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The thing I keep thinking is that I want to have social software built on a co-operative model (like a food co-op): you all pay some nominal membership fee (cou

The thing I keep thinking is that I want to have social software built on a co-operative model (like a food co-op): you all pay some nominal membership fee (could you fund servers and developers on $5/year/user?), and the software would then be developed to fit the agreed-upon needs of the community, without dark patterns or behavior modification projects, openly, and with some kind of community governance (which need not be exclusive of technical leadership). Obviously this would probably never get the global reach of a no-fee Facebook, but I would use something like this in a second, many of my friends would too, and I sometimes daydream about what I would need to do to get it off the ground.

decasia 8y ago
My thought about the article is that basically the author has gotten too negative. He is so distracted with attacking the ad-supported social software we have that he gave up thinking about the software we need.
- binarnosp 8y ago
  We don't need software to socialize. Some tasks of our life can be taken over by software, but others should stay with us. Especially with the advent of AI, engineers are racing to automate everything: from suggesting us new friends, new music, with which dresses we look smart, and so on. Automating everything will cause the atrophying of our skills and we will become a bunch of lonely depressed, smartly dressed users with thousands of virtual friends and perfect music playlists that never deviate from our preferred music. Automation is fine and dandy, but not for everything.
  - caymanjim 8y ago
    Your response is literally a use of software to socialize. Of course we don't "need" it, but that's a meaningless statement. We don't need computers or electricity either. The idea that we're all being duped and manipulated into using something we don't need so that we'll view ads is overblown. It's not false, it's just not a new thing and it's not a problem. Media has been intertwined with market research, ratings, feedback, and advertising since before the electronic age. Advertising platforms have been getting incrementally better at learning what people want, how to push their psychological buttons, and how to retain customers. There's a tendency to treat social media users as helpless victims of an evil empire who don't realize their personal details are being used to target them for exploitation. People aren't that stupid. They know what they're trading for these great free products we all use.
    - FabHK 8y ago
      The fact that ads and news (!) are individually targeted is new, and I'd consider it a huge threat. Decades ago, some news and shows were watched by everyone. There was still plenty of variety to go off in individual directions, but there was a common ground. That is being threatened. > People aren't that stupid. They know what they're trading for these great free products we all use. Maybe for most HN readers, but I don't think that is the case for most users.
    - bizkitgto 8y ago
      > People aren't that stupid. They know what they're trading for these great free products we all use. I would say the average user has no idea what exactly they are trading for.
  - TeMPOraL 8y ago
    To some extent yes, but then again, social media is public billboard meets address book. There's nothing in there that fundamentally shouldn't be automated, it's just the sum of those parts that enable a new dimension in social interaction. Also: we don't need software for most things in life. But we like software, as it usually makes things better.
    - bizkitgto 8y ago
      Is software making us better or lazy?
      - TeMPOraL 8y ago
        Is it laziness, or efficient use of time, which could be put to a more productive use? It's a tricky question.
- CaptainZapp 8y ago
  He's one of two really relevant critical thinkers on tech and is critical of some of the aspects since literally decades. The other, arguably, being Evgeny Morozov (for a shorter time). Lanier certainly has the chops, the background and the deliverables to be taken seriously. I think those guys are super important as a counterweight to the fawning and gushing (in general) tech press and I for one wish that they have far more reach, impact and influence.
  - tangental 8y ago
    There is another critical thinker I recently came across - Adam Greenfield - much better then Morozov IMO. Have a look at his latest book: Radical Technologies: The Design of Everyday Life https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30724899-radical-technologies https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30724899-radical-technol...
  - jonjacky 8y ago
    I would add Maciej Ceglowski http://idlewords.com/talks/ http://idlewords.com/talks/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maciej_Ceg%C5%82owski https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maciej_Ceg%C5%82owski
- bizkitgto 8y ago
  We don't need social media...or software to live happy lives.
icebraining 8y ago
I think that was the goal of App.net. It shut down last year.
- decasia 8y ago
  A cautionary tale for sure. My thought is that something new would need to not replicate the UX of existing social software, but would need to think of better alternatives. Competing with existing giants on their own terms, but with a different business model, is a hard sell, probably too hard.
- reitanqild 8y ago
  I had to look that up. I thought that app.net (despite the name) was a twitter clone except that you could write somewhat bigger messages and had to pay for it. Searched for it on ddg and here is what the excerpt from Wikipedia says: "App.net was an ad-free online social networking service and microblogging service which enabled its users to write messages of up to 256 characters." Turns out that they did a lot of stuff later that I would have liked but by then I was probably using WhatsApp.
coffeefirst 8y ago
Global reach has also given us a global misinformation and harassment crisis that nobody has figured out how to manage effectively. We'd probably be better off if we moved the good parts to smaller platforms.
- maze-le 8y ago
  Misinformation and harassment also exists on smaller platforms, it is a matter how to deal with it. Smaller platforms usually have a more tightly bound user-group and moderation, so it is detected and prevented earlier. But this also means that someone you trust in the group needs to be the moderator or have certain privileges. So, effectively it is more work per user to manage smaller groups than larger ones -- which is fine, if you find people who want to do this task. Another approach might be a community driven model -- where detractors could be ostracized. For very small groups this might work out well, but as the group gets larger, the potential for misuse rises also.
NeedMoreTea 8y ago
Before everyone had to be on Facebook, a few friends and relatives used a hidden forum on someone's spare domain, and it worked really nicely. A co-op social network sounds an interesting idea. Doubly so if it gave only the sort of features early Facebook had - i.e. the ones useful to the users, before it became about the algorithm, engagement and so on. Wouldn't be surprised if there's something along those lines on github. It would be really nice to have some choices that actively reject the "users are data cattle" model, even if it goes back to the BBS world of lots of little, barely connected, islands.
- leephillips 8y ago
  I'm not on Facebook. I know plenty of other adults who don't have an account. My daughter tells me that the young folks have completely abandoned it, a good while ago.
  - znpy 8y ago
    Indeed, and I quite understand this: once relatives (parents and grandparents) joined the Facebook bandwagon, the fun was over. What once was some youngsters'-inner-circle has become the new sons-and-daughters-surveillance service. And as with all the forms of surveillance, kids are escaping it.
    - leephillips 8y ago
      A good guess, but that's not the reason. She and many in her group use Snapchat and Instagram (if I have those names right - I've never even opened a page, if they have pages, on one of these services) knowing that at least a handful of parents established accounts specifically to keep an eye on things. They don't care. They even happily interact with the parents on the platforms. They just don't like Facebook. When they want to have (what they think are) private conversations they use WhatsApp, etc.
    - wyclif 8y ago
      Parental or familial surveillance isn't the reason at all. I'm in SE Asia right now, in a country where Facebook Zero makes it available to everyone regardless of income, and guess what? Not only does everybody have a Facebook account, many women have at least three: one for friends, one for family, and one that is anonymous to hide their activity from their friends and family. I know it's against Facebook's TOS, but it's so easy to create a pseudonymous username. So it's the same for American teenage kids: they just create a new account with a fake name. If they are abandoning Facebook it's because they like Instagram or Snapchat more, not because their parents are on Facebook.
zaarn 8y ago
I personally favor the federated model. In there, you can have some communities that run co-op and some that are free to use. It also makes the ecosystem more open compared to centrally managed software, even if it's transparent and without dark patterns. (Plus, how do you police it if you're talking about a company that is well versed in the art of 'taking it over the line by 1 inch per year')
- decasia 8y ago
  Federated communities would be neat and basically are how the "real world" already interconnects, socially speaking. I don't think that's exclusive of what I had in mind. But you have to actually have the communities before you can do the federation (this is also how it works in the offline world — it's not like people design interoperability protocols and THEN found villages).
  - hannasanarion 8y ago
    So what you're saying is, we should try to convince the existing villages (Facebook, reddit, Twitter) to adopt interoperability protocols?
    - decasia 8y ago
      Ha no, of course I think that is impossible. It's more like: we could build nicer, community-funded, sanely run social software, and alongside them we could support XMPP type features for hackers who are able to use them, or to interoperate with other alternative online communities that may be emerging.
    - zaarn 8y ago
      Nah, I would favor a pitchfork-and-torches approach to Facebook and Twitter, the entire company behind it is so unlikely to change that a radical rebuild is required.
edhelas 8y ago
In some extends this is what the Movim project (https://movim.eu/ https://movim.eu/) is building for several years now. A light solution that you can deploy on a server and that handle the communication of a small community (10 to a few hundreds people). The good thing is that it relies on XMPP for all the communication, therefore all the instances are still connected to each others allowing communication between all the users of the network and with all the existing XMPP applications. It offers social features (publications, blog, comments), chat (chatrooms, stickers...) and video-conferencing. P.S. I'm one of the contributor of the project.
- decasia 8y ago
  This looks excellent, I'm really glad to see this out there and will explore!
darkerside 8y ago
I'm not a big government advocate, generally speaking, but enacting this at a federal level, would be akin to a modern day postal service. Social media communication without the bells and whistles--or the obsession with engagement. I'd be all for it.
- decasia 8y ago
  Not sure why you're getting downvoted. I don't think it's likely that government-provided social software would work all that well in the contemporary USA (unless they built it with better security and privacy than they have ever wanted to see in the private sector), but the government can be seen as a version of cooperative funding and it's certainly worth thinking about. I would like it if my local government funded an alternative to Nextdoor, for instance.
  - amanaplanacanal 8y ago
    I think the bigger problem in the US would be how to deal with free-speech issues. It either has to be moderated (sorry, no free speech here!) or it will be overrun by trolls, spammers, and other evils.
    - darkerside 8y ago
      That's a great point. No need for moderation through postal mail because it's all 1-to-1 communication. OTOH, all broadcast media is heavily moderated today.
      - template3 8y ago
        Lol postal mail has a long history of moderation. A lot of first amendment case law with respect to obscenity and fraud comes from postal cases.
        darkerside 8y ago
        Do you have some examples of what you're talking about?
Maximus9000 8y ago
> $5/year/user I think facebook has each user valued at about $200USD/year. A 2016 article from the Guardian puts it at $60/year... so I'm not sure which number to believe. https://www.kqed.org/news/11661387/heres-how-much-you-are-worth-to-facebook-in-dollars-and-cents https://www.kqed.org/news/11661387/heres-how-much-you-are-wo... https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jan/28/how-much-are-you-worth-to-facebook https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jan/28/how-much-...
- dwighttk 8y ago
  That's revenue though, right? Parent was asking about cost. This network would have no ad revenue.
  - decasia 8y ago
    Yeah, from the perspective of starting something cooperatively funded from scratch, I think it's basically about "what would it cost to get something running and keep it worth using," balanced against "what would people actually be willing to pay?" In my dreams, if the price point were low enough, like "the cost of two coffees per year" or something, and it wasn't irritating to pay it, there are plenty of people who want out of FB and could afford that.
    - WrtCdEvrydy 8y ago
      The issue isn't often the cost but payment friction. When I started using privacy.com, I found it a lot easier to fund stuff because it was frictionless to generate a CC and drop it into a payment form automatically.
- CaptainZapp 8y ago
  I think it depends on geopgraphy. North American and European users are worth a lot more than users in developing countries.
- ams6110 8y ago
  At the same time, how many Facebook users would pay even $1/month to use the platform? I bet less than half.
JepZ 8y ago
Well, while I dream the same dream, it feels awkward asking my family and friends to pay 5€ per year so that we can share the cost of running our XMPP-Server. Currently, I pay all the bills and manage the server myself (so no cost/effort for them), and they still keep using WhatsApp with most of their contacts. I don't know what the root of that evil is, but there are undoubtedly multiple factors involved. First of all, most people have WhatsApp already. Secondly, it is effortless to use. With federated systems, you always have to choose a provider. Once you have overcome that hurdle, the privacy-sensitive people like us do not want to share their address book with the server so finding your people is a manual setup for everyone (another hurdle). Last but not least, the client landscape of XMPP is still far from perfect. If you want to use end-to-end encryption (e.g., OMEMO) there are finally some clients which work with each other (Android: Conversations, iOS: ChatSecure, Desktop: Gajim), but configuring all that stuff (Server + Clients), is not as easy as pushing a button. Other features like video calls are still very fragmented and rarely work if different clients are involved. I think it would take ten dedicated developers about a year to fix all those problems (if they would agree on common goals and focus on those) and even after that, we would still have to sell the product.
- decasia 8y ago
  I don't know if I would build something from scratch that was based on XMPP or even on the idea of messaging. I keep thinking that the Twitter/FB/chat models of socializing is a very limited form of online sociability and that we could do better. I think it would be better to build something that was sufficiently compelling and had enough new features/UX that people would want to use it all on its own, as something better than the existing ad-supported options, and then we would enable federated options as an alternative form of access. But I think the primary UX has to be "log in to web app" or "install mobile clients," not "fiddle with XMPP settings" (because that is too fiddly, like you're saying, and you have to meet people where they are). This being said — it's excellent that you run your own server and managed to get some of your social network to actually use it!
  - Leace 8y ago
    I think the parent referred to fiddling with OMEMO fingerprints, that a) is automated in "good clients" (Conversations) b) can't be easy and paranoid-secure at the same time. I also run XMPP server for friends and family and actually all of them are very happy with it. With Conversations this entire experience looks like any other modern messenger. Network effects are of course a problem in any decentralized environments but looking at how quickly companies drop their solutions (Google?) or abuse the data you give them (Facebook?) I don't see any other reasonable option. Today Signal is nice and kind, tomorrow they are bought by Facebook and start "fiddling" with the app...
mackrevinack 8y ago
if the SafeNetwork ever gets released we could easily have things like that. with monetisation being built in it will be fairly frictionless for poeple to pay or for an app or service to take a micropayment any time you use it. so if getting more users means getting more money, then the focus could be just on making the best service possible instead of focusing on ads and tracking to keep things running
pdog 8y ago
Why charge users at all? Social software could be funded entirely by voluntary donations or a small foundation.
- decasia 8y ago
  It's a good question. I guess I would say that in my limited experience, co-operatives that fund by providing products and services (food, housing) seem to accumulate less organizational bloat and overhead, because their continued funding is directly coupled to providing a good user experience. But in foundations and donation-based nonprofits, what you see is that they become organizationally focused on chasing donations, they have more and more irritating "please donate to us" fundraising staff, they may have to bend their mission towards whatever can please the local philanthropists, and they sometimes end up seeming more worried about organizational survival (via procuring money) than with whatever their mission is supposed to be. Another way of putting this is that it seems pretty hard to make voluntary donations provide stability, and organizations like stability. I'm open to having my mind changed about this, but it seems to me that it creates some major new organizational failure modes when you decouple the mission from the source of revenue.
- Jaruzel 8y ago
  Based on how often Wikipedia runs banners asking for donations, I'm not sure the 'voluntary donation' model actually works. The plain truth of it is that most people[1] want their internet fix for free, and are prepared to expose all manner of personal information in order for it to STAY free. The moment Facebook actually starts charging for features, people will start to jump ship en-mass to the next free social platform. --- [1] Us lot on HN are not 'most people'.
  - detaro 8y ago
    Wikipedia has and spends a lot of money though. 250+ employees, $50+ million yearly expenses, $10+ million yearly profits. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation#Financial_summary https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation#Financial...
  - 8y ago
tomjen3 8y ago
If you could get the users together that model could work, but you still run into the winner takes all problem with social networks: nobody likes Facebook, but that is where all your friends are. Of course, for some communities the value is that all your friends aren't there, but in general even if I was willing to pay for that service (and it would probably have to be 5 usd/month, not per year due to scale) most of the people I know wouldn't be willing to pay that and so the idea is DOA. It is however quite possible that model would work for other types of software -- after all that model was exactly what Danish farmers used to fund the companies that could process their milk.
pjc50 8y ago
Twenty years ago I was involved in founding something similar, the SRCF: https://www.srcf.net/faq/about#why https://www.srcf.net/faq/about#why The intention was to provide hosting for web pages relating to university societies, with good facilities for transfer of ownership (since there was annual turnover of the society administrators). Nowadays this role would be filled by Facebook pages, but the SRCF is still there and still useful. I believe if you want to get the co-op model off the ground you have to start with a particular user community that you're a member of. Then you can start scaling it to other communities. But crucially this process must be lead by thinking of the user community and their needs, not the technology - the technology is secondary and you can always tape together a solution somehow. (We "nearly" came up with Facebook, called people.ucam.org, but we weren't even the only people in the university looking at the question of "how to stay in touch with your friends after graduating"; it was a common problem of the time) Another example of a community-driven content hosting site / social network is "Archive of our own": AO3, for fanfic (often NSFW)
dvfjsdhgfv 8y ago
People are already doing that. For example one of the communities I'm involved in is using HumHub on a VPS. It's supercheap, something like 5€/month, so the per-person cost is almost nil. Nobody objects to paying for hosting and the platform itself is a pleasure to use - maybe because you can relax and know you're in a good company, and there's nobody to manipulate you.
- hmhrex 8y ago
  I like this idea. I might just try it with my family.
snikeris 8y ago
This reminds me of The WELL: https://www.well.com/ https://www.well.com/
- rsync 8y ago
  Actually, I have noticed recently that several online communities are approximating what I used to think of as a "BBS". I think, specifically, of the lesswrong site and the collection of tools and user-created content that are collected under a single site there.
- MisterOctober 8y ago
  ^ brings back some memories. The WELL was the first social-internet thing I ever heard of -- in a TIME magazine cover story on, I kid you not, 'Cyberpunk' -- circa 1993ish
rsync 8y ago
"The thing I keep thinking is that I want to have social software built on a co-operative model (like a food co-op): you all pay some nominal membership fee (could you fund servers and developers on $5/year/user?), and the software would then be developed to fit the agreed-upon needs of the community" No fees, no development needed, lightweight and has been working for decades: A listserv. Everything else is just candy.
- warkdarrior 8y ago
  Candy is what attracts and keeps people on Facebook, instead of using a listserv.
- tomcooks 8y ago
  People want candy though
styfle 8y ago
I think some mastodon[0] servers are run this way: users pay a small portion to cover hosting costs and there is usually some topic that brings that server/community together. However, you are not limited to a single mastodon community because they are federated (similar to email where gmail users can communicate with hotmail users). [0]: https://github.com/tootsuite/mastodon https://github.com/tootsuite/mastodon
MaxBarraclough 8y ago
You need to address the question of federation. If you have a thousand unconnected small networks, you're going to be unable to compete with worldwide networks.
lucideer 8y ago
This is different, but with some minor modifications this sounds a lot like Scuttlebutt. Have you tried Patchwork? > you all pay some nominal membership fee (could you fund servers and developers on $5/year/user?) People individually run "pubs", which are servers (with hosting costs), but every user also acts as a potential server, caching and proxying encrypted communications on behalf of other users, which acts as a sort of "cost", though it's not directly monetary. > software would then be developed to fit the agreed-upon needs of the community, without dark patterns or behavior modification projects, openly, and with some kind of community governance Apart from the central protocol, niche needs are met by various clients—e.g. there is a dedicated chess client for users who just want to play chess over the social network. > need not be exclusive of technical leadership While the SSBC is in no way dictatorial and even often jokey, I think their clients demonstrate exceptional technical leadership. The strategy of having a protocol with many clients usually leads to having many disparate clients of low quality. On the contrary, most users use Patchwork, the main stable SSBC-maintained client; it's the most "Facebook-ish" of the clients and is very intuitive.
frio 8y ago
https://social.coop/about https://social.coop/about is just that :). Although I see they've killed their front page and closed registrations for a while.

decasia 8y ago

My thought about the article is that basically the author has gotten too negative. He is so distracted with attacking the ad-supported social software we have that he gave up thinking about the software we need.

binarnosp 8y ago
We don't need software to socialize. Some tasks of our life can be taken over by software, but others should stay with us. Especially with the advent of AI, engineers are racing to automate everything: from suggesting us new friends, new music, with which dresses we look smart, and so on. Automating everything will cause the atrophying of our skills and we will become a bunch of lonely depressed, smartly dressed users with thousands of virtual friends and perfect music playlists that never deviate from our preferred music. Automation is fine and dandy, but not for everything.
- caymanjim 8y ago
  Your response is literally a use of software to socialize. Of course we don't "need" it, but that's a meaningless statement. We don't need computers or electricity either. The idea that we're all being duped and manipulated into using something we don't need so that we'll view ads is overblown. It's not false, it's just not a new thing and it's not a problem. Media has been intertwined with market research, ratings, feedback, and advertising since before the electronic age. Advertising platforms have been getting incrementally better at learning what people want, how to push their psychological buttons, and how to retain customers. There's a tendency to treat social media users as helpless victims of an evil empire who don't realize their personal details are being used to target them for exploitation. People aren't that stupid. They know what they're trading for these great free products we all use.
  - FabHK 8y ago
    The fact that ads and news (!) are individually targeted is new, and I'd consider it a huge threat. Decades ago, some news and shows were watched by everyone. There was still plenty of variety to go off in individual directions, but there was a common ground. That is being threatened. > People aren't that stupid. They know what they're trading for these great free products we all use. Maybe for most HN readers, but I don't think that is the case for most users.
  - bizkitgto 8y ago
    > People aren't that stupid. They know what they're trading for these great free products we all use. I would say the average user has no idea what exactly they are trading for.
- TeMPOraL 8y ago
  To some extent yes, but then again, social media is public billboard meets address book. There's nothing in there that fundamentally shouldn't be automated, it's just the sum of those parts that enable a new dimension in social interaction. Also: we don't need software for most things in life. But we like software, as it usually makes things better.
  - bizkitgto 8y ago
    Is software making us better or lazy?
    - TeMPOraL 8y ago
      Is it laziness, or efficient use of time, which could be put to a more productive use? It's a tricky question.
CaptainZapp 8y ago
He's one of two really relevant critical thinkers on tech and is critical of some of the aspects since literally decades. The other, arguably, being Evgeny Morozov (for a shorter time). Lanier certainly has the chops, the background and the deliverables to be taken seriously. I think those guys are super important as a counterweight to the fawning and gushing (in general) tech press and I for one wish that they have far more reach, impact and influence.
- tangental 8y ago
  There is another critical thinker I recently came across - Adam Greenfield - much better then Morozov IMO. Have a look at his latest book: Radical Technologies: The Design of Everyday Life https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30724899-radical-technologies https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30724899-radical-technol...
- jonjacky 8y ago
  I would add Maciej Ceglowski http://idlewords.com/talks/ http://idlewords.com/talks/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maciej_Ceg%C5%82owski https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maciej_Ceg%C5%82owski
bizkitgto 8y ago
We don't need social media...or software to live happy lives.

icebraining 8y ago

I think that was the goal of App.net. It shut down last year.

decasia 8y ago
A cautionary tale for sure. My thought is that something new would need to not replicate the UX of existing social software, but would need to think of better alternatives. Competing with existing giants on their own terms, but with a different business model, is a hard sell, probably too hard.
reitanqild 8y ago
I had to look that up. I thought that app.net (despite the name) was a twitter clone except that you could write somewhat bigger messages and had to pay for it. Searched for it on ddg and here is what the excerpt from Wikipedia says: "App.net was an ad-free online social networking service and microblogging service which enabled its users to write messages of up to 256 characters." Turns out that they did a lot of stuff later that I would have liked but by then I was probably using WhatsApp.

coffeefirst 8y ago

Global reach has also given us a global misinformation and harassment crisis that nobody has figured out how to manage effectively. We'd probably be better off if we moved the good parts to smaller platforms.

maze-le 8y ago
Misinformation and harassment also exists on smaller platforms, it is a matter how to deal with it. Smaller platforms usually have a more tightly bound user-group and moderation, so it is detected and prevented earlier. But this also means that someone you trust in the group needs to be the moderator or have certain privileges. So, effectively it is more work per user to manage smaller groups than larger ones -- which is fine, if you find people who want to do this task. Another approach might be a community driven model -- where detractors could be ostracized. For very small groups this might work out well, but as the group gets larger, the potential for misuse rises also.

NeedMoreTea 8y ago

Before everyone had to be on Facebook, a few friends and relatives used a hidden forum on someone's spare domain, and it worked really nicely. A co-op social network sounds an interesting idea. Doubly so if it gave only the sort of features early Facebook had - i.e. the ones useful to the users, before it became about the algorithm, engagement and so on. Wouldn't be surprised if there's something along those lines on github. It would be really nice to have some choices that actively reject the "users are data cattle" model, even if it goes back to the BBS world of lots of little, barely connected, islands.

leephillips 8y ago
I'm not on Facebook. I know plenty of other adults who don't have an account. My daughter tells me that the young folks have completely abandoned it, a good while ago.
- znpy 8y ago
  Indeed, and I quite understand this: once relatives (parents and grandparents) joined the Facebook bandwagon, the fun was over. What once was some youngsters'-inner-circle has become the new sons-and-daughters-surveillance service. And as with all the forms of surveillance, kids are escaping it.
  - leephillips 8y ago
    A good guess, but that's not the reason. She and many in her group use Snapchat and Instagram (if I have those names right - I've never even opened a page, if they have pages, on one of these services) knowing that at least a handful of parents established accounts specifically to keep an eye on things. They don't care. They even happily interact with the parents on the platforms. They just don't like Facebook. When they want to have (what they think are) private conversations they use WhatsApp, etc.
  - wyclif 8y ago
    Parental or familial surveillance isn't the reason at all. I'm in SE Asia right now, in a country where Facebook Zero makes it available to everyone regardless of income, and guess what? Not only does everybody have a Facebook account, many women have at least three: one for friends, one for family, and one that is anonymous to hide their activity from their friends and family. I know it's against Facebook's TOS, but it's so easy to create a pseudonymous username. So it's the same for American teenage kids: they just create a new account with a fake name. If they are abandoning Facebook it's because they like Instagram or Snapchat more, not because their parents are on Facebook.

zaarn 8y ago

I personally favor the federated model. In there, you can have some communities that run co-op and some that are free to use. It also makes the ecosystem more open compared to centrally managed software, even if it's transparent and without dark patterns. (Plus, how do you police it if you're talking about a company that is well versed in the art of 'taking it over the line by 1 inch per year')

decasia 8y ago
Federated communities would be neat and basically are how the "real world" already interconnects, socially speaking. I don't think that's exclusive of what I had in mind. But you have to actually have the communities before you can do the federation (this is also how it works in the offline world — it's not like people design interoperability protocols and THEN found villages).
- hannasanarion 8y ago
  So what you're saying is, we should try to convince the existing villages (Facebook, reddit, Twitter) to adopt interoperability protocols?
  - decasia 8y ago
    Ha no, of course I think that is impossible. It's more like: we could build nicer, community-funded, sanely run social software, and alongside them we could support XMPP type features for hackers who are able to use them, or to interoperate with other alternative online communities that may be emerging.
  - zaarn 8y ago
    Nah, I would favor a pitchfork-and-torches approach to Facebook and Twitter, the entire company behind it is so unlikely to change that a radical rebuild is required.

edhelas 8y ago

In some extends this is what the Movim project (https://movim.eu/ https://movim.eu/) is building for several years now. A light solution that you can deploy on a server and that handle the communication of a small community (10 to a few hundreds people). The good thing is that it relies on XMPP for all the communication, therefore all the instances are still connected to each others allowing communication between all the users of the network and with all the existing XMPP applications. It offers social features (publications, blog, comments), chat (chatrooms, stickers...) and video-conferencing. P.S. I'm one of the contributor of the project.

decasia 8y ago
This looks excellent, I'm really glad to see this out there and will explore!

darkerside 8y ago

I'm not a big government advocate, generally speaking, but enacting this at a federal level, would be akin to a modern day postal service. Social media communication without the bells and whistles--or the obsession with engagement. I'd be all for it.

decasia 8y ago
Not sure why you're getting downvoted. I don't think it's likely that government-provided social software would work all that well in the contemporary USA (unless they built it with better security and privacy than they have ever wanted to see in the private sector), but the government can be seen as a version of cooperative funding and it's certainly worth thinking about. I would like it if my local government funded an alternative to Nextdoor, for instance.
- amanaplanacanal 8y ago
  I think the bigger problem in the US would be how to deal with free-speech issues. It either has to be moderated (sorry, no free speech here!) or it will be overrun by trolls, spammers, and other evils.
  - darkerside 8y ago
    That's a great point. No need for moderation through postal mail because it's all 1-to-1 communication. OTOH, all broadcast media is heavily moderated today.
    - template3 8y ago
      Lol postal mail has a long history of moderation. A lot of first amendment case law with respect to obscenity and fraud comes from postal cases.
      - darkerside 8y ago
        Do you have some examples of what you're talking about?

Maximus9000 8y ago

> $5/year/user I think facebook has each user valued at about $200USD/year. A 2016 article from the Guardian puts it at $60/year... so I'm not sure which number to believe. https://www.kqed.org/news/11661387/heres-how-much-you-are-worth-to-facebook-in-dollars-and-cents https://www.kqed.org/news/11661387/heres-how-much-you-are-wo... https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jan/28/how-much-are-you-worth-to-facebook https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jan/28/how-much-...

dwighttk 8y ago
That's revenue though, right? Parent was asking about cost. This network would have no ad revenue.
- decasia 8y ago
  Yeah, from the perspective of starting something cooperatively funded from scratch, I think it's basically about "what would it cost to get something running and keep it worth using," balanced against "what would people actually be willing to pay?" In my dreams, if the price point were low enough, like "the cost of two coffees per year" or something, and it wasn't irritating to pay it, there are plenty of people who want out of FB and could afford that.
  - WrtCdEvrydy 8y ago
    The issue isn't often the cost but payment friction. When I started using privacy.com, I found it a lot easier to fund stuff because it was frictionless to generate a CC and drop it into a payment form automatically.
CaptainZapp 8y ago
I think it depends on geopgraphy. North American and European users are worth a lot more than users in developing countries.
ams6110 8y ago
At the same time, how many Facebook users would pay even $1/month to use the platform? I bet less than half.

JepZ 8y ago

Well, while I dream the same dream, it feels awkward asking my family and friends to pay 5€ per year so that we can share the cost of running our XMPP-Server. Currently, I pay all the bills and manage the server myself (so no cost/effort for them), and they still keep using WhatsApp with most of their contacts. I don't know what the root of that evil is, but there are undoubtedly multiple factors involved. First of all, most people have WhatsApp already. Secondly, it is effortless to use. With federated systems, you always have to choose a provider. Once you have overcome that hurdle, the privacy-sensitive people like us do not want to share their address book with the server so finding your people is a manual setup for everyone (another hurdle). Last but not least, the client landscape of XMPP is still far from perfect. If you want to use end-to-end encryption (e.g., OMEMO) there are finally some clients which work with each other (Android: Conversations, iOS: ChatSecure, Desktop: Gajim), but configuring all that stuff (Server + Clients), is not as easy as pushing a button. Other features like video calls are still very fragmented and rarely work if different clients are involved. I think it would take ten dedicated developers about a year to fix all those problems (if they would agree on common goals and focus on those) and even after that, we would still have to sell the product.

decasia 8y ago
I don't know if I would build something from scratch that was based on XMPP or even on the idea of messaging. I keep thinking that the Twitter/FB/chat models of socializing is a very limited form of online sociability and that we could do better. I think it would be better to build something that was sufficiently compelling and had enough new features/UX that people would want to use it all on its own, as something better than the existing ad-supported options, and then we would enable federated options as an alternative form of access. But I think the primary UX has to be "log in to web app" or "install mobile clients," not "fiddle with XMPP settings" (because that is too fiddly, like you're saying, and you have to meet people where they are). This being said — it's excellent that you run your own server and managed to get some of your social network to actually use it!
- Leace 8y ago
  I think the parent referred to fiddling with OMEMO fingerprints, that a) is automated in "good clients" (Conversations) b) can't be easy and paranoid-secure at the same time. I also run XMPP server for friends and family and actually all of them are very happy with it. With Conversations this entire experience looks like any other modern messenger. Network effects are of course a problem in any decentralized environments but looking at how quickly companies drop their solutions (Google?) or abuse the data you give them (Facebook?) I don't see any other reasonable option. Today Signal is nice and kind, tomorrow they are bought by Facebook and start "fiddling" with the app...

mackrevinack 8y ago

if the SafeNetwork ever gets released we could easily have things like that. with monetisation being built in it will be fairly frictionless for poeple to pay or for an app or service to take a micropayment any time you use it. so if getting more users means getting more money, then the focus could be just on making the best service possible instead of focusing on ads and tracking to keep things running

pdog 8y ago

Why charge users at all? Social software could be funded entirely by voluntary donations or a small foundation.

decasia 8y ago
It's a good question. I guess I would say that in my limited experience, co-operatives that fund by providing products and services (food, housing) seem to accumulate less organizational bloat and overhead, because their continued funding is directly coupled to providing a good user experience. But in foundations and donation-based nonprofits, what you see is that they become organizationally focused on chasing donations, they have more and more irritating "please donate to us" fundraising staff, they may have to bend their mission towards whatever can please the local philanthropists, and they sometimes end up seeming more worried about organizational survival (via procuring money) than with whatever their mission is supposed to be. Another way of putting this is that it seems pretty hard to make voluntary donations provide stability, and organizations like stability. I'm open to having my mind changed about this, but it seems to me that it creates some major new organizational failure modes when you decouple the mission from the source of revenue.
Jaruzel 8y ago
Based on how often Wikipedia runs banners asking for donations, I'm not sure the 'voluntary donation' model actually works. The plain truth of it is that most people[1] want their internet fix for free, and are prepared to expose all manner of personal information in order for it to STAY free. The moment Facebook actually starts charging for features, people will start to jump ship en-mass to the next free social platform. --- [1] Us lot on HN are not 'most people'.
- detaro 8y ago
  Wikipedia has and spends a lot of money though. 250+ employees, $50+ million yearly expenses, $10+ million yearly profits. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation#Financial_summary https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation#Financial...
- 8y ago

tomjen3 8y ago

If you could get the users together that model could work, but you still run into the winner takes all problem with social networks: nobody likes Facebook, but that is where all your friends are. Of course, for some communities the value is that all your friends aren't there, but in general even if I was willing to pay for that service (and it would probably have to be 5 usd/month, not per year due to scale) most of the people I know wouldn't be willing to pay that and so the idea is DOA. It is however quite possible that model would work for other types of software -- after all that model was exactly what Danish farmers used to fund the companies that could process their milk.

pjc50 8y ago

Twenty years ago I was involved in founding something similar, the SRCF: https://www.srcf.net/faq/about#why https://www.srcf.net/faq/about#why The intention was to provide hosting for web pages relating to university societies, with good facilities for transfer of ownership (since there was annual turnover of the society administrators). Nowadays this role would be filled by Facebook pages, but the SRCF is still there and still useful. I believe if you want to get the co-op model off the ground you have to start with a particular user community that you're a member of. Then you can start scaling it to other communities. But crucially this process must be lead by thinking of the user community and their needs, not the technology - the technology is secondary and you can always tape together a solution somehow. (We "nearly" came up with Facebook, called people.ucam.org, but we weren't even the only people in the university looking at the question of "how to stay in touch with your friends after graduating"; it was a common problem of the time) Another example of a community-driven content hosting site / social network is "Archive of our own": AO3, for fanfic (often NSFW)

dvfjsdhgfv 8y ago

People are already doing that. For example one of the communities I'm involved in is using HumHub on a VPS. It's supercheap, something like 5€/month, so the per-person cost is almost nil. Nobody objects to paying for hosting and the platform itself is a pleasure to use - maybe because you can relax and know you're in a good company, and there's nobody to manipulate you.

hmhrex 8y ago
I like this idea. I might just try it with my family.

snikeris 8y ago

This reminds me of The WELL: https://www.well.com/ https://www.well.com/

rsync 8y ago
Actually, I have noticed recently that several online communities are approximating what I used to think of as a "BBS". I think, specifically, of the lesswrong site and the collection of tools and user-created content that are collected under a single site there.
MisterOctober 8y ago
^ brings back some memories. The WELL was the first social-internet thing I ever heard of -- in a TIME magazine cover story on, I kid you not, 'Cyberpunk' -- circa 1993ish

rsync 8y ago

"The thing I keep thinking is that I want to have social software built on a co-operative model (like a food co-op): you all pay some nominal membership fee (could you fund servers and developers on $5/year/user?), and the software would then be developed to fit the agreed-upon needs of the community" No fees, no development needed, lightweight and has been working for decades: A listserv. Everything else is just candy.

warkdarrior 8y ago
Candy is what attracts and keeps people on Facebook, instead of using a listserv.
tomcooks 8y ago
People want candy though

styfle 8y ago

I think some mastodon[0] servers are run this way: users pay a small portion to cover hosting costs and there is usually some topic that brings that server/community together. However, you are not limited to a single mastodon community because they are federated (similar to email where gmail users can communicate with hotmail users). [0]: https://github.com/tootsuite/mastodon https://github.com/tootsuite/mastodon

MaxBarraclough 8y ago

You need to address the question of federation. If you have a thousand unconnected small networks, you're going to be unable to compete with worldwide networks.

lucideer 8y ago

This is different, but with some minor modifications this sounds a lot like Scuttlebutt. Have you tried Patchwork? > you all pay some nominal membership fee (could you fund servers and developers on $5/year/user?) People individually run "pubs", which are servers (with hosting costs), but every user also acts as a potential server, caching and proxying encrypted communications on behalf of other users, which acts as a sort of "cost", though it's not directly monetary. > software would then be developed to fit the agreed-upon needs of the community, without dark patterns or behavior modification projects, openly, and with some kind of community governance Apart from the central protocol, niche needs are met by various clients—e.g. there is a dedicated chess client for users who just want to play chess over the social network. > need not be exclusive of technical leadership While the SSBC is in no way dictatorial and even often jokey, I think their clients demonstrate exceptional technical leadership. The strategy of having a protocol with many clients usually leads to having many disparate clients of low quality. On the contrary, most users use Patchwork, the main stable SSBC-maintained client; it's the most "Facebook-ish" of the clients and is very intuitive.

frio 8y ago

https://social.coop/about https://social.coop/about is just that :). Although I see they've killed their front page and closed registrations for a while.