waste of money to me. Who types in a url any more?

TomMarius 8y ago

I have high end computer (i7-7700 with 32GB of empty RAM) with pretty good graphics card (GeForce GTX 1060)... and this site is lagging. I can't even scroll properly.

walty8 8y ago
Based on wappalyzer, webpack & jquery are used on the website. But no other framework (React, Vue, Ionic) is detected... So it's just jquery + webpack?
- TomMarius 8y ago
  Well, I'm not a part of the SPA hating crowd since my job is making fast SPAs. It's very easy to mess up (scroll) performance even without jQuery.
- g-b-r 8y ago
  I don't know what you're looking at, but for sure they're using vue. Most likely suspect is the typewriter animation, which ought to be done with https://github.com/tameemsafi/typewriterjs https://github.com/tameemsafi/typewriterjs (but maybe it's just how they used it - or maybe something entirely different, I just had a quick look).

edhelas 8y ago

Here we go, another Social Network engine :) Just following the NIH syndrome, once again. > OpenBook is OpenSource Yeah awesome. Like many other projects. Having the OpenSource stamp is not really an advantage anymore. Building and maintaining a community around it, with strong support and integration is something way more difficult to do. > On Openbook you will not only be able to personalise your profile, but the entire network itself! From changing the color of your homepage to adding plugins, you can make it as unique as yourself. So basically I can customize everything. On my instance? Is it federated/decentralized (doesn't seems so)? > We don’t track anything you do, neither monetize your information nor share it without your explicit and informed consent. Hopefully the GDPR has already cover all those things :) > All applications will be reviewed by us. We will make sure they: only request the needed information, have the exact location of your data available for you, at all times, delete all your information if you’d revoke the permission... GDPR > Some examples of the technology we'll be researching and developing: > Cryptographically enforced data sharing policies > End to end encryption, even on the browser > Public key cryptography on the browser > Post-quantum cryptography algorithms and protocols NIH syndrom, all those things are already covered by many other projects, why not reusing that? Also, "post-quantum" cryptography, looks like a nice buzzword thrown in there. > Migrating to Openbook will be easy-peasy, with our simple drag-and-drop system. Just download your data from your old social network1 and transfer them to Openbook. Shazam! Good luck with that. GDPR is indeed forcing social platforms to have a Data-Portability politic. Facebook is exporting the user content in HTML flat file with no proper identifiers or easy way to reconstruct the data structure. > ...we’re also planning to help enterprise customers setting up their own internal, self-hosted and secure social networks with extra functionality such as projects, identity and access management. So basically they are developing another centralized Social Network engine.

catwell 8y ago
I don't disagree with everything you said, but if this thing gets traction, this is the HN DropBox thread of the future :) ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863 )
- 8y ago

pasta 8y ago

Looks like there is something wrong with the site. Javascript crashes and nothing is visible.

omk 8y ago

If it's not federated, there is little control already. If the business models for centralized networks are not aggressive right now, nothing stop them from evolving once there's more money on the table. I wonder what folks here think about ActivityPub. I been craving for a federated protocol since Google Wave. I'm yet to go through it in detail and see if it really stands.

edhelas 8y ago
If you're looking for a real-time federated social-network (that is what I understood by "Google Wave") solution have a look at solutions based on the industry standard XMPP. I'm building one (Movim https://movim.eu/ https://movim.eu/) and started to explain how is made the architecture in this blog post https://nl.movim.eu/?blog/edhelas%40movim.eu/how-s-made-movim-part-i-the-architecture-CCA7If https://nl.movim.eu/?blog/edhelas%40movim.eu/how-s-made-movi....

laurent123456 8y ago

Not sure they have their priorities right. The last item in the list of goals (at $500,000, no less) are iOS and Android apps. I would think that should come first as without this very few people will want to use the service at all.

drchaos 8y ago
Why that? A decent mobile site should be fine, there are quite some people (including me) who even prefer this over apps.
naravara 8y ago
I am tired of Apps that really should just be websites. Unless you have some kind of real, functional need to access my phone's hardware or software I don't need you taking up space on my device. I'd much rather just save a book mark to my home screen and launch from there.

akuji1993 8y ago

Site is crashing and throws a million errors on the console.

hurtwed 8y ago

The splash page is hideously slow and stuttering even on desktop. Is the CSS/JS just this bad, or is this site trying to mine cryptocurrency in the background?

g-b-r 8y ago
I think it's that "typewriter" effect, probably some endless loop without any sleep. It doesn't help that javascript is required

yeleti 8y ago

A long long time ago (in 2010), Facebook sued a start-up called Teachbook for using 'book' in its name. Hope you don't get into that muddle. https://money.cnn.com/2010/08/26/technology/teachbook/ https://money.cnn.com/2010/08/26/technology/teachbook/

lioeters 8y ago
I hadn't heard about this. They've sued several companies whose names end with "book". Apparently a lawsuit coming from FB is scary enough that they've acquiesced and changed their names, without standing up in court. Replacebook!

rcar1046 8y ago

I'm not sure I can imagine any path to success here. Maybe focus on a small interest group or locale to begin with, then look to spread outward from there. A small college campus perhaps. ;) Still...this needs a hook other than the privacy angle, and a big one at that.

ssdspoimdsjvv 8y ago

A nearly empty webpage that lags like crazy is very bad promotion and makes me question whether they have the knowledge to create a high-traffic social network. Also, the quote of the founder: Openbook is not only an evolutionary step for social networks, it's also a humanitarian project at world scale. Makes me want to vomit. You're making a website, not feeding hungry children.

pavs 8y ago
From their website: >In partnership with FoundersPledge, we'll be giving 30% of our revenue towards projects for education, sanitization, climate change prevention and more.
- bko 8y ago
  From the FAQ on their page: >Who's paying for everything so far? > So far we have been completely self funded. However, this has proven to be very hard. With most of us working full-time jobs apart from Openbook, it could take us long time till we release the first version and even then, we would not be able to afford the IT infrastructure needed to compete with any of the established networks. As we wanted the project to be driven by people and not capital, we decided to go for crowd-funding. We'll be launching our Kickstarter campaign on the 17th of July. They don't appear to have a revenue model. I'm not sure if they consider donations from kickstarter revenue, but so far its their only source. I don't think passing on 30% of donations to FoundersPledge is really changing the world
  - pavs 8y ago
    They are talking about future revenue generation. Kickstarted is being used as a fundraiser. They are probably trying something similar to ghost blogging platform. Whether they are successful or not is to be seen, but I am not enjoying how some people are unnecessarily shitting on their effort.
  - leavenotracks 8y ago
    Can't even get to their FAQ page at the moment, no links on their homepage seem to be working.

_RedPanda 8y ago

I can't click on any links, am I doing something wrong? The only links that are working for me, are the ones on the right side of the page. Website looks like this for me: https://i.imgur.com/7OkVlUz.png https://i.imgur.com/7OkVlUz.png I am using Google Chrome on Windows 10

billabul 8y ago
the website is spitting js errors like crazy
hankhill 8y ago
Same here with Firefox on Linux.
Sekhmet 8y ago
Same on FF on Windows 10.
dezzeus 8y ago
Me too with Opera (Beta 54) on MacOS (10.13) :/
hutattedonmyarm 8y ago
Same with Vivaldi, FF, and Edge on Win 10. Works in Safari on Mojave though

logcat 8y ago

It is worth mentioning that protocol-based social networks exist. Like https://www.scuttlebutt.nz/ https://www.scuttlebutt.nz/

iaml 8y ago
Until they can work without installing additional app they will never be mainstream.
- logcat 8y ago
  Snapchat is counterexample
  - icebraining 8y ago
    Also Whatsapp.
wuliwong 8y ago
This is random, but I believe browser navigation is broken on sucttlebutt.nz (at least on chrome os-x).

starbugs 8y ago

First of all, kudos for trying this. So far I've only read comments that have a strong tendency towards the destructive or even pejorative end of the spectrum. I think that's unfair considering all the effort they are putting into this. Having said that, I'd like to know what distinguishes this from e.g. Facebook in the long term. It's easy to put out a manifesto and pledge that you are never going to do bad things. It's also easy to come up with a vague theoretical business model that doesn't really say how it will work. Let's assume they succeed with this – there is nothing that enforces these early statements anymore and soon investor pressure will lead to an outcome similar to the established success stories. That's why I think you have to be much more different if you really aim to make a difference at scale.

bko 8y ago
They're not just trying this. They're asking for money from regular folks with no real sustainable revenue model apart from "we're crowd-funding" [0]. People are free to donate as they like, but I think the whole pitch is not entirely honest. [0] https://www.open-book.org/en/faq https://www.open-book.org/en/faq
- class4behavior 8y ago
  You should read their FAQ on Kickstarter [1]. There they answer why their project is not federated, what revenue model they aim for, and why they aren't a non-profit. Here's their take on the business model: >Our business model is not and will never be advertisements. >We will have a transparent revenue model based on a generic way for people to securely transact physical and digital goods and services inside the network. This will be done through an atomic digital unit of value. Although this initially reflected as a marketplace, our ambitions go way beyond that. >Apart from this, we’re also planning to help enterprise customers setting up their own internal, self-hosted and secure social networks with extra functionality such as projects, identity and access management. [1]: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1520156881/openbook-the-honest-open-source-and-awesome-social/faqs https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1520156881/openbook-the...
  - 8y ago

juhq 8y ago

How do I sign up? Odd that a social network does not have registration form

eevilspock 8y ago
It's a kickstarter. i.e. it's being built. The minimal €1 contribution will give you "early access".

stockkid 8y ago

Interesting project. But when I try the website in Firefox on Anddroid or macOS, scroll is jagged and links & css animations are slow to respond.

lcnmrn 8y ago

I built two working, bug free social sites and yet nobody cares about them. At the end of the day someone else comes with a vaporware manifesto and takes the discussion away from actual products.

pweissbrod 8y ago
Hi I'd be curious to see what youve built. Can you supply links?
- prab97 8y ago
  I see two links in his HN bio.
  - reitanqild 8y ago
    Seems not everyone is aware so I'll just point it out: The bio can be found by clicking peoples username. From the bio you can also navigate to their comment history and also see what stories they have submitted.
    - jameskegel 8y ago
      If someone isn’t aware of this they are not my preferred peer.
      - reitanqild 8y ago
        The XKCD "Ten Thousand" might be interesting for some https://xkcd.com/1053/ https://xkcd.com/1053/
        deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
      - reitanqild 8y ago
        To add to my answer from yesterday: there is also no obvious way to see that usernames are links (at least for me, somewhat colorblind on a mobile device.)

drngdds 8y ago

Might be interesting if it was federated. Federation is AFAICT the only way to avoid network effects, which are why we're in this whole mess to begin with. (Many more people would have left Facebook after all the scandals if they could interact with their Facebook friends from another site.) There's no way of ensuring that Openbook wouldn't become as evil as Facebook once it had a big userbase.

discordianfish 8y ago

Today, everybody can build a social network. Apparently though building a social network that's actually used is quite hard and many failed. So I'd expect somebody who tries again to have some novel approach but it doesn't look like it. How does this compare to disapora or mastodon except the lack of federation? I really wish them to succeed since I'd like to see somebody breaking the facebook monopoly, yet I'm quite sure this won't end any different than disapora, mastadon, app.net and the several ones I can't even remember anymore. There is this common mistake of seeing these platforms as a technical challenge but in reality, unless you have a novel approach that people crave for, it's a lot of non-technical hustle.

rainbowmverse 8y ago
I can't speak for the others, but Mastodon hasn't ended. I use it every day and still meet lots of new people.

onyva 8y ago

I like it that there are attempts to change the status quo and not accept Facebook in our lives as a fact, and push back against the monetization of personal information. But shouldn’t this be backed up by an organization with some trackrecord in the domain of user's digital rights, free and open standards? EFF, FSF... join existing umbrella projects, even if not leveraging existing code... https://www.gnu.org/software/social... https://www.gnu.org/software/social...? Like someone else said here already, today everybody can build a social network. Btw they don’t seem to even own openbook.org ...

laurent123456 8y ago
It's a for-profit company so I doubt the EFF, etc. would want to back them. They might be open now, but as they grow and more and more investors own the company there's no reason to think they'll be any better than Facebook.
- rement 8y ago
  Take reddit for example. They used to release there code to the open but that is no longer true.

reacharavindh 8y ago

I'm actually fine that it is not de-centralized. It is true that federated systems are too complicated for practical use. However, to go against Facebook, we need something like Wikipedia, not Facebook by some other guy who pinky promises that he will be good. This right here kills it for me, and hopefully others too. "Why is Openbook not a non-profit? Making Openbook a for-profit was a hard choice to make. We love Wikipedia, the Ghost Foundation, Founders Pledge, Mozilla and many more. However we see the same struggle repeated over and over again. These companies struggle to grow beyond their profitability. These companies struggle to grow to the size and resources needed to compete with for-profit businesses. When we need to grow exponentially, we need to be able to raise the large amounts of money needed to do so. Therefore we are officially a for-profit company. But do note that when we do this, we will make sure the people investing in the company will be people with real interest on the platform, its core values of privacy, security, freedom, openness and its humanitarian nature." NO NO NO NO NO!!! Why do you have to exponentially grow to be useful. Be the right service, and growth comes by that virtue. People love Wikipedia for what it is, not because it "grows exponentially". You're just another guy with good motives until you succumb to investor pressure. I've been hoping for a Mozilla/Wikimedia like foundation to come up with a modern centralized alternative to Facebook, that just has it in their bylaws that prevents any creepy tracking from being implemented in the first place. As they say, "False pretence of security is worse than no security because it makes you let your guard down". Don't dilute the community driven foundations by profit driven projects like this, please.

koboll 8y ago
>People love Wikipedia for what it is, not because it "grows exponentially". That's because Wikipedia is not a social network. A social network is only worthwhile if it gains a critical mass of users such that there are enough friends on it (or sometimes, i.e. Twitter, enough interesting people on it) to make spending time there worthwhile. Massive growth is more important to the survival of a social network than to any other business model.
- class4behavior 8y ago
  >Massive growth is more important to the survival of a social network than to any other business model. Growth is. Massive growth is only relevant if you want to compete on the largest, global scale.

hankhill 8y ago

Firefox says "InternalError: too much recursion" and none of the links work on the front page of the site. Not sure what's going on but not a good start.

ommunist 8y ago

Can I import my FB data to Openbook?

wll 8y ago

«Making Openbook a for-profit was a hard choice to make. We check all the non-profits boxes and we love non-profits. We love Wikipedia, the Ghost Foundation, Founders Pledge, Mozilla and many more. However we see the same struggle repeated over and over again. These companies struggle to grow beyond their profitability. These companies struggle to grow to the size and resources needed to compete with for-profit businesses. When we need to grow exponentially, we need to be able to raise the large amounts of money needed to do so. Therefore we are officially a for-profit company. But do note that when we do this, we will make sure the people investing in the company will be people with real interest on the platform, its core values of privacy, security, freedom, openness and its humanitarian nature.» [0] As a for-profit corporation’s legal operational boundaries end at the financial interests of its shareholders, any corporation-defined “core value” may not and does not benefit from legal guarantees. While a benefit corporation [1] may allow to balance the interests of shareholders and stakeholders, any form equal to a UK company limited by guarantee with “limited” exemption [2] [Section 60, Section 62] binds, secures a corporation’s objects (or “core values”) to interest-free legal requirements. For trust to ensue and persist, any “for-benefit” alternative to existing for-profit corporation- or nation state-controlled platforms must state its “core values” as the controlling corporation’s objects. [0] https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1520156881/openbook-the-honest-open-source-and-awesome-social/faqs#project_faq_255412 https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1520156881/openbook-the... [1] http://benefitcorp.net/sites/default/files/Benefit_Corporation_White_Paper.pdf http://benefitcorp.net/sites/default/files/Benefit_Corporati... [2] http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2006/46/part/5/chapter/2/crossheading/required-indications-for-limited-companies http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2006/46/part/5/chapter/2...

throwawayqdhd 8y ago

Not knocking this effort, but why are all decentralized, open social networks that hope to compete against Facebook and Instagram so...dull? Their marketing is all the same wholesomeness and positive messaging. There's no "rebellious" streak to it at all. But wholesomeness didn't help Facebook, Snapchat and Instagram grow. Facebook was the "adults only" social network that required a .edu address when it was challenging MySpace. Snapchat was pretty much a sexting app. Instagram is basically semi-nude models in its search feed. I get what these people are trying to do, but you're not going to do that by being boring and corporate.

deleted 8y ago
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tomcooks 8y ago
I'd rather have a functioning, 'dull' project than an edgy 2kool4skool meme disappearing in a couple of months because the hipster userbase moved to the next cool socnet.
have_faith 8y ago
Diaspora tried being edgy, I don't think it helped them. They're still around thought as far as I know.

mgkimsal 8y ago

"drag and drop your old social media archive... import all your photos, videos, chats and more". Photos/videos I can sort of understand, but 'chats' - they're done with other people, none of whom would have been granting permission for their content to be migrated to openbook. Am I being too literal here, or is this a privacy violation being promised on day one?

tzfld 8y ago
they may refer when both users are registered and agreed with this, but it's not easy to do
wilsonnb2 8y ago
I don't think all parties of a chat need to consent for that information to be shared, aside from specific cases like doctor-patient and lawyer-client.

deleted 8y ago

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katakuchi 8y ago

Valiant effort, I don't understand why the community is responding so toxic. Rather than assuming that growth will lead to this social network becoming the next corrupted Facebook, why don't we focus on the unique aspects that make this open-sourced network worthwhile to begin with? Security - Privacy - Customisability - Compatibility with status quo. We can all agree that we lost faith in the monstrosity that Facebook has become, it doesn't mean that we can't place faith in other technology to produce a different outcome.

_bxg1 8y ago
The code being open-source accomplishes very little in this case. It's what they do with your data after they get it that matters. Data is the new oil, and if a for-profit company can get it, rest assured they will use or sell it.
- privacygeek445 8y ago
  I get where you're coming from but data is the new oil in conjunction with machine learning/ big data algorithms. Thats the true evil. that part at least will be transparent with the open-source model IMO
  - _bxg1 8y ago
    Once they have the data, they can do whatever they want with it. They can run it through closed-source ML, they can sell it to other companies. I suppose people would know if they meddled with the news feed order, but that's about it.
    - privacygeek445 8y ago
      Thats rather cynical... Sure!! The team of privacy and security activists backed by internet hall of fame member Phil Zimmerman who created PGP and fought the US govt are all actually closeted evil capitalists just out to get everyones data..
8y ago

_bxg1 8y ago

At this point I don't trust the sunny promises of any for-profit that wants me to give them my data. Data is the new oil. If an organization can get it and legally profit from it, be assured that they will.

Shank 8y ago

There's a lot of marketing on here about honesty, fun, and being personal. That being said, none of these attributes are being applied to the social network part of the social network. In their current form, they're just buzzwords about the project. For once, I'd like to see a project use these words in a meaningful way. Build a manifesto that isn't just "we are building a platform." Focus on actual social interactions and social behaviors that the platform should have. Build something that actually encourages honesty, openness, and fun posts over lying, fake personalities, and cynicism. Normal users don't see benefits in switching away from Facebook to an equivalent platform with more honest caretakers. That's the sad reality of it. But if a social network pledged to only allow posts that are positive about things, or actively banned people for spreading lies, that would be totally different. It's an execution thing -- people would need to see policy in action -- but if pulled off, it would result in a fundamentally different and easily comparable platform to Facebook.

taylorswift_ 8y ago
What kinds of social interactions or behaviors would encourage honesty, openness etc? While I commend their enthusiasm, I don't think the audience they (or any large social network) needs cares a lick about privacy, openness, honesty, or goodwill. If they did then Facebook & Instagram wouldn't have 1+ Billion Users, not to mention Twitter, Reddit, Twitch, Baidu etc etc. People want to engage with a product that is interesting and suits their social/personal needs more than anything else. While I agree with most of what you said, "But if a social network pledged to only allow posts that are positive about things, or actively banned people for spreading lies, that would be totally different. ", I disagree with this line. Heard of Imzy? Who is the police for stopping the spread of "lies"? I take a more Libertarian stance and think we need the opposite and rather less censorship, less thought policing, less handholding, but within a context of a set of rules.

dielan 8y ago

For profit and centeralized. Hard pass. Is this the next Ello?

overcast 8y ago

I don't get it. Who is asking for another Facebook? Except for a few vocal minority carrying on over privacy and decentralization, none of which will even bother. The rest of the world doesn't care, Facebook is there for them already. When everyone inevitably tires of it, they'll move to a new idea, not another clone. Facebook knows this, that's why they continue purchasing upcoming services like Instagram.

Reedx 8y ago

> helping make the world a better place. It's hard to take anyone seriously who uses that phrase... Especially in this sort of context. That's been a joke for a long time now, everyone knows it's nonsense.

codeafin 8y ago
Same with > Good for the planet It all almost looks ironically done.

wuliwong 8y ago

I was thinking about making an open source social-network just this morning. I'm all about "for profit" in general but as has been echoed a bunch in the comments already, a lot of corporations start off on a good trajectory but ultimately wind up in a place we don't like. I don't want to stoke any political flames, so I'll just leave it at that. :) The reasons I would like to see a project like this succeed would be to have a network that better protects privacy and has very transparent censorship. I'm not super well versed in open source and non-profit but my current thinking is that making an organization of similar style to wikipedia would be the best strategy. Open source the code, own the hardware and raise money through donations. Do you think I'm missing something or would this be the best strategy? Also, is there already a project(s) like this?

Proven 8y ago

Wants to fund climatism with revenue made from me using their product. That's 10 times worse than staying with FB. Like giving your money to the government.

newscracker 8y ago

If it's not ad supported, how do they plan to keep the lights on once the Kickstarter funding gets exhausted and when they don't get any institutional funding? Somehow the following paragraph form the manifesto doesn't sound very convincing (it sounds like some messaging services that have said that they'll make money selling stickers): > "We will have a transparent revenue model based on a generic way for people to securely transact physical and digital goods and services inside the network. This will be done through an atomic digital unit of value. Although this initially reflected as a marketplace, our ambitions go way beyond that. > Apart from this, we’re also planning to help enterprise customers setting up their own internal, self-hosted and secure social networks with extra functionality such as projects, identity and access management." This should also be listed in the FAQ.

godelski 8y ago

This site made my fan spin up like crazy (FF61). Happen to anyone else? (reproducible on my end)

shiburizu 8y ago

While it's easy to point out at moral level that nothing is guaranteed that if this sort of project gets big it cannot just run off with investor money to go off on Zuckerberg hijinks which has no good reason to even exist at this point -- the notion that it is "too difficult" to implement federated social networking is not going to sway me away from my advocacy of it. The most important identity system in the world -- the one that even the biggest websites in the world want you to identify yourself with is definitely your email. The protocols underlying your email are my vision for social networking: A common format that accurately sends a message to feature-complete implementations. There's really not any reason we can't have your federated social media be your email replacement barring that the W3C standard doesn't call for any sort of secure mailbox (Mastodon doesn't have REAL "private messages") but it's still a damn good solution to the problem of trying to work in the social media space: you need users. What if the users are already there? Perhaps as the APub standard and implementations grow we can see them become standardized to the sort of SSO that we are used to when we "connect with Facebook/Twitter" but another closed-loop timeline-based for-profit social media won't ever have my attention because there's not a market. Unless it's Vine.