8 ms·

How to run a small social network site for your friends

252 points by catacombs 7y ago

jasode 7y ago
>Why to NOT run a small social network site [...] If you choose to run a site like this, it means that people will now depend on you for something that's important to them. People on Friend Camp are very forgiving when we have down time, and sometimes that down time can last hours if I'm asleep or at a movie or otherwise busy. Kudos to the author for responsibly mentioning the caveats and setting realistic expectations. Before asking friends & family to depend on a personal Mastodon server, consider carefully if you really want to take on that burden of responsibility to become a sysadmin and defacto tech support.
- SiVal 7y ago
  Yes, I think we'd be better off if we had equivalents of much of Facebook or Twitter implemented as distributed protocols like email rather than as a centralized system. You'd have your own @fred@example.com rather than just @fred at the One Big Company. Most ISPs could include them with the basic package or you could get them from someone else online the way you can get email from your ISP or gmail, hotmail, etc. You could then still run your own server, just as you can with email, but you wouldn't have to take on that responsibility to get most of the benefits of taking control of your social media.
  - OrgNet 7y ago
    isn't what https://about.riot.im/ https://about.riot.im/ is?
    - omnimus 7y ago
      no
      - OrgNet 7y ago
        why not?
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
    - mxuribe 7y ago
      Riot is a chat client/app - not a social media client/app in the strict sense. It is one of many clients/apps that uses the matrix protocol. I guess the nearest analogous clients/apps to Riot would be WhatsApp and good ol' IRC. In WhatsApp you might have groups, whereas IRC has rooms...and Riot leverages the "different rooms" concept for different chats. I would say Riot is a bit closer conceptually to IRC than WhatsApp...Because...Riot - and every other client/app that leverags the matrix protocol - is designed to be decentralized, or at least federated...so much in the same vein as good ol' email. I hope this nickel tour helps. ;-)
      - OrgNet 7y ago
        thanks, but what is the matrix protocol missing again? groups vs rooms vs profile vs private chat... aren't they all the same if you set proper security?
        mxuribe 7y ago
        Sorry, I'm not sure what you're asking...? My comments were merely trying to clarify your question about the Riot client/app.
    - MayeulC 7y ago
      Matrix is a distributed (federated) protocol, I also run my own server. However, I have not yet advertised it to my family, because that would mean having to maintain a high uptime. To alleviate this, decentralised user accounts would be needed, which [1] is about. [1]: https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-doc/issues/915 https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-doc/issues/915
  - dspillett 7y ago
    That is what https://diasporafoundation.org/ https://diasporafoundation.org/ is trying to achieve, or something close to, IIRC. I'm not sure what state the project is in currently as I've not kept an eye on it recently, but it sounded promising when it started out. Looking at the release blog there seem to be regular small updates so there is at least some active development going on.
    - brighter2morrow 7y ago
      As I understand it, the founder of diaspora met an early end at his own hand.
      - gleenn 7y ago
        Very sad but he had a couple co-founders as well as some community of people interested in continuing development AFAIR.
      - slfnflctd 7y ago
        Wow, I had no idea of this. There's even a Wikipedia page mentioning it that's not hard to find. The lost potential always makes me wince in these situations. Obviously, not all suicidal people have the possibility of recovering (especially if you include euthanasia), but it feels to me like a lot of them could, if we had healthier social/support systems.
  - rakoo 7y ago
    That is literally what ActivityPub and its predecessor OStatus are for: a protocol for declaring an identity and interacting with everyone else. The protocol is heavily oriented towards exchanging small-ish messages asynchronously to a bunch of recipients or to a server, so it's mostly intended for microblogging, but there are already some other uses popping up (an instagram-like photo sharing system, a youtube-like video site where you can post/follow/comment through your account, a standard blogging platform...) All of those applications talk to each other in a way that is finally looking like it's got enough steam to hold.
herghost 7y ago
I think what I mainly worry about is that whilst I’d be happy keeping it pretty small - friends of friends, and family - I know that some of my family believe (and share socially) some abhorrent views, as too do some friends of friends, and so I’d necessarily be anointing myself censor-in-chief. I left Facebook because it was a Sisyphean task to simply point out the glaring omissions and outright fabrications that my “friends” shared. Here? I’d have to actually deal with it, and probably also be somehow responsible for it.
- curiousgeorgio 7y ago
  It sounds exhausting to have such correct views about everything and yet be surrounded by so many people of inferior intellect. If only we had more brave souls willing to publicly point out how the rest of us are all wrong... :)
  - bronco21016 7y ago
    So you ignore it. Then what? The only ones speaking have their ideas become the ‘truth’ simply because they’re the loudest majority. Next thing you know the earth is a disc or vaccines cause Autism.
    - brighter2morrow 7y ago
      >So you ignore it. Then what? The only ones speaking have their ideas become the ‘truth’ simply because they’re the loudest majority. Next thing you know the earth is a disc or vaccines cause Autism. Sounds like a slippery slope argument, which I've been told are invalid.
      - TeMPOraL 7y ago
        Slippery slopes are a real thing, and slippery slope arguments are frequently valid. What distinguishes a valid slippery slope argument from an invalid one is the details about the slope. Is it actually slippery? Does it slope in the direction the argument asserts it does?
personjerry 7y ago
None of those are good enough reasons to want to run your own social network though. I don't want to pay to maintain it, I don't want to spend time fixing it and thinking new features. Most of all I don't want to have to police it! These aren't enjoyable differences and fail to build a convincing case to run your own social network...
- jmts 7y ago
  Those are not good enough reasons for you, perhaps. They may however be good enough for others. Your experience is not the only experience.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - Kye 7y ago
    Case in point: witches.live has code for handling the moon. https://witches.live/@anna/102403392019217231 https://witches.live/@anna/102403392019217231
im3w1l 7y ago
Wont your friends be scared of you snooping on their private messages? For all his faults Zuck wont tell the friend circle what a slut so-and-so is.
- bronson 7y ago
  True, he just tells the ad buyers.
  - im3w1l 7y ago
    I have never heard of any leaks of private messages (by facebook, let's not count shoulder surfing or the counterparty telling) coming back to haunt the people who wrote them. So the risk you are mentioning seems more theoretical than the very real risk if a friend runs it.
    - yule 7y ago
      https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5864427 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5864427
      - im3w1l 7y ago
        Good point. I should have excluded law enforcement et al from my statement.
- brighter2morrow 7y ago
  Is being a "slut" a bad thing anymore? I thought they had slutwalks and abortion parades nowadays.
  - dang 7y ago
    Would you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and especially ideological flamebait to HN? It's not what this site is for, and we ban accounts that do it. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
deepnet 7y ago
Small shops can be a diverse ecosystem, en-masse robust and anti-fragile. Edges, servers at the edges - monopolies are not a free Internet. Computers run our lives, either we are in control or they are - Stallman is right - without GNU's four freedoms neither societies nor peoples are free.
Lowkeyloki 7y ago
For what it's worth, I really love the design of this site. It has a really slick xwindows aesthetic.
- mxuribe 7y ago
  100% agreed! I'll add that its - dare i say - minimalist-designed approach made it an additional joy to read. I couldn't think of where i saw such a similar look-and-feel, but now that you mention it, yeah "xwindows aesthetic" would be a good description for it! Cheers!
spacebear 7y ago
Any tips on how to get your friends to actually use the social network? I've tried and failed with Slack and Mastodon.
- fuball63 7y ago
  This is the biggest question to me too. Whenever I try to do something like this, my friends will do it for a short while, seemingly in support of me/the project, then fall off. I have the same issue with making computer games too. They will try it once, say good job, and never bring it up again. I now try and approach games like, 1) what is something that I can play by myself that still brings value and 2) what is that "it feature" that will make someone curious/interested enough to come back, and focus on that. Maybe it's the same for community sites.
  - latexr 7y ago
    > I have the same issue with making computer games too. They will try it once, say good job, and never bring it up again. Are you picking friends who like to play games (i.e. they play games you haven’t designed)? If so, are you making the genre of games they like to play? If having your friends enjoy your games is important to you, consider collaborating with one of them, making them part of the design process — make a game for them. Better yet, make a game for you to play together, either cooperatively or competitively, whatever you prefer. Alternatively, make a game where the characters are you and your friends. Ian McConville, of Three Panel Soul[1], made a pixel art game “for and audience of one” where the main character was his girlfriend. At the end, he asked her to marry him[2]. You don’t need to do something so grandiose, but being a character in a game might make your friends more invested in playing it. [1]: http://www.threepanelsoul.com/ http://www.threepanelsoul.com/ [2]: https://www.comicmix.com/2008/06/27/webcomic-news-roundup-love-life-and-poop/ https://www.comicmix.com/2008/06/27/webcomic-news-roundup-lo...
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
newscracker 7y ago
That was a really well written article, and though I didn't agree with some points, I couldn't stop reading it until I finished it. Something about the layout, the line spacing and such was engaging enough (of course, the content and how it was organized was the biggest influence). I too feel that identity migration (or the lack thereof) is an issue that needs to be solved. I'm not sure if there's a technical solution that would be easy for people to follow. At the very least, users should be able to take their content out and have it migrated/hosted elsewhere, similar to how email content can be moved somewhere else, even if they're forced to get a new address. I personally believe that Mastodon and other Twitter like solutions are too noisy and disjointed, without clear and prominent topic/subject and threading. Facebook groups has a better interface for handling this kind of conversation. One point I disagree with is the "neighborhood" classification. Most users will not really understand it or get what it means whenever the neighborhood servers change (new ones get added, some get removed). It seems way too complex. The concept of local vs. global on Mastodon is in itself a cognitive barrier for many people to overcome. Global vs. "friends" is the easiest distinction to understand and use. In my observation most of the users on Facebook tend to use one of these for their posts, and nothing else.
- vermilingua 7y ago
  > I'm not sure if there's a technical solution that would be easy for people to follow. Why not? It should be no harder than specifying the server you want to migrate to, and the handle you wish to use there. Everything else should be handled by the backend, and the receiving server’s mod team.
jph 7y ago
Added to a collection of social network plan ideas: https://github.com/joelparkerhenderson/social_network_plan https://github.com/joelparkerhenderson/social_network_plan
- nunodonato 7y ago
  I've been brainstorming and planning for a different kind of social network and found your list very useful! Are you planning to do something with it, or just collecting info?
  - jph 7y ago
    Collecting info to help spur ideas among developers and designers. I'd like to hear about your perspectives; reach me at joel@joelparkerhenderson.com.
SOLAR_FIELDS 7y ago
The absolute greatest discovery I made on this article is oulipo.social, a social network where the letter e is banned. The text on the page has to be one of the greatest things I have witnessed in a long time. There is a fully functional and amazingly well written FAQ all without the letter e: https://oulipo.social/about/more https://oulipo.social/about/more Here’s question 6 from that page for a taste: What synonym should I sub in for [x]? Try to stop looking for synonyms; if you try to swap out individual words, you'll find it tough going. Pull back and think abstractly about what you want to say and find words for that.
- gerikson 7y ago
  Ironically the URL for the FAQ contains the forbidden later, but it sure sounds like a cool concept.
  - gerikson 7y ago
    "Letter" not "later" , damn you autocorrect and also damn the window for editing comments is short :(
- freddie_mercury 7y ago
  I didn't see a mention but it is almost certainly inspired by the famous (in some circles) book by Georges Perec, A Void. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Void https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Void The entire book, a murder-mystery, is written without using the letter 'e'.
- Kye 7y ago
  Contrast with dolphin.town where you can only use the letter e. There's a feud. https://oulipo.social/users/kit/statuses/101223229913710919 https://oulipo.social/users/kit/statuses/101223229913710919
charliebrownau 7y ago
I found 99% of Diaspora and Masterdon servers/pods/instances are run by LEFT WING NPCS Dont expect to get free speech or ability to have speech outside the Cult of Marxism
charliebrownau 7y ago
Gday Platforms that censor speech List :- * Facebook * Twitter * Google & Youtube * TUMBLR & Instagram * Pateron * Stripe * Paypal * Twitch * Spotify * Apple * Sony * pin interest * LinkedIn * Mailchimp * Wordpress * mastodon * azure * Mastercard * Godaddy * MEDIUM * Shopify * Cloudflare * pusher * WIKI * Reddit * teespring * Slack * coinbase * GOFUNDME * VISA * Square * Bitpay * ROKU * Netflix * Indiegogo * Disqus * Diaspora * VIMEO * Ravelry * Github Regards, Charliebrowau
lubujackson 7y ago
I like the small social network vibe because it reminds me of the old BBS days. I think social networks thrive with some form of exclusivity to keep them stable - Facebook started by requiring your college email address and BBSes were limited by the range of your area code (or else you would suffer long distance calling fees). A network of 50 friends is interesting, Mastodon seems to group by interest or topic which is interesting, but there was something special about the local boundaries of BBSes that created interesting dynamics and let you see the same people on different boards and in different contexts, all from the same small-ish pool of people. It was a great mix of self-selection (which BBSes I chose to visit, the personal variations available) and forced interaction (who else would visit them and why).
2sk21 7y ago
This is, overall, a great idea but I do worry about security. Even if I keep all of the code fully patched, I have learned that pretty much anything can be broken into.
- Kye 7y ago
  https://masto.host/ https://masto.host/ You don't get the same flexibility, but they take care of backups, updates, and security.

252 points by catacombs 7y ago

>Why to NOT run a small social network site [...] If you choose to run a site like this, it means that people will now depend on you for something that's important to them. People on Friend Camp are very forgiving when we have down time, and sometimes that down time can last hours if I'm asleep or at a movie or otherwise busy. Kudos to the author for responsibly mentioning the caveats and setting realistic expectations. Before asking friends & family to depend on a personal Mastodon server, consider carefully if you really want to take on that burden of responsibility to become a sysadmin and defacto tech support.

SiVal 7y ago
Yes, I think we'd be better off if we had equivalents of much of Facebook or Twitter implemented as distributed protocols like email rather than as a centralized system. You'd have your own @fred@example.com rather than just @fred at the One Big Company. Most ISPs could include them with the basic package or you could get them from someone else online the way you can get email from your ISP or gmail, hotmail, etc. You could then still run your own server, just as you can with email, but you wouldn't have to take on that responsibility to get most of the benefits of taking control of your social media.
- OrgNet 7y ago
  isn't what https://about.riot.im/ https://about.riot.im/ is?
  - omnimus 7y ago
    no
    - OrgNet 7y ago
      why not?
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
  - mxuribe 7y ago
    Riot is a chat client/app - not a social media client/app in the strict sense. It is one of many clients/apps that uses the matrix protocol. I guess the nearest analogous clients/apps to Riot would be WhatsApp and good ol' IRC. In WhatsApp you might have groups, whereas IRC has rooms...and Riot leverages the "different rooms" concept for different chats. I would say Riot is a bit closer conceptually to IRC than WhatsApp...Because...Riot - and every other client/app that leverags the matrix protocol - is designed to be decentralized, or at least federated...so much in the same vein as good ol' email. I hope this nickel tour helps. ;-)
    - OrgNet 7y ago
      thanks, but what is the matrix protocol missing again? groups vs rooms vs profile vs private chat... aren't they all the same if you set proper security?
      - mxuribe 7y ago
        Sorry, I'm not sure what you're asking...? My comments were merely trying to clarify your question about the Riot client/app.
  - MayeulC 7y ago
    Matrix is a distributed (federated) protocol, I also run my own server. However, I have not yet advertised it to my family, because that would mean having to maintain a high uptime. To alleviate this, decentralised user accounts would be needed, which [1] is about. [1]: https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-doc/issues/915 https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-doc/issues/915
- dspillett 7y ago
  That is what https://diasporafoundation.org/ https://diasporafoundation.org/ is trying to achieve, or something close to, IIRC. I'm not sure what state the project is in currently as I've not kept an eye on it recently, but it sounded promising when it started out. Looking at the release blog there seem to be regular small updates so there is at least some active development going on.
  - brighter2morrow 7y ago
    As I understand it, the founder of diaspora met an early end at his own hand.
    - gleenn 7y ago
      Very sad but he had a couple co-founders as well as some community of people interested in continuing development AFAIR.
    - slfnflctd 7y ago
      Wow, I had no idea of this. There's even a Wikipedia page mentioning it that's not hard to find. The lost potential always makes me wince in these situations. Obviously, not all suicidal people have the possibility of recovering (especially if you include euthanasia), but it feels to me like a lot of them could, if we had healthier social/support systems.
- rakoo 7y ago
  That is literally what ActivityPub and its predecessor OStatus are for: a protocol for declaring an identity and interacting with everyone else. The protocol is heavily oriented towards exchanging small-ish messages asynchronously to a bunch of recipients or to a server, so it's mostly intended for microblogging, but there are already some other uses popping up (an instagram-like photo sharing system, a youtube-like video site where you can post/follow/comment through your account, a standard blogging platform...) All of those applications talk to each other in a way that is finally looking like it's got enough steam to hold.

herghost 7y ago

I think what I mainly worry about is that whilst I’d be happy keeping it pretty small - friends of friends, and family - I know that some of my family believe (and share socially) some abhorrent views, as too do some friends of friends, and so I’d necessarily be anointing myself censor-in-chief. I left Facebook because it was a Sisyphean task to simply point out the glaring omissions and outright fabrications that my “friends” shared. Here? I’d have to actually deal with it, and probably also be somehow responsible for it.

curiousgeorgio 7y ago
It sounds exhausting to have such correct views about everything and yet be surrounded by so many people of inferior intellect. If only we had more brave souls willing to publicly point out how the rest of us are all wrong... :)
- bronco21016 7y ago
  So you ignore it. Then what? The only ones speaking have their ideas become the ‘truth’ simply because they’re the loudest majority. Next thing you know the earth is a disc or vaccines cause Autism.
  - brighter2morrow 7y ago
    >So you ignore it. Then what? The only ones speaking have their ideas become the ‘truth’ simply because they’re the loudest majority. Next thing you know the earth is a disc or vaccines cause Autism. Sounds like a slippery slope argument, which I've been told are invalid.
    - TeMPOraL 7y ago
      Slippery slopes are a real thing, and slippery slope arguments are frequently valid. What distinguishes a valid slippery slope argument from an invalid one is the details about the slope. Is it actually slippery? Does it slope in the direction the argument asserts it does?

personjerry 7y ago

None of those are good enough reasons to want to run your own social network though. I don't want to pay to maintain it, I don't want to spend time fixing it and thinking new features. Most of all I don't want to have to police it! These aren't enjoyable differences and fail to build a convincing case to run your own social network...

jmts 7y ago
Those are not good enough reasons for you, perhaps. They may however be good enough for others. Your experience is not the only experience.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- Kye 7y ago
  Case in point: witches.live has code for handling the moon. https://witches.live/@anna/102403392019217231 https://witches.live/@anna/102403392019217231

im3w1l 7y ago

Wont your friends be scared of you snooping on their private messages? For all his faults Zuck wont tell the friend circle what a slut so-and-so is.

bronson 7y ago
True, he just tells the ad buyers.
- im3w1l 7y ago
  I have never heard of any leaks of private messages (by facebook, let's not count shoulder surfing or the counterparty telling) coming back to haunt the people who wrote them. So the risk you are mentioning seems more theoretical than the very real risk if a friend runs it.
  - yule 7y ago
    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5864427 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5864427
    - im3w1l 7y ago
      Good point. I should have excluded law enforcement et al from my statement.
brighter2morrow 7y ago
Is being a "slut" a bad thing anymore? I thought they had slutwalks and abortion parades nowadays.
- dang 7y ago
  Would you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and especially ideological flamebait to HN? It's not what this site is for, and we ban accounts that do it. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

deepnet 7y ago

Small shops can be a diverse ecosystem, en-masse robust and anti-fragile. Edges, servers at the edges - monopolies are not a free Internet. Computers run our lives, either we are in control or they are - Stallman is right - without GNU's four freedoms neither societies nor peoples are free.

Lowkeyloki 7y ago

For what it's worth, I really love the design of this site. It has a really slick xwindows aesthetic.

mxuribe 7y ago
100% agreed! I'll add that its - dare i say - minimalist-designed approach made it an additional joy to read. I couldn't think of where i saw such a similar look-and-feel, but now that you mention it, yeah "xwindows aesthetic" would be a good description for it! Cheers!

spacebear 7y ago

Any tips on how to get your friends to actually use the social network? I've tried and failed with Slack and Mastodon.

fuball63 7y ago
This is the biggest question to me too. Whenever I try to do something like this, my friends will do it for a short while, seemingly in support of me/the project, then fall off. I have the same issue with making computer games too. They will try it once, say good job, and never bring it up again. I now try and approach games like, 1) what is something that I can play by myself that still brings value and 2) what is that "it feature" that will make someone curious/interested enough to come back, and focus on that. Maybe it's the same for community sites.
- latexr 7y ago
  > I have the same issue with making computer games too. They will try it once, say good job, and never bring it up again. Are you picking friends who like to play games (i.e. they play games you haven’t designed)? If so, are you making the genre of games they like to play? If having your friends enjoy your games is important to you, consider collaborating with one of them, making them part of the design process — make a game for them. Better yet, make a game for you to play together, either cooperatively or competitively, whatever you prefer. Alternatively, make a game where the characters are you and your friends. Ian McConville, of Three Panel Soul[1], made a pixel art game “for and audience of one” where the main character was his girlfriend. At the end, he asked her to marry him[2]. You don’t need to do something so grandiose, but being a character in a game might make your friends more invested in playing it. [1]: http://www.threepanelsoul.com/ http://www.threepanelsoul.com/ [2]: https://www.comicmix.com/2008/06/27/webcomic-news-roundup-love-life-and-poop/ https://www.comicmix.com/2008/06/27/webcomic-news-roundup-lo...
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

newscracker 7y ago

That was a really well written article, and though I didn't agree with some points, I couldn't stop reading it until I finished it. Something about the layout, the line spacing and such was engaging enough (of course, the content and how it was organized was the biggest influence). I too feel that identity migration (or the lack thereof) is an issue that needs to be solved. I'm not sure if there's a technical solution that would be easy for people to follow. At the very least, users should be able to take their content out and have it migrated/hosted elsewhere, similar to how email content can be moved somewhere else, even if they're forced to get a new address. I personally believe that Mastodon and other Twitter like solutions are too noisy and disjointed, without clear and prominent topic/subject and threading. Facebook groups has a better interface for handling this kind of conversation. One point I disagree with is the "neighborhood" classification. Most users will not really understand it or get what it means whenever the neighborhood servers change (new ones get added, some get removed). It seems way too complex. The concept of local vs. global on Mastodon is in itself a cognitive barrier for many people to overcome. Global vs. "friends" is the easiest distinction to understand and use. In my observation most of the users on Facebook tend to use one of these for their posts, and nothing else.

vermilingua 7y ago
> I'm not sure if there's a technical solution that would be easy for people to follow. Why not? It should be no harder than specifying the server you want to migrate to, and the handle you wish to use there. Everything else should be handled by the backend, and the receiving server’s mod team.

jph 7y ago

Added to a collection of social network plan ideas: https://github.com/joelparkerhenderson/social_network_plan https://github.com/joelparkerhenderson/social_network_plan

nunodonato 7y ago
I've been brainstorming and planning for a different kind of social network and found your list very useful! Are you planning to do something with it, or just collecting info?
- jph 7y ago
  Collecting info to help spur ideas among developers and designers. I'd like to hear about your perspectives; reach me at joel@joelparkerhenderson.com.

SOLAR_FIELDS 7y ago

The absolute greatest discovery I made on this article is oulipo.social, a social network where the letter e is banned. The text on the page has to be one of the greatest things I have witnessed in a long time. There is a fully functional and amazingly well written FAQ all without the letter e: https://oulipo.social/about/more https://oulipo.social/about/more Here’s question 6 from that page for a taste: What synonym should I sub in for [x]? Try to stop looking for synonyms; if you try to swap out individual words, you'll find it tough going. Pull back and think abstractly about what you want to say and find words for that.

gerikson 7y ago
Ironically the URL for the FAQ contains the forbidden later, but it sure sounds like a cool concept.
- gerikson 7y ago
  "Letter" not "later" , damn you autocorrect and also damn the window for editing comments is short :(
freddie_mercury 7y ago
I didn't see a mention but it is almost certainly inspired by the famous (in some circles) book by Georges Perec, A Void. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Void https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Void The entire book, a murder-mystery, is written without using the letter 'e'.
Kye 7y ago
Contrast with dolphin.town where you can only use the letter e. There's a feud. https://oulipo.social/users/kit/statuses/101223229913710919 https://oulipo.social/users/kit/statuses/101223229913710919

charliebrownau 7y ago

I found 99% of Diaspora and Masterdon servers/pods/instances are run by LEFT WING NPCS Dont expect to get free speech or ability to have speech outside the Cult of Marxism

charliebrownau 7y ago

Gday Platforms that censor speech List :- * Facebook * Twitter * Google & Youtube * TUMBLR & Instagram * Pateron * Stripe * Paypal * Twitch * Spotify * Apple * Sony * pin interest * LinkedIn * Mailchimp * Wordpress * mastodon * azure * Mastercard * Godaddy * MEDIUM * Shopify * Cloudflare * pusher * WIKI * Reddit * teespring * Slack * coinbase * GOFUNDME * VISA * Square * Bitpay * ROKU * Netflix * Indiegogo * Disqus * Diaspora * VIMEO * Ravelry * Github Regards, Charliebrowau

lubujackson 7y ago

I like the small social network vibe because it reminds me of the old BBS days. I think social networks thrive with some form of exclusivity to keep them stable - Facebook started by requiring your college email address and BBSes were limited by the range of your area code (or else you would suffer long distance calling fees). A network of 50 friends is interesting, Mastodon seems to group by interest or topic which is interesting, but there was something special about the local boundaries of BBSes that created interesting dynamics and let you see the same people on different boards and in different contexts, all from the same small-ish pool of people. It was a great mix of self-selection (which BBSes I chose to visit, the personal variations available) and forced interaction (who else would visit them and why).

2sk21 7y ago

This is, overall, a great idea but I do worry about security. Even if I keep all of the code fully patched, I have learned that pretty much anything can be broken into.

Kye 7y ago
https://masto.host/ https://masto.host/ You don't get the same flexibility, but they take care of backups, updates, and security.