4 ms·

I'd like to see a social network that tries to minimize the impact of "whale" nodes. I can go to twitter if I want to see what's on the mind of the world's top

I'd like to see a social network that tries to minimize the impact of "whale" nodes. I can go to twitter if I want to see what's on the mind of the world's top influencers. I can go to facebook if I want to see people mass-sharing news articles with 10,000 toxic comments about the latest political events. Where's the social network built around connecting you to your network and only your network? This would likely alleviate the moderation issue too. You aren't going to see filth and extremism unless it's posted by your social network, which decreases the incentive for bad actors to post it in the first place.

chasd00 6y ago
don't you setup you're own network in both FB and Twitter? i choose who my friends are in FB (I'm not on twitter)
- helen___keller 6y ago
  Sure, in theory. But I feel like on both platform you end up just seeing tons of shares/retweets of whales/influencers. (particularly the way they reorder content on your timeline so it's presented by what they think you want to see)
  - user-the-name 6y ago
    Mastodon will let you turn off boosted posts on your home timeline. It will also not reorder anything, ever.
    - knicholes 6y ago
      It also won't post an advertisement every 3rd item in your news feed...
fassssst 6y ago
Group chats are all you need for that.
- helen___keller 6y ago
  Group chats work well for a fixed set of users looking for all-to-all broadcast, but that's hardly a social network. Something like Discord gets even closer. I'd say Discord actually makes a pretty good social network, although most people don't treat it as such. In my experience, the biggest issue with discord-as-a-social-network is the binary nature of discord server membership. I've had my one "friends group" server split into 3 or 4 servers (each with 80% membership overlap) over some people who had drama, and this makes it much less manageable as a social network because you tend to spend most of your time on one or maybe two servers.
crossroadsguy 6y ago
I really liked Path and Orkut while they lasted. Well, not always, but I did find them nice. Maybe because I was younger.
nanomonkey 6y ago
This is how Scuttlebutt works. The problem is that when you download the client software, you have no content to read until you build up your network. This confuses most people that are looking to find new friends and augment their current social network with something global. The solution that I found was to go to hacker spaces and meetups and turn on the client and see who else was on the local network. Not everyone has that option.
- hinkley 6y ago
  Default content is difficult to manage, especially if the goal is to avoid cults of personality, or recreating Slashdot/Digg/Reddit on your platform. I think this is why everyone who started a MySpace account has the founder as a friend. You have one example of how the thing works, and he's too busy doing other stuff to turn it into a soap box. I think the right solution is exhibited in the way people use Slack servers for niche communities. You don't install Slack because you heard Slack is neat. You install Slack because someone sends you an invite link.
- rpdillon 6y ago
  I was having a similar problem with SSB but resolved it by subscribing to an SSB Room I ran across online that was for folks generically into tech, and that bootstrapped my experience really well, as I now have lots of channels and pubs that I can access. I agree it's quite hurdle to get over compared to what most everyone is used to, though.
grishka 6y ago
> Where's the social network built around connecting you to your network and only your network? That's exactly what I'm building (with ActivityPub). It's not yet production-ready though.
- WClayFerguson 6y ago
  Your name 'grishka' looks familiar. I'm also an ActivityPub developer (https://quanta.wiki https://quanta.wiki). What languages do you develop in, in case we can share code?
  - berkes 6y ago
    If you want to talk about sharing code or ideas on AP, https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks/ https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks/ is the place to go. (I'm there with my hn username. Building a decentralised professional social network-linkedin)
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  - grishka 6y ago
    Java for the back end, TypeScript for the very lightweight front end.
    - WClayFerguson 6y ago
      I'm also doing the same: Java+TypeScript. If you want to collaborate, I'm here: https://quanta.wiki https://quanta.wiki https://github.com/Clay-Ferguson/quantizr https://github.com/Clay-Ferguson/quantizr If you create an account on Quanta reply back with your account name so I can find you.
    - WClayFerguson 6y ago
      BTW we have spoken before. You are the developer of Smitherene, the only other ActivityPub implementation in Java other than my Quanta platform. Your code was very helpful to me getting my impl working!
WClayFerguson 6y ago
You're describing the Fediverse (Mastodon, Pleroma, etc)

chasd00 6y ago

don't you setup you're own network in both FB and Twitter? i choose who my friends are in FB (I'm not on twitter)

helen___keller 6y ago
Sure, in theory. But I feel like on both platform you end up just seeing tons of shares/retweets of whales/influencers. (particularly the way they reorder content on your timeline so it's presented by what they think you want to see)
- user-the-name 6y ago
  Mastodon will let you turn off boosted posts on your home timeline. It will also not reorder anything, ever.
  - knicholes 6y ago
    It also won't post an advertisement every 3rd item in your news feed...

fassssst 6y ago

Group chats are all you need for that.

helen___keller 6y ago
Group chats work well for a fixed set of users looking for all-to-all broadcast, but that's hardly a social network. Something like Discord gets even closer. I'd say Discord actually makes a pretty good social network, although most people don't treat it as such. In my experience, the biggest issue with discord-as-a-social-network is the binary nature of discord server membership. I've had my one "friends group" server split into 3 or 4 servers (each with 80% membership overlap) over some people who had drama, and this makes it much less manageable as a social network because you tend to spend most of your time on one or maybe two servers.

crossroadsguy 6y ago

I really liked Path and Orkut while they lasted. Well, not always, but I did find them nice. Maybe because I was younger.

nanomonkey 6y ago

This is how Scuttlebutt works. The problem is that when you download the client software, you have no content to read until you build up your network. This confuses most people that are looking to find new friends and augment their current social network with something global. The solution that I found was to go to hacker spaces and meetups and turn on the client and see who else was on the local network. Not everyone has that option.

hinkley 6y ago
Default content is difficult to manage, especially if the goal is to avoid cults of personality, or recreating Slashdot/Digg/Reddit on your platform. I think this is why everyone who started a MySpace account has the founder as a friend. You have one example of how the thing works, and he's too busy doing other stuff to turn it into a soap box. I think the right solution is exhibited in the way people use Slack servers for niche communities. You don't install Slack because you heard Slack is neat. You install Slack because someone sends you an invite link.
rpdillon 6y ago
I was having a similar problem with SSB but resolved it by subscribing to an SSB Room I ran across online that was for folks generically into tech, and that bootstrapped my experience really well, as I now have lots of channels and pubs that I can access. I agree it's quite hurdle to get over compared to what most everyone is used to, though.

grishka 6y ago

> Where's the social network built around connecting you to your network and only your network? That's exactly what I'm building (with ActivityPub). It's not yet production-ready though.

WClayFerguson 6y ago
Your name 'grishka' looks familiar. I'm also an ActivityPub developer (https://quanta.wiki https://quanta.wiki). What languages do you develop in, in case we can share code?
- berkes 6y ago
  If you want to talk about sharing code or ideas on AP, https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks/ https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks/ is the place to go. (I'm there with my hn username. Building a decentralised professional social network-linkedin)
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- grishka 6y ago
  Java for the back end, TypeScript for the very lightweight front end.
  - WClayFerguson 6y ago
    I'm also doing the same: Java+TypeScript. If you want to collaborate, I'm here: https://quanta.wiki https://quanta.wiki https://github.com/Clay-Ferguson/quantizr https://github.com/Clay-Ferguson/quantizr If you create an account on Quanta reply back with your account name so I can find you.
  - WClayFerguson 6y ago
    BTW we have spoken before. You are the developer of Smitherene, the only other ActivityPub implementation in Java other than my Quanta platform. Your code was very helpful to me getting my impl working!

WClayFerguson 6y ago

You're describing the Fediverse (Mastodon, Pleroma, etc)