7 ms·

Show HN: A Socialist Social Network

28 points by fstopmick 7y ago

bifrost 7y ago
It appears to be down?
johnday 7y ago
The site seems to not currently functioning, which... doesn't bode well? I am interested in how a social network can be socialist, per se.
- natechols 7y ago
  The jokes practically write themselves...
  - giancarlostoro 7y ago
    I was going go comment "it doesnt work" but I didnt want people to think I was making fun of the political ideology instead of reiterating the website not working.
    - bifrost 7y ago
      Keyboard Stalin once said -> "The loss of one click is tragic, but the loss of thousands is statistic."
      - fstopmick 7y ago
        hahahahaha stop distracting me with your wit
  - WarDores 7y ago
    Someone else was supposed to pick up the bandwidth tab.
    - bifrost 7y ago
      I think there was a song about that.
  - anoncake 7y ago
    The dev must have used a dysfunctional programming language. They should have used a functional one, without classes and state.
- bifrost 7y ago
  Maybe its for "Social-Ists"? Like a weird way of saying people who like to be social? And hopefully not the kind of socialism that Russia/DPRC employ, that would be the worst of all worlds.
  - anoncake 7y ago
    > socialism [...] Russia [...] Welcome back! A lot has changed in the 30+ years you were in coma.
    - bifrost 7y ago
      I was talking about actual Russia not Ukraine/etc. We could talk about the USSR but not everyone gets what that is anymore...
      - anoncake 7y ago
        Russia isn't socialist at all, not even in the Soviet sense.
- lukifer 7y ago
  Not only does socialism suffer from a "No True Scotsman" problem (there is a wide disparity, from within and without, regarding what the term means), I dare say that's true of just about every -ism under the sun. (TODO: invent a political ideology that includes a formal specification.) :)
  - anoncake 7y ago
    "Socialism" being an ambiguous term would not be that much of a problem if people stopped pretending it isn't and every socialist is a tankie. It's hard to believe someone is arguing in good faith if they criticize anarchists for trying to build a totalitarian dictatorship. We have a problem with people seeing Ms. Scott from England, thinking her skirt is a kilt and getting angry when she claims she can't play the bagpipe.
    - averros 7y ago
      Totalitarians have used anarchists to achieve their goals in the past. Anarchists themselves may believe they're fighting the Man, but they're just being useful idiots. When the general populace gets fed up with anarchist antics and rioting they start clamoring for tougher law enforcement (and stronger leaders). That's when totalitarians come in.
    - lukifer 7y ago
      No dispute. Obviously decades of anti-Soviet propaganda (which does encapsulate many legitimate critiques) have muddled the conceptual landscape, both in terms of oversimplification, and in emotional charge. And, we have significant status quo bias regarding our particular neoliberal form of capitalism; you can't tell a fish about water. Still, even correcting for those historical factors, I think every -ism, or school of thought, suffers from similar problems in subjective perception: it's easy to find nuance and diversity of opinion if one looks for it, and equally easy to find bad actors, tribalist talking points, sloppy thinking, etc, if one looks for it. > We have a problem with people seeing Ms. Scott from England, thinking her skirt is a kilt and getting angry when she claims she can't play the bagpipe. :)
anigbrowl 7y ago
OP, if you're bootstrapping this thing at a tiny scale it looks like you've just been hit with the 'HN hug of death' as the wide readership of the website often yields a huge surge of incoming traffic to anything which lands on the front page. While someone else sorts this problem out (or you just wait for it to subside) perhaps you could explain the concept and goals here in the meantime. Don't feel bad, this happens to lots of people.
- bifrost 7y ago
  Pre-rendering the landing page can help too.
- fstopmick 7y ago
  Thanks for this! This is a super small nights/weekends experiment with a dozen or so active users; I probably should have prepared for a spike, huh? I'll leave a top-level comment to summarize the thinking before I jump back over to keeping it alive . Thank you again.
nyolfen 7y ago
this is perhaps a more useful link, assuming it will load for you: https://www.karma.fm/p/SZ1CD/karma-capital-architecture https://www.karma.fm/p/SZ1CD/karma-capital-architecture
- fstopmick 7y ago
  Thank you for this
fstopmick 7y ago
Hi all - Thank you for killing my baby! In short, the thinking here is that instead of building a community with the intent to monetize the users and their data, we can become sustainable through patron contributions - half of which get redistributed to the users. My thinking is that this incentivizes us all to keep costs very low and also incentivizes members to impress one another, instead of exploiting one another with clickbait or "lead-generation" (advertising for-profit stuff is strictly disallowed). RE "socialism": this isn't intended to be socialism as a religion ~ more like, "the model we're working with right now is having some painful side-effects and maybe it's worth trying a hypermodern coop / WSDE model that addresses some of the root causes of these symptoms (data abuses, CCP exerting control over our information flow / free speech, cambridge analytics stuff, LGBTQ+/small creators struggling on YouTube, etc)" which happens to align with some socialist principles, from what I gather. Here's the Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/karmafm https://www.patreon.com/karmafm This is very young and experimental, and so far there's only been a single distribution (a whopping $4 (post-fees) sent to a member from a $10 patron contribution) but the Patron contributions have since quadrupled to $40! Forgive my brevity as I attempt to keep this thing breathing and thank you for taking a look.
- bifrost 7y ago
  Thanks for clarifying, it sounds more like you're talking about Voluntaryism and Libertarian ideas. People paying an amount that they feel is fair vs prescribed is very forward thinking and I wish you luck! PS: I'd avoid anything that actually returns funds since its likely to end up being called a Ponzi scheme...
  - fstopmick 7y ago
    Sure thing, thanks for taking an interest. And yeah, that sounds about right. Although my dream is to gradually push this into the hands of some kind of meritocratic collective ownership, where the "workers" own the "means of production", which in this case would be the students/activists being able to fork the data, app code, and devops for free at any time. RE ponzi scheme... hmmm... so when a Patron makes a $10 contribution, they can then choose which user receives half of their contribution. I wonder how to prevent the perception from turning Ponzi with this model...
RugnirViking 7y ago
Hi there. I left a comment on the site, but I'm not sure if it got through because it went down again before I could check to see. The main problem I have found so far trying to use the site is that you've made a huge variety of communities and posts using a reddit scraper. I understand the urge to have content, but starting small will allow users to actually find places where other living users are rather than an endless wasteland of bot posts with no comments. In addition, having user-driven content from the start will (hopefully) lead to a community and a unique style forming - with people sticking around because they enjoy the content and discussion already there, and posting more of the same themselves. If you want to shape the community, the best way would be to make one or two posts yourself, and try hard to comment and engage with other user's posts in the way you hope future users will. Also, the personality of the first few active users will have a large effect on how the site's culture will evolve. If you're interested in left-wing politics, perhaps try to publicise the site in the kinds of places people already talk about left-wing politics - specific subreddits or discord servers. Of course a lot of places won't like straight-up advertisement, but if you pitch it as an ongoing project and ask for ideas, people will likely be happier to accept it.
- fstopmick 7y ago
  It went through and I responded! I apologize for the performance headache. I'm in uncharted territory over here. https://www.karma.fm/p/SGXFV/once-upon-a-time-i-accidentally-launched-karma https://www.karma.fm/p/SGXFV/once-upon-a-time-i-accidentally... My response: Thanks so much @Rugnir. This is absolutely a problem; I'll quote you over on the most recent retrospective. I have a question: when you visit the homepage, all posts are human (filtered for "non robot posts"). You can then include bot posts by manually disabling this filter. On Tribe pages, the filter is "off" by default. Would you like to see the filter controls on the Tribe pages, with it "off" by default? ~~~ In addition, having user-driven content from the start will (hopefully) lead to a community and a unique style forming - with people sticking around because they enjoy the content and discussion already there, and posting more of the same themselves. If you want to shape the community, the best way would be to make one or two posts yourself, and try hard to comment and engage with other user's posts in the way you hope future users will. Also, the personality of the first few active users will have a large effect on how the site's culture will evolve. If you're interested in left-wing politics, perhaps try to publicise the site in the kinds of places people already talk about left-wing politics - specific subreddits or discord servers. Of course a lot of places won't like straight-up advertisement, but if you pitch it as an ongoing project and ask for ideas, people will likely be happier to accept it. ^ YES! This is all gold. Thank you.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
cyborgx7 7y ago
A "socialist social network" sounds appealing, but the words "meritocracy" and "gamification" are red flags to me. I think I'll stick with mastodon for now.
easytiger 7y ago
Can you explain some of the design? I.e. backend stuff
- fstopmick 7y ago
  Sure thing! The application architecture is simple - it's an n-tier app (front end > business layer > SQL server). The business layer is .NET/C#. I use Entity Framework as an ORM and then migrate the slower bits to Dapper + raw SQL whenever I need to trade maintainability for performance. I'd be happy to expand on anything specific you're curious about :)

28 points by fstopmick 7y ago

It appears to be down?

The site seems to not currently functioning, which... doesn't bode well? I am interested in how a social network can be socialist, per se.

natechols 7y ago
The jokes practically write themselves...
- giancarlostoro 7y ago
  I was going go comment "it doesnt work" but I didnt want people to think I was making fun of the political ideology instead of reiterating the website not working.
  - bifrost 7y ago
    Keyboard Stalin once said -> "The loss of one click is tragic, but the loss of thousands is statistic."
    - fstopmick 7y ago
      hahahahaha stop distracting me with your wit
- WarDores 7y ago
  Someone else was supposed to pick up the bandwidth tab.
  - bifrost 7y ago
    I think there was a song about that.
- anoncake 7y ago
  The dev must have used a dysfunctional programming language. They should have used a functional one, without classes and state.
bifrost 7y ago
Maybe its for "Social-Ists"? Like a weird way of saying people who like to be social? And hopefully not the kind of socialism that Russia/DPRC employ, that would be the worst of all worlds.
- anoncake 7y ago
  > socialism [...] Russia [...] Welcome back! A lot has changed in the 30+ years you were in coma.
  - bifrost 7y ago
    I was talking about actual Russia not Ukraine/etc. We could talk about the USSR but not everyone gets what that is anymore...
    - anoncake 7y ago
      Russia isn't socialist at all, not even in the Soviet sense.
lukifer 7y ago
Not only does socialism suffer from a "No True Scotsman" problem (there is a wide disparity, from within and without, regarding what the term means), I dare say that's true of just about every -ism under the sun. (TODO: invent a political ideology that includes a formal specification.) :)
- anoncake 7y ago
  "Socialism" being an ambiguous term would not be that much of a problem if people stopped pretending it isn't and every socialist is a tankie. It's hard to believe someone is arguing in good faith if they criticize anarchists for trying to build a totalitarian dictatorship. We have a problem with people seeing Ms. Scott from England, thinking her skirt is a kilt and getting angry when she claims she can't play the bagpipe.
  - averros 7y ago
    Totalitarians have used anarchists to achieve their goals in the past. Anarchists themselves may believe they're fighting the Man, but they're just being useful idiots. When the general populace gets fed up with anarchist antics and rioting they start clamoring for tougher law enforcement (and stronger leaders). That's when totalitarians come in.
  - lukifer 7y ago
    No dispute. Obviously decades of anti-Soviet propaganda (which does encapsulate many legitimate critiques) have muddled the conceptual landscape, both in terms of oversimplification, and in emotional charge. And, we have significant status quo bias regarding our particular neoliberal form of capitalism; you can't tell a fish about water. Still, even correcting for those historical factors, I think every -ism, or school of thought, suffers from similar problems in subjective perception: it's easy to find nuance and diversity of opinion if one looks for it, and equally easy to find bad actors, tribalist talking points, sloppy thinking, etc, if one looks for it. > We have a problem with people seeing Ms. Scott from England, thinking her skirt is a kilt and getting angry when she claims she can't play the bagpipe. :)

anigbrowl 7y ago

OP, if you're bootstrapping this thing at a tiny scale it looks like you've just been hit with the 'HN hug of death' as the wide readership of the website often yields a huge surge of incoming traffic to anything which lands on the front page. While someone else sorts this problem out (or you just wait for it to subside) perhaps you could explain the concept and goals here in the meantime. Don't feel bad, this happens to lots of people.

bifrost 7y ago
Pre-rendering the landing page can help too.
fstopmick 7y ago
Thanks for this! This is a super small nights/weekends experiment with a dozen or so active users; I probably should have prepared for a spike, huh? I'll leave a top-level comment to summarize the thinking before I jump back over to keeping it alive . Thank you again.

nyolfen 7y ago

this is perhaps a more useful link, assuming it will load for you: https://www.karma.fm/p/SZ1CD/karma-capital-architecture https://www.karma.fm/p/SZ1CD/karma-capital-architecture

fstopmick 7y ago
Thank you for this

fstopmick 7y ago

Hi all - Thank you for killing my baby! In short, the thinking here is that instead of building a community with the intent to monetize the users and their data, we can become sustainable through patron contributions - half of which get redistributed to the users. My thinking is that this incentivizes us all to keep costs very low and also incentivizes members to impress one another, instead of exploiting one another with clickbait or "lead-generation" (advertising for-profit stuff is strictly disallowed). RE "socialism": this isn't intended to be socialism as a religion ~ more like, "the model we're working with right now is having some painful side-effects and maybe it's worth trying a hypermodern coop / WSDE model that addresses some of the root causes of these symptoms (data abuses, CCP exerting control over our information flow / free speech, cambridge analytics stuff, LGBTQ+/small creators struggling on YouTube, etc)" which happens to align with some socialist principles, from what I gather. Here's the Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/karmafm https://www.patreon.com/karmafm This is very young and experimental, and so far there's only been a single distribution (a whopping $4 (post-fees) sent to a member from a $10 patron contribution) but the Patron contributions have since quadrupled to $40! Forgive my brevity as I attempt to keep this thing breathing and thank you for taking a look.

bifrost 7y ago
Thanks for clarifying, it sounds more like you're talking about Voluntaryism and Libertarian ideas. People paying an amount that they feel is fair vs prescribed is very forward thinking and I wish you luck! PS: I'd avoid anything that actually returns funds since its likely to end up being called a Ponzi scheme...
- fstopmick 7y ago
  Sure thing, thanks for taking an interest. And yeah, that sounds about right. Although my dream is to gradually push this into the hands of some kind of meritocratic collective ownership, where the "workers" own the "means of production", which in this case would be the students/activists being able to fork the data, app code, and devops for free at any time. RE ponzi scheme... hmmm... so when a Patron makes a $10 contribution, they can then choose which user receives half of their contribution. I wonder how to prevent the perception from turning Ponzi with this model...

RugnirViking 7y ago

Hi there. I left a comment on the site, but I'm not sure if it got through because it went down again before I could check to see. The main problem I have found so far trying to use the site is that you've made a huge variety of communities and posts using a reddit scraper. I understand the urge to have content, but starting small will allow users to actually find places where other living users are rather than an endless wasteland of bot posts with no comments. In addition, having user-driven content from the start will (hopefully) lead to a community and a unique style forming - with people sticking around because they enjoy the content and discussion already there, and posting more of the same themselves. If you want to shape the community, the best way would be to make one or two posts yourself, and try hard to comment and engage with other user's posts in the way you hope future users will. Also, the personality of the first few active users will have a large effect on how the site's culture will evolve. If you're interested in left-wing politics, perhaps try to publicise the site in the kinds of places people already talk about left-wing politics - specific subreddits or discord servers. Of course a lot of places won't like straight-up advertisement, but if you pitch it as an ongoing project and ask for ideas, people will likely be happier to accept it.

fstopmick 7y ago
It went through and I responded! I apologize for the performance headache. I'm in uncharted territory over here. https://www.karma.fm/p/SGXFV/once-upon-a-time-i-accidentally-launched-karma https://www.karma.fm/p/SGXFV/once-upon-a-time-i-accidentally... My response: Thanks so much @Rugnir. This is absolutely a problem; I'll quote you over on the most recent retrospective. I have a question: when you visit the homepage, all posts are human (filtered for "non robot posts"). You can then include bot posts by manually disabling this filter. On Tribe pages, the filter is "off" by default. Would you like to see the filter controls on the Tribe pages, with it "off" by default? ~~~ In addition, having user-driven content from the start will (hopefully) lead to a community and a unique style forming - with people sticking around because they enjoy the content and discussion already there, and posting more of the same themselves. If you want to shape the community, the best way would be to make one or two posts yourself, and try hard to comment and engage with other user's posts in the way you hope future users will. Also, the personality of the first few active users will have a large effect on how the site's culture will evolve. If you're interested in left-wing politics, perhaps try to publicise the site in the kinds of places people already talk about left-wing politics - specific subreddits or discord servers. Of course a lot of places won't like straight-up advertisement, but if you pitch it as an ongoing project and ask for ideas, people will likely be happier to accept it. ^ YES! This is all gold. Thank you.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

cyborgx7 7y ago

A "socialist social network" sounds appealing, but the words "meritocracy" and "gamification" are red flags to me. I think I'll stick with mastodon for now.

easytiger 7y ago

Can you explain some of the design? I.e. backend stuff

fstopmick 7y ago
Sure thing! The application architecture is simple - it's an n-tier app (front end > business layer > SQL server). The business layer is .NET/C#. I use Entity Framework as an ORM and then migrate the slower bits to Dapper + raw SQL whenever I need to trade maintainability for performance. I'd be happy to expand on anything specific you're curious about :)