22 ms·

How to run a small social network site for your friends

359 points by quaintdev 5y ago

dsizzle 5y ago
>If you have some programming experience, this is for you. >If you have no programming experience, this is for you. I can't tell if there's a typo here, or if the "Who is this for?" section could be shortened to simply "everyone", haha.
- resonious 5y ago
  I think you're right: this can be shortened to "everyone". I imagine the author is just trying to make it very clear, in a humorous way. Non-programmers can use this to learn, but programmers can still use this to have fun.
2Gkashmiri 5y ago
>The reason I can make these modifications is that Mastodon is open source the pedantic me would like to point out that mastodon is "free software" more than anything "open source" because that terms can mean a lot of things that free software isn't but i get the point. yeah. there is this amazing software called pleromaPi. https://github.com/guysoft/PleromaPi/ https://github.com/guysoft/PleromaPi/ so you simply install it on a raspberry pi and you are good to go with your own social network. this is by far the easiest way to dip your toes into free software social networking via the fediverse. then there are https://fediverse.party/ https://fediverse.party/ , which if you get started with pleromapi can be much easier to understand and you will have a good time learning about technology and stuff.
- spurgu 5y ago
  What makes Pleroma different from for example Mastodon? Why would one choose one over the other?
  - 2Gkashmiri 5y ago
    it is much easier to host with lesser resources
    - spurgu 5y ago
      Thanks! I had been considering Mastodon for a private (non-federated) little community. But from a quick look it seems Pleroma doesn't have any mobile apps? That's a dealbreaker for many people.
      - vpzom 5y ago
        Pleroma emulates Mastodon's API, so most Mastodon apps also work with it
        spurgu 5y ago
        Thanks! That's interesting. Looks like I have some research to do.
      - 2Gkashmiri 5y ago
        oh. pleroma does. there is tusky and fedilab. they are all intercompatible so it works wonderfully. just login.
      - opan 5y ago
        In addition to the apps mentioned already, the mobile browser UI is actually well-liked by many.
  - 2Gkashmiri 5y ago
    mastodon needs like 4gb ram to properly work while pleroma can work on a 1gb ram vps/pi without any trouble. it is also easier to manage because there are less moving parts
  - egypturnash 5y ago
    My experience as a Mastodon admin is that Pleroma is popular among people with anime girl avatars who like to post swastikas, ethnic slurs, and right-wing propaganda.
kody 5y ago
I wish there were a way to broadcast "I am a <hobbyist> in <area>" and generate a decentralized forum (i.e. phpbb 15 years ago). Growing up, all online friends lived hundreds of miles away; as an adult, all my friends have wildly different interests. Nowadays Discord is The Answer but it's not nearly as intimate as a good message board. Maybe that's a function of growing up, but I can't help but feel disillusioned that $someone hasn't come up with a good enough solution for my use case (San Diego retro computing/HAM/etc.) that isn't instantly inundated with real-life politics.
- zimpenfish 5y ago
  Much as I don't want to promote them (it was a toxic hell working there), Kalido were trying to do this kind of "match interest<X> in area<Y> and generate introductions". https://www.kalido.me https://www.kalido.me
  - skinkestek 5y ago
    I tried looking at it briefly and the first thought that hit me is if someone except MeWe[1] is finally trying to recreate the great parts of the social network part of Google+. Would this be correct? Edit: I searched HN and the only reference I could find to Kalido was your comment(!). It looks so promising yet from the comment it doesn't seem like either something I shouldn't want to touch (like Something Awful) or something that wouldn't survive long. Is there anyone here either you or anyone else who wants to share some lore? Edit 2: It seems on a closer look to look more like a weird enterprise cross breed between linkedIn and Google+, not a general social network. Still interested to hear more about it, I feel I am reasonably well informed about such software and yet this has slipped by. [1]: I had great hopes for MeWe, but last I checked they were still lacking a great deal IMO, especially in that they don't seem to see the value of not broadcasting my actual identity to everyone.
    - zimpenfish 5y ago
      > It looks so promising yet from the comment it doesn't seem like either something I shouldn't want to touch I can't speak to the communities on there - I just worked there, never really used it myself (but the founders and others who work there do use it to make connections, I believe.) > more like a weird enterprise cross breed between linkedIn and Google+, not a general social network Yeah, the main thrust is that it's an "AI powered LinkedIn for generating communities" but there was good support for "find people who like <X> near <Y>" and get suggestions if people appeared near you with similar interests ("<A> also likes <X> and is near you in <Y>"). > this has slipped by I don't think they've got around to making a big publicity push yet.
nith3n 5y ago
I used to run a "for friends only" social network on ning.com a decade ago. Was fun till Ning changed direction.
- kingcharles 5y ago
  God, I hadn't even thought about Ning for a decade. I had to check it still existed. I remember when it was 24 Hour Laundry.
hemloc_io 5y ago
I have what I think is a unique perspective on this. Private small self run social media already exists. It's personal Minecraft servers. When I was younger I ran a Minecraft server out of my toaster of a PC. Friends hopped on, made their own little houses, built stuff and talked. Friends would pass in and out and in order to get in you had to be invited! I'd say max there were 10-20 people on there somewhat consistently. It was great, and better than social media or even game for hanging out with your friends IMO because it emulated synchronous human interaction instead of just setting up feeds where everything has to be "perfect". It was easy enough for a 14 year old to setup, and administer. Mods made it hackable and fun. I guess the metaverse was already a thing back then huh?
- mitchdoogle 5y ago
  I can't help but think that kids today are doing something like this in their own way. And that the real thing people miss when they wax nostalgic is youth.
  - michaelbrave 5y ago
    I see kids today doing this a lot with "Among Us", Fortnite and Minecraft still. Among us basically functions like a chat room but you can control who enters, password protect it, set rules for the game etc
    - EamonnMR 5y ago
      I wonder if minecraft's sticking to private servers as the first class multiplayer helped keep it relevant.
- countvonbalzac 5y ago
  i did the same thing, minecraft servers were an amazing social experience for kids
  - hemloc_io 5y ago
    100% and it got me into tech too :) Learn a lot with spare time on your hands and wanting to build something for your friends!
Nerada 5y ago
I miss how every hobby had a forum running on phpBB, SimpleMachines, Invision, etc. HN is great, but it's very point in time. If I find an interesting topic posted over a day ago, it's never getting new replies. It's a snapshot of the thoughts on that topic for that single day, nothing more.
- godshatter 5y ago
  This is exactly what I want. I don't want something federated, I just want to host a small site on a particular topic and have some moderation control. I don't need it to connect to every other social network, I just want it to be a small island that like-minded people can congregate on to talk that also has more modern features than the old phpbb did.
  - rambambram 5y ago
    Also true for me. I'm building something like that, where RSS feeds and RSS readers come together on a small personal website. Not necessarily a group chat or forum, more like a microblog/timeline/webring thing. A lot of individual websites, connected by the technology of modern and traditional internet. Question: Would the absence of a forum (or some sort of group chat) be a deal breaker for you?
    - godshatter 5y ago
      I like the idea of such a thing, if I'm understanding it. A place to write your thoughts and share them with others while being able to see their contributions? I miss the old geocities sites, even as bad as they looked, because you could create what you want and make it available to others and I miss the old webrings where you could discover new things random people created. I am interested in a small forum ability as well, but it doesn't have to be in the same application.
      - rambambram 5y ago
        Good to hear. My ideas for such a thing are based on the same sentiment; the internet as it used to be, and should be (?). I agree that some interactive parts like a forum, or even nested comments like here on HN, are necessary. That's what really makes it a two way street. Me having a website and you having a website (and us subscribing to each other's feed) is more like two one way streets. A webring is also a feature I really like. Good for related - but still random - discovery.
joe_the_user 5y ago
In my admittedly limited experience as a human being on this planet, you are not going to be able to form and maintain a cohesive group of more than about 50 to 100 people who all basically agree on values and moderation rules and that sort of stuff. I run a FB group with 5,000 members. It's active daily, on a controversial topic but I don't do a moderation actions more than a couple times a week. I'm in reddit with a million members that does fine too. Clear direction is really helpful. "No trolling at all, none" is much better than "don't do much trolling". Otherwise, I like the instructions.
- dredmorbius 5y ago
  Facebook's own automated moderation is all but certainly playing a role here. To think that this group requires no moderation is all but certainly false. There's also a distinct difference between total registered members and current active users. Especially on any group more than a few years old, there will be many registered-but attrited members who aren't regularly active. The active membership may be anywhere from half to 1% of the nominal registered count (and even smaller on very large groups). Unless you've got accurate insights into those patterns, I'd discount your experience strongly on these grounds as well. Looking at Google+ groups in the months prior to that service being shut down, I noted a number of patterns. Peak engagements, indicated by visible post, comment, and +1 (equivalent to "like") activity seemed to peak on a per-user basis at around 10,000 users or so. Not only were there far fewer very large groups (1 million+ members) than would be expected, but those that did exist were far less active than their raw size would suggest. Post activity was a much stronger predictor than size for engagement. Spot checks of larger groups showed many were overrun by spam and low-effort posts. (This despite Google's own anti-spam and anti-abuse measures.) If you're in but not moderating that large subreddit, I'd also tend to discount experience. Reddit also has its own automated anti-abuse systems, though AFAIU it relies far more on moderators, and the load and tools are a constant source of contention between the site and its (nominally) unpaid volunteer admins. Lack of trasnparency also leads to many suspicions and complaints (most unfounded, some not) against mods.
dmje 5y ago
Really great perspective from a community point of view (if you want a good read, check out the 20-year-old "Design for communities" book - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Design-Community-Derek-Powazek/dp/0735710759 https://www.amazon.co.uk/Design-Community-Derek-Powazek/dp/0...). From a software pov I'm less convinced. Seems to me that "just make a Telegram / WhatsApp / whatever" group is where most online communities seem to be coalescing...?
- jkepler 5y ago
  Problem is, Telegram stores all conversation data in their cloud with homemade encryption, and WhatsApp is proprietary, owned by Facebook, and has been target of numerous security breaches... So, something encrypted via open standards and self-hostable (matrix anyone?) does a better job guarding data privacy and security.
  - dmje 5y ago
    Yeh, agree in theory. In practice (sadly) I don't think most local groups care about privacy or security...
renewiltord 5y ago
Have private Slack. It is good.
- vaylian 5y ago
  Did you read the article?
- smolder 5y ago
  Yeah, although Privacy as a Service is never guaranteed to be private.
- sneak 5y ago
  "private Slack" is a contradiction in terms. Slack is not e2e encrypted and the people at Slack can read all of your messages and DMs. Being a US company, there are a fair number of circumstances where they have to turn the contents over to the government without a warrant or probable cause, too.
captainmuon 5y ago
For me this kinda misses the point of social networks. I don't need a special site to stay in contact with my actual friends (nor could I convince them all to join my site). I also don't need something to talk with total strangers. I want something in the middle, a site to explore the fringes of my social graph. Look up people that I barely know. Understand who is connected to whom, who is a friend of a friend. And have a low-key way of staying in touch with people who are not in my closest circle. I think this was realized with Facebook in the late 00s (or in Germany, StudiVZ). It was literally a people's directory where you would enter information you wanted to publicly share, and basically "everybody" was there.
- olah_1 5y ago
  > I want something in the middle, a site to explore the fringes of my social graph. Look up people that I barely know. Understand who is connected to whom, who is a friend of a friend. And have a low-key way of staying in touch with people who are not in my closest circle. This is what Iris is going for. https://github.com/irislib/iris-messenger https://github.com/irislib/iris-messenger
taccie 5y ago
Not really meant for friends, but for organizations and companies we have build Open Social as open-source platform: https://www.drupal.org/project/social https://www.drupal.org/project/social and SaaS at https://www.getopensocial.com/ https://www.getopensocial.com/ We are happy to have the backing of orgs as the UN and the European Commission. Goal is to go fully decoupled using React and GraphQL next year.
- nhumrich 5y ago
  Open social looks really awesome, but also looks intentionally hard to find the source code to, and figure out how to run it. There are no pricing information or demo videos on the website, so it's hard to know if the saas pricing is even feasible, and no video to help engage interest. It just says "request a demo". Why can't I watch a pre-recorded demo?
andreyk 5y ago
I actually tried to do this with Diaspora and a couple dozen of my closest friends. We tweaked it to not have like buttons, and like other fun stuff. The idea being that it'd be our own little space and we could be weird on there and design it as we felt like. Sadly, it just did not catch on, people were not invested enough in it. These days, I'm not too sure there is a point to this kind of thing instead of a group WeChat/FB or Discord or what have you chat. I do wish the community of HN had a forum kind of site, not quite social media but something with more persistent interactions on topics and perhaps among users.
- ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
  I set up an SMF site, about ten years ago. It has about a thousand members. A number have passed away, during its tenure. And tumbleweeds and dust bunnies. Facebook killed it. I keep it going, but no one really uses it.
- bertil 5y ago
  A lot of people criticise the Growth efforts are social media company —and they tend to do some shady things— but their work leads to large groups of people being active and findable on the same platform. That’s hard, requires a lot of effort and in genuinely valuable. If people included that in discussions about whether the bad habits was worth it, we could have more meaningful conversation about the role of social media.
  - DarylZero 5y ago
    It's only hard because it's zero sum competition against others doing the same. It seems to happen quite naturally.
    - bertil 5y ago
      No, it’s hard because it involves imagining a lot of ways that potential users are blocked, prioritising them, explain the product and simplify it. I’ve work for a dozen social media company and none saw itself as a zero-sum game.
Jaruzel 5y ago
What I really want to see is a guide on: 'How to convince all your friends to jump ship and join you on a platform you built, and abandon their friends in the process.' /s
- scubbo 5y ago
  This, but unsarcastically.
- fiatjaf 5y ago
  Every now and then I see this kind of post here. "Friends", they say. "Run software for your friends", they tell. I always wonder who are these people who have so many friends and who are these friends who are willing to try experimental social networks with no one else in them.
  - the_other 5y ago
    I"m the one that wants to try experimental social tools, in my circles.
  - sneak 5y ago
    You can come meet us, the link has been in my profile for months. ;)
- sneak 5y ago
  Why does using an additional platform require abandoning anything? Having a forum account doesn't delete your Twitter.
bertil 5y ago
I'm not sure that many people would want to share what they put on social networks with their local computer enthusiast. Talk about hobby, neighbourhood questions, lost child—sure. But a lot of conversation on there are gossiping, private information, the occasional password. A lot has been said here about privacy and how social media company might abuse it; the reality, is that they don’t care much about your private conversation, unless they can target ads based on this, or grab your attention. They don’t have the time or the inclination. Your colleague who can see all private message on Slack without notification and probably does religiously (yeah, that’s a thing) on the other hand…
- grishka 5y ago
  You can't guarantee privacy in a federated system and it's important to understand. I'm working on my own ActivityPub project and I don't even support any kind of non-public content for now. I'll be exploring the options for e2e encrypted instant messaging later tho.
  - eevilspock 5y ago
    One-to-many messages can be encrypted with end-to-end encryption by encrypting a copy for each recipient using their public key. Apple essentially does this with iMessage, both for sending a message to each of your devices as well as to each recipient in a group chat.
    - grishka 5y ago
      The problem with that is that you now have to have a "client" to decrypt and display those posts. And it has to manage keys. And you have to shift some of that burden onto the user because otherwise the key could be accessible to the server. People do somewhat expect this stuff for messaging, but it'll get really messy really fast for posts and photos and similar long-lived content. It'll get even messier when you consider that privacy options in this style of social network are the likes of "friends only", so they include dynamic collections of users.
darcys22 5y ago
The best social network these days is a smallish closed group chat on your favourite platform. There are apps that exist already to keep these private if you wish. But the key is curating the chat so there is good signal from friends who arnt starting flame wars.
- GekkePrutser 5y ago
  This, I think this is really why Facebook bought WhatsApp.. Because they buy everything they view as a threat and it kinda is.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
arvindamirtaa 5y ago
Takes me back to the hay days ning.com days!
streamofdigits 5y ago
Small social networks is the real "web3" opportunity. The contours and requirements to reach that next stage are still somewhat blurry: * how to make them ubiquitous (easy hosting, maintenance, moderation) * how to federate flexibly and effectively (private/public boundaries, social graph discovery, integrate different media, polymorphic clients) * how to nudge behavior, extract people from their digital prisons and reboot them into more sane behaviors - not trivial, some real social scientist input required * how to make them self-financing without creating distorted incentives for any stakeholder etc. there are lots of things to work out but its clear we've been through an centralized web / walled garden aberration period that inflicted untold damage to the broader "digital transformation" enterprise and legitimized / rewarded abusive practices that can not persist as a permanent pattern
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
known 5y ago
WhatsApp, if it's really a small group
high_5 5y ago
How about just having Signal groups?
- nhumrich 5y ago
  Uh. I personally hate signal groups. If you ever lose your phone, you loose all history. The desktop app works, but won't show any history. I know in signals eyes this is intentional, but it's also silly. I had access to all that information, it's not any less safe on a new device that I have to prove I own.
  - sneak 5y ago
    You don't have a logged history of all of your in-person chats with your friend groups, either.
    - nhumrich 5y ago
      Neither does the other person, though. With signal, you lose history, but anyone who hasn't changed devices, doesn't.
- olah_1 5y ago
  Agree. If they're really your friends, you already have their phone numbers.
gandutraveler 5y ago
Who do you prefer to share your personal data with? A friend or a large tech. No more gossips or sleeping with your friends partner
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
amacbride 5y ago
The BBS lives again!
oxymoran 5y ago
“ As an example, Friend Camp is anti-free-speech, at least in the sense that freedom of speech is commonly understood as a value. This is repulsive to some people on both the left and the right, and it's important that people with that core value find somewhere other than Friend Camp to set up their online home. For those wondering, the RationalWiki definition of freedom of speech is exactly the kind of freedom of speech we take issue with on our server. Again, you may find this abhorrent, but you don't have to join our server, and we're never going to house more than a few dozen people.” Lolololololololooololol. Even rational wiki is too moderate.
ubermonkey 5y ago
I have this problem now, or, at least, I have a problem that might be solved with such a site. However, the trick would be convincing NON-technical people to use it rather than ad-hoc group texts or (ugh) Facebook.
vegetablepotpie 5y ago
> Friend Camp is anti-free-speech, at least in the sense that freedom of speech is commonly understood as a value. This is repulsive to some people on both the left and the right, and it's important that people with that core value find somewhere other than Friend Camp to set up their online home I like this perspective because free speech is considered fundamental to the point that if you don’t uphold it, you’re considered a totalitarian. Not having an absolute view of free speech is what we would call a more nuanced view. Although I wouldn’t want a University, the ACLU, or Facebook taking this view, I think it’s fine for a small community to take it and is one of the things that can attract people to small social networks.
- fartcannon 5y ago
  Nuance is where all the bullshit is. That's where soft power thrives.
  - lolsal 5y ago
    Why is a nuanced perspective bullshit?
    - fartcannon 5y ago
      No, that's where the bullshit is, not that nuance is bullshit. Nuance is great for certain things, like art. But, like art, there's a lot of room for interpretation, misunderstanding, impersonators, and even deceptive dishonesty. Nuance requires everyone is on the same page. What looks like a masterwork to you, might look like something a child could paint to the teeming millions.
      - voakbasda 5y ago
        > Nuance requires everyone is on the same page. What looks like a masterwork to you, might look like something a child could paint to the teeming millions. I suspect they mean Jackson Pollock: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackson_Pollock?wprov=sfti1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackson_Pollock?wprov=sfti1 I personally lack sufficient “nuance” to appreciate his work.
dpeck 5y ago
It would be tough to get any adoption at larger than a small handful of people scale, and most of that already happens over private chat platforms. I help curate networks for my fraternity (US, college for those of you not familiar with it). Many of us are in the same or related career fields, and there’s a few hobbies that are common to find in the group (sports, music, etc). These are people who, for the most part, genuinely enjoy spending time with each other, meeting up a few times a year as at larger events like our colleges homecoming and our founders day. Many spouses are close friends too and people who live near each other often hang out together, kids play sports on same teams, etc. But even with those things going for us, it is damn hard to curate any sort of social space with continued interaction. People have become accustomed to things being so niche, that groups with wide-ranging topics are dead. If people want to talk guitars, they’ll do that on a subreddit, or find the Facebook group for their cars. People self-select into hyper-specified conversation groups. I have been unsuccessful in finding a way to successfully foster wider, continuous conversation in a group setting. The closest I’ve seen to that is in larger family text threads where aunts/cousins/etc will occasionally share pics of what they’re doing or share that they got a promotion at work or something. It seems rare outside of a family dynamic. I hope the OP, or someone figures out a good way to build community that isn’t just laser focused on a specific thing, or built around a cult of personality, but I fear that’s more or less human nature, at least in current US culture.
- btbuildem 5y ago
  > It would be tough to get any adoption at larger than a small handful of people scale I think that's exactly the point. OP wants a human-sized community, without the cancerous mandate of growth. It's meant to be a bulletin board for your immediate community, around dozens of people in size on average.
  - dpeck 5y ago
    I guess we have different ideas of small handful. I’m not thinking continuous growth, I’m thinking things in the range of Dunbars number. Personally I haven’t seen anything work for more than about 5-10 people, and group chat really works fine at the < 10 scale in my opinion.
chasd00 5y ago
May be an oversimplification but I have a group iMessage on my phone with a handful of college buddies. It works pretty much perfectly as a private social network.
wishinghand 5y ago
This reminds me of a blog post that I can’t find anymore. I sort of remember the title being a riff on “Cooking for One” but it might have been “Programming for One”. It was about the author making a little photo sharing app just for their family. Kind of like a snapchat clone, but invite only for friends and family, no public feed at all. Does this ring a bell for anyone?
- ents 5y ago
  [An app can be a home-cooked meal](https://www.robinsloan.com/notes/home-cooked-app/ https://www.robinsloan.com/notes/home-cooked-app/)
  - wishinghand 5y ago
    Thank you so much! This has been itching my brain for a while.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
pbhjpbhj 5y ago
Anyone remember Opera Unite, https://web.archive.org/web/20091120143058/http://my.opera.com/unite/blog/2009/11/16/hello-yusef-example-opera-unite-application https://web.archive.org/web/20091120143058/http://my.opera.c... I was all-in on it being a new decentralisation of the web, that Facebook et al. would become syndicators of our broadcast content. We'd publish the content from our own computers and online services would cache it for access, but it would always be available as long as there was a direct route from my home computer to yours. Still, I see that this sort of system could happen, basically a web-mesh.
smm11 5y ago
Blogger has always been the way.
karaterobot 5y ago
I agree with all the problems they note about large social networks: not being in control of the software, the data, the rules, and so on. I think this approach solves many of those problems. But, some of other the problems with systems like Twitter and Facebook are inherent to the style of communication, and are not solved by just hosting your own Twitter and Facebook clone.
SavantIdiot 5y ago
Every time this article shows up on HN I give mastodon a shot. I've tried to launch mastodon multiple times over the past few years. It is non-trivial for someone who doesn't know the dozen components involved, and not just the docker image. I hope someone makes a better docker container that is a little more plug-and-play with AWS or DigialOcean.
- bthallplz 5y ago
  Have you checked out Pleroma? I've heard that it's much more light-weight, and it interoperates with Mastodon.
scionthefly 5y ago
At first glance it seems like people are reinventing the BBS.
lcnmrn 5y ago
That's was the initial purpose of Subreply.com just for friends, but it evolved past that and now I have to review each new account. It's still great because everyone it's verified. I wish there was a service to allow only real people to sign up on small sites / forums.
rpmisms 5y ago
This is Discord. I have several small friend groups who meet and talk through Discord without having to deal with running our own service.
hayley-patton 5y ago
All the complications with federation and fitting poorly-defined "communities" into well-defined servers, and the author's idea of "neighbourhoods", are incredibly prone to failure. From experience, I only got along with a few people in such small "communities", and, at best, felt no connection whatsoever with the rest; thus I can only reject the idea that having a small and rigid community is ever a good idea. I seriously think that having to pick just one community, and then manage everything via a community, is the cause of most moderation/administration/management/etc disasters on the Fediverse. Servers should just be public utilities, and no further associations should be given to them; leave the people who use them to decide what a community is!
popfastful 5y ago
I am creating two new webapp for you! alovez.com alternative to facebook.com and snapfeel.com alternative to instagram.com

359 points by quaintdev 5y ago

>If you have some programming experience, this is for you. >If you have no programming experience, this is for you. I can't tell if there's a typo here, or if the "Who is this for?" section could be shortened to simply "everyone", haha.

resonious 5y ago
I think you're right: this can be shortened to "everyone". I imagine the author is just trying to make it very clear, in a humorous way. Non-programmers can use this to learn, but programmers can still use this to have fun.

2Gkashmiri 5y ago

>The reason I can make these modifications is that Mastodon is open source the pedantic me would like to point out that mastodon is "free software" more than anything "open source" because that terms can mean a lot of things that free software isn't but i get the point. yeah. there is this amazing software called pleromaPi. https://github.com/guysoft/PleromaPi/ https://github.com/guysoft/PleromaPi/ so you simply install it on a raspberry pi and you are good to go with your own social network. this is by far the easiest way to dip your toes into free software social networking via the fediverse. then there are https://fediverse.party/ https://fediverse.party/ , which if you get started with pleromapi can be much easier to understand and you will have a good time learning about technology and stuff.

spurgu 5y ago
What makes Pleroma different from for example Mastodon? Why would one choose one over the other?
- 2Gkashmiri 5y ago
  it is much easier to host with lesser resources
  - spurgu 5y ago
    Thanks! I had been considering Mastodon for a private (non-federated) little community. But from a quick look it seems Pleroma doesn't have any mobile apps? That's a dealbreaker for many people.
    - vpzom 5y ago
      Pleroma emulates Mastodon's API, so most Mastodon apps also work with it
      - spurgu 5y ago
        Thanks! That's interesting. Looks like I have some research to do.
    - 2Gkashmiri 5y ago
      oh. pleroma does. there is tusky and fedilab. they are all intercompatible so it works wonderfully. just login.
    - opan 5y ago
      In addition to the apps mentioned already, the mobile browser UI is actually well-liked by many.
- 2Gkashmiri 5y ago
  mastodon needs like 4gb ram to properly work while pleroma can work on a 1gb ram vps/pi without any trouble. it is also easier to manage because there are less moving parts
- egypturnash 5y ago
  My experience as a Mastodon admin is that Pleroma is popular among people with anime girl avatars who like to post swastikas, ethnic slurs, and right-wing propaganda.

kody 5y ago

I wish there were a way to broadcast "I am a <hobbyist> in <area>" and generate a decentralized forum (i.e. phpbb 15 years ago). Growing up, all online friends lived hundreds of miles away; as an adult, all my friends have wildly different interests. Nowadays Discord is The Answer but it's not nearly as intimate as a good message board. Maybe that's a function of growing up, but I can't help but feel disillusioned that $someone hasn't come up with a good enough solution for my use case (San Diego retro computing/HAM/etc.) that isn't instantly inundated with real-life politics.

zimpenfish 5y ago
Much as I don't want to promote them (it was a toxic hell working there), Kalido were trying to do this kind of "match interest<X> in area<Y> and generate introductions". https://www.kalido.me https://www.kalido.me
- skinkestek 5y ago
  I tried looking at it briefly and the first thought that hit me is if someone except MeWe[1] is finally trying to recreate the great parts of the social network part of Google+. Would this be correct? Edit: I searched HN and the only reference I could find to Kalido was your comment(!). It looks so promising yet from the comment it doesn't seem like either something I shouldn't want to touch (like Something Awful) or something that wouldn't survive long. Is there anyone here either you or anyone else who wants to share some lore? Edit 2: It seems on a closer look to look more like a weird enterprise cross breed between linkedIn and Google+, not a general social network. Still interested to hear more about it, I feel I am reasonably well informed about such software and yet this has slipped by. [1]: I had great hopes for MeWe, but last I checked they were still lacking a great deal IMO, especially in that they don't seem to see the value of not broadcasting my actual identity to everyone.
  - zimpenfish 5y ago
    > It looks so promising yet from the comment it doesn't seem like either something I shouldn't want to touch I can't speak to the communities on there - I just worked there, never really used it myself (but the founders and others who work there do use it to make connections, I believe.) > more like a weird enterprise cross breed between linkedIn and Google+, not a general social network Yeah, the main thrust is that it's an "AI powered LinkedIn for generating communities" but there was good support for "find people who like <X> near <Y>" and get suggestions if people appeared near you with similar interests ("<A> also likes <X> and is near you in <Y>"). > this has slipped by I don't think they've got around to making a big publicity push yet.

nith3n 5y ago

I used to run a "for friends only" social network on ning.com a decade ago. Was fun till Ning changed direction.

kingcharles 5y ago
God, I hadn't even thought about Ning for a decade. I had to check it still existed. I remember when it was 24 Hour Laundry.

hemloc_io 5y ago

I have what I think is a unique perspective on this. Private small self run social media already exists. It's personal Minecraft servers. When I was younger I ran a Minecraft server out of my toaster of a PC. Friends hopped on, made their own little houses, built stuff and talked. Friends would pass in and out and in order to get in you had to be invited! I'd say max there were 10-20 people on there somewhat consistently. It was great, and better than social media or even game for hanging out with your friends IMO because it emulated synchronous human interaction instead of just setting up feeds where everything has to be "perfect". It was easy enough for a 14 year old to setup, and administer. Mods made it hackable and fun. I guess the metaverse was already a thing back then huh?

mitchdoogle 5y ago
I can't help but think that kids today are doing something like this in their own way. And that the real thing people miss when they wax nostalgic is youth.
- michaelbrave 5y ago
  I see kids today doing this a lot with "Among Us", Fortnite and Minecraft still. Among us basically functions like a chat room but you can control who enters, password protect it, set rules for the game etc
  - EamonnMR 5y ago
    I wonder if minecraft's sticking to private servers as the first class multiplayer helped keep it relevant.
countvonbalzac 5y ago
i did the same thing, minecraft servers were an amazing social experience for kids
- hemloc_io 5y ago
  100% and it got me into tech too :) Learn a lot with spare time on your hands and wanting to build something for your friends!

Nerada 5y ago

I miss how every hobby had a forum running on phpBB, SimpleMachines, Invision, etc. HN is great, but it's very point in time. If I find an interesting topic posted over a day ago, it's never getting new replies. It's a snapshot of the thoughts on that topic for that single day, nothing more.

godshatter 5y ago
This is exactly what I want. I don't want something federated, I just want to host a small site on a particular topic and have some moderation control. I don't need it to connect to every other social network, I just want it to be a small island that like-minded people can congregate on to talk that also has more modern features than the old phpbb did.
- rambambram 5y ago
  Also true for me. I'm building something like that, where RSS feeds and RSS readers come together on a small personal website. Not necessarily a group chat or forum, more like a microblog/timeline/webring thing. A lot of individual websites, connected by the technology of modern and traditional internet. Question: Would the absence of a forum (or some sort of group chat) be a deal breaker for you?
  - godshatter 5y ago
    I like the idea of such a thing, if I'm understanding it. A place to write your thoughts and share them with others while being able to see their contributions? I miss the old geocities sites, even as bad as they looked, because you could create what you want and make it available to others and I miss the old webrings where you could discover new things random people created. I am interested in a small forum ability as well, but it doesn't have to be in the same application.
    - rambambram 5y ago
      Good to hear. My ideas for such a thing are based on the same sentiment; the internet as it used to be, and should be (?). I agree that some interactive parts like a forum, or even nested comments like here on HN, are necessary. That's what really makes it a two way street. Me having a website and you having a website (and us subscribing to each other's feed) is more like two one way streets. A webring is also a feature I really like. Good for related - but still random - discovery.

joe_the_user 5y ago

In my admittedly limited experience as a human being on this planet, you are not going to be able to form and maintain a cohesive group of more than about 50 to 100 people who all basically agree on values and moderation rules and that sort of stuff. I run a FB group with 5,000 members. It's active daily, on a controversial topic but I don't do a moderation actions more than a couple times a week. I'm in reddit with a million members that does fine too. Clear direction is really helpful. "No trolling at all, none" is much better than "don't do much trolling". Otherwise, I like the instructions.

dredmorbius 5y ago
Facebook's own automated moderation is all but certainly playing a role here. To think that this group requires no moderation is all but certainly false. There's also a distinct difference between total registered members and current active users. Especially on any group more than a few years old, there will be many registered-but attrited members who aren't regularly active. The active membership may be anywhere from half to 1% of the nominal registered count (and even smaller on very large groups). Unless you've got accurate insights into those patterns, I'd discount your experience strongly on these grounds as well. Looking at Google+ groups in the months prior to that service being shut down, I noted a number of patterns. Peak engagements, indicated by visible post, comment, and +1 (equivalent to "like") activity seemed to peak on a per-user basis at around 10,000 users or so. Not only were there far fewer very large groups (1 million+ members) than would be expected, but those that did exist were far less active than their raw size would suggest. Post activity was a much stronger predictor than size for engagement. Spot checks of larger groups showed many were overrun by spam and low-effort posts. (This despite Google's own anti-spam and anti-abuse measures.) If you're in but not moderating that large subreddit, I'd also tend to discount experience. Reddit also has its own automated anti-abuse systems, though AFAIU it relies far more on moderators, and the load and tools are a constant source of contention between the site and its (nominally) unpaid volunteer admins. Lack of trasnparency also leads to many suspicions and complaints (most unfounded, some not) against mods.

dmje 5y ago

Really great perspective from a community point of view (if you want a good read, check out the 20-year-old "Design for communities" book - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Design-Community-Derek-Powazek/dp/0735710759 https://www.amazon.co.uk/Design-Community-Derek-Powazek/dp/0...). From a software pov I'm less convinced. Seems to me that "just make a Telegram / WhatsApp / whatever" group is where most online communities seem to be coalescing...?

jkepler 5y ago
Problem is, Telegram stores all conversation data in their cloud with homemade encryption, and WhatsApp is proprietary, owned by Facebook, and has been target of numerous security breaches... So, something encrypted via open standards and self-hostable (matrix anyone?) does a better job guarding data privacy and security.
- dmje 5y ago
  Yeh, agree in theory. In practice (sadly) I don't think most local groups care about privacy or security...

renewiltord 5y ago

Have private Slack. It is good.

vaylian 5y ago
Did you read the article?
smolder 5y ago
Yeah, although Privacy as a Service is never guaranteed to be private.
sneak 5y ago
"private Slack" is a contradiction in terms. Slack is not e2e encrypted and the people at Slack can read all of your messages and DMs. Being a US company, there are a fair number of circumstances where they have to turn the contents over to the government without a warrant or probable cause, too.

captainmuon 5y ago

For me this kinda misses the point of social networks. I don't need a special site to stay in contact with my actual friends (nor could I convince them all to join my site). I also don't need something to talk with total strangers. I want something in the middle, a site to explore the fringes of my social graph. Look up people that I barely know. Understand who is connected to whom, who is a friend of a friend. And have a low-key way of staying in touch with people who are not in my closest circle. I think this was realized with Facebook in the late 00s (or in Germany, StudiVZ). It was literally a people's directory where you would enter information you wanted to publicly share, and basically "everybody" was there.

olah_1 5y ago
> I want something in the middle, a site to explore the fringes of my social graph. Look up people that I barely know. Understand who is connected to whom, who is a friend of a friend. And have a low-key way of staying in touch with people who are not in my closest circle. This is what Iris is going for. https://github.com/irislib/iris-messenger https://github.com/irislib/iris-messenger

taccie 5y ago

Not really meant for friends, but for organizations and companies we have build Open Social as open-source platform: https://www.drupal.org/project/social https://www.drupal.org/project/social and SaaS at https://www.getopensocial.com/ https://www.getopensocial.com/ We are happy to have the backing of orgs as the UN and the European Commission. Goal is to go fully decoupled using React and GraphQL next year.

nhumrich 5y ago
Open social looks really awesome, but also looks intentionally hard to find the source code to, and figure out how to run it. There are no pricing information or demo videos on the website, so it's hard to know if the saas pricing is even feasible, and no video to help engage interest. It just says "request a demo". Why can't I watch a pre-recorded demo?

andreyk 5y ago

I actually tried to do this with Diaspora and a couple dozen of my closest friends. We tweaked it to not have like buttons, and like other fun stuff. The idea being that it'd be our own little space and we could be weird on there and design it as we felt like. Sadly, it just did not catch on, people were not invested enough in it. These days, I'm not too sure there is a point to this kind of thing instead of a group WeChat/FB or Discord or what have you chat. I do wish the community of HN had a forum kind of site, not quite social media but something with more persistent interactions on topics and perhaps among users.

ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
I set up an SMF site, about ten years ago. It has about a thousand members. A number have passed away, during its tenure. And tumbleweeds and dust bunnies. Facebook killed it. I keep it going, but no one really uses it.
bertil 5y ago
A lot of people criticise the Growth efforts are social media company —and they tend to do some shady things— but their work leads to large groups of people being active and findable on the same platform. That’s hard, requires a lot of effort and in genuinely valuable. If people included that in discussions about whether the bad habits was worth it, we could have more meaningful conversation about the role of social media.
- DarylZero 5y ago
  It's only hard because it's zero sum competition against others doing the same. It seems to happen quite naturally.
  - bertil 5y ago
    No, it’s hard because it involves imagining a lot of ways that potential users are blocked, prioritising them, explain the product and simplify it. I’ve work for a dozen social media company and none saw itself as a zero-sum game.

Jaruzel 5y ago

What I really want to see is a guide on: 'How to convince all your friends to jump ship and join you on a platform you built, and abandon their friends in the process.' /s

scubbo 5y ago
This, but unsarcastically.
fiatjaf 5y ago
Every now and then I see this kind of post here. "Friends", they say. "Run software for your friends", they tell. I always wonder who are these people who have so many friends and who are these friends who are willing to try experimental social networks with no one else in them.
- the_other 5y ago
  I"m the one that wants to try experimental social tools, in my circles.
- sneak 5y ago
  You can come meet us, the link has been in my profile for months. ;)
sneak 5y ago
Why does using an additional platform require abandoning anything? Having a forum account doesn't delete your Twitter.

bertil 5y ago

I'm not sure that many people would want to share what they put on social networks with their local computer enthusiast. Talk about hobby, neighbourhood questions, lost child—sure. But a lot of conversation on there are gossiping, private information, the occasional password. A lot has been said here about privacy and how social media company might abuse it; the reality, is that they don’t care much about your private conversation, unless they can target ads based on this, or grab your attention. They don’t have the time or the inclination. Your colleague who can see all private message on Slack without notification and probably does religiously (yeah, that’s a thing) on the other hand…

grishka 5y ago
You can't guarantee privacy in a federated system and it's important to understand. I'm working on my own ActivityPub project and I don't even support any kind of non-public content for now. I'll be exploring the options for e2e encrypted instant messaging later tho.
- eevilspock 5y ago
  One-to-many messages can be encrypted with end-to-end encryption by encrypting a copy for each recipient using their public key. Apple essentially does this with iMessage, both for sending a message to each of your devices as well as to each recipient in a group chat.
  - grishka 5y ago
    The problem with that is that you now have to have a "client" to decrypt and display those posts. And it has to manage keys. And you have to shift some of that burden onto the user because otherwise the key could be accessible to the server. People do somewhat expect this stuff for messaging, but it'll get really messy really fast for posts and photos and similar long-lived content. It'll get even messier when you consider that privacy options in this style of social network are the likes of "friends only", so they include dynamic collections of users.

darcys22 5y ago

The best social network these days is a smallish closed group chat on your favourite platform. There are apps that exist already to keep these private if you wish. But the key is curating the chat so there is good signal from friends who arnt starting flame wars.

GekkePrutser 5y ago
This, I think this is really why Facebook bought WhatsApp.. Because they buy everything they view as a threat and it kinda is.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

arvindamirtaa 5y ago

Takes me back to the hay days ning.com days!

streamofdigits 5y ago

Small social networks is the real "web3" opportunity. The contours and requirements to reach that next stage are still somewhat blurry: * how to make them ubiquitous (easy hosting, maintenance, moderation) * how to federate flexibly and effectively (private/public boundaries, social graph discovery, integrate different media, polymorphic clients) * how to nudge behavior, extract people from their digital prisons and reboot them into more sane behaviors - not trivial, some real social scientist input required * how to make them self-financing without creating distorted incentives for any stakeholder etc. there are lots of things to work out but its clear we've been through an centralized web / walled garden aberration period that inflicted untold damage to the broader "digital transformation" enterprise and legitimized / rewarded abusive practices that can not persist as a permanent pattern

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

known 5y ago

WhatsApp, if it's really a small group

high_5 5y ago

How about just having Signal groups?

nhumrich 5y ago
Uh. I personally hate signal groups. If you ever lose your phone, you loose all history. The desktop app works, but won't show any history. I know in signals eyes this is intentional, but it's also silly. I had access to all that information, it's not any less safe on a new device that I have to prove I own.
- sneak 5y ago
  You don't have a logged history of all of your in-person chats with your friend groups, either.
  - nhumrich 5y ago
    Neither does the other person, though. With signal, you lose history, but anyone who hasn't changed devices, doesn't.
olah_1 5y ago
Agree. If they're really your friends, you already have their phone numbers.

gandutraveler 5y ago

Who do you prefer to share your personal data with? A friend or a large tech. No more gossips or sleeping with your friends partner

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

amacbride 5y ago

The BBS lives again!

oxymoran 5y ago

“ As an example, Friend Camp is anti-free-speech, at least in the sense that freedom of speech is commonly understood as a value. This is repulsive to some people on both the left and the right, and it's important that people with that core value find somewhere other than Friend Camp to set up their online home. For those wondering, the RationalWiki definition of freedom of speech is exactly the kind of freedom of speech we take issue with on our server. Again, you may find this abhorrent, but you don't have to join our server, and we're never going to house more than a few dozen people.” Lolololololololooololol. Even rational wiki is too moderate.

ubermonkey 5y ago

I have this problem now, or, at least, I have a problem that might be solved with such a site. However, the trick would be convincing NON-technical people to use it rather than ad-hoc group texts or (ugh) Facebook.

vegetablepotpie 5y ago

> Friend Camp is anti-free-speech, at least in the sense that freedom of speech is commonly understood as a value. This is repulsive to some people on both the left and the right, and it's important that people with that core value find somewhere other than Friend Camp to set up their online home I like this perspective because free speech is considered fundamental to the point that if you don’t uphold it, you’re considered a totalitarian. Not having an absolute view of free speech is what we would call a more nuanced view. Although I wouldn’t want a University, the ACLU, or Facebook taking this view, I think it’s fine for a small community to take it and is one of the things that can attract people to small social networks.

fartcannon 5y ago
Nuance is where all the bullshit is. That's where soft power thrives.
- lolsal 5y ago
  Why is a nuanced perspective bullshit?
  - fartcannon 5y ago
    No, that's where the bullshit is, not that nuance is bullshit. Nuance is great for certain things, like art. But, like art, there's a lot of room for interpretation, misunderstanding, impersonators, and even deceptive dishonesty. Nuance requires everyone is on the same page. What looks like a masterwork to you, might look like something a child could paint to the teeming millions.
    - voakbasda 5y ago
      > Nuance requires everyone is on the same page. What looks like a masterwork to you, might look like something a child could paint to the teeming millions. I suspect they mean Jackson Pollock: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackson_Pollock?wprov=sfti1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackson_Pollock?wprov=sfti1 I personally lack sufficient “nuance” to appreciate his work.

dpeck 5y ago

It would be tough to get any adoption at larger than a small handful of people scale, and most of that already happens over private chat platforms. I help curate networks for my fraternity (US, college for those of you not familiar with it). Many of us are in the same or related career fields, and there’s a few hobbies that are common to find in the group (sports, music, etc). These are people who, for the most part, genuinely enjoy spending time with each other, meeting up a few times a year as at larger events like our colleges homecoming and our founders day. Many spouses are close friends too and people who live near each other often hang out together, kids play sports on same teams, etc. But even with those things going for us, it is damn hard to curate any sort of social space with continued interaction. People have become accustomed to things being so niche, that groups with wide-ranging topics are dead. If people want to talk guitars, they’ll do that on a subreddit, or find the Facebook group for their cars. People self-select into hyper-specified conversation groups. I have been unsuccessful in finding a way to successfully foster wider, continuous conversation in a group setting. The closest I’ve seen to that is in larger family text threads where aunts/cousins/etc will occasionally share pics of what they’re doing or share that they got a promotion at work or something. It seems rare outside of a family dynamic. I hope the OP, or someone figures out a good way to build community that isn’t just laser focused on a specific thing, or built around a cult of personality, but I fear that’s more or less human nature, at least in current US culture.

btbuildem 5y ago
> It would be tough to get any adoption at larger than a small handful of people scale I think that's exactly the point. OP wants a human-sized community, without the cancerous mandate of growth. It's meant to be a bulletin board for your immediate community, around dozens of people in size on average.
- dpeck 5y ago
  I guess we have different ideas of small handful. I’m not thinking continuous growth, I’m thinking things in the range of Dunbars number. Personally I haven’t seen anything work for more than about 5-10 people, and group chat really works fine at the < 10 scale in my opinion.

chasd00 5y ago

May be an oversimplification but I have a group iMessage on my phone with a handful of college buddies. It works pretty much perfectly as a private social network.

wishinghand 5y ago

This reminds me of a blog post that I can’t find anymore. I sort of remember the title being a riff on “Cooking for One” but it might have been “Programming for One”. It was about the author making a little photo sharing app just for their family. Kind of like a snapchat clone, but invite only for friends and family, no public feed at all. Does this ring a bell for anyone?

ents 5y ago
[An app can be a home-cooked meal](https://www.robinsloan.com/notes/home-cooked-app/ https://www.robinsloan.com/notes/home-cooked-app/)
- wishinghand 5y ago
  Thank you so much! This has been itching my brain for a while.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

pbhjpbhj 5y ago

Anyone remember Opera Unite, https://web.archive.org/web/20091120143058/http://my.opera.com/unite/blog/2009/11/16/hello-yusef-example-opera-unite-application https://web.archive.org/web/20091120143058/http://my.opera.c... I was all-in on it being a new decentralisation of the web, that Facebook et al. would become syndicators of our broadcast content. We'd publish the content from our own computers and online services would cache it for access, but it would always be available as long as there was a direct route from my home computer to yours. Still, I see that this sort of system could happen, basically a web-mesh.

smm11 5y ago

Blogger has always been the way.

karaterobot 5y ago

I agree with all the problems they note about large social networks: not being in control of the software, the data, the rules, and so on. I think this approach solves many of those problems. But, some of other the problems with systems like Twitter and Facebook are inherent to the style of communication, and are not solved by just hosting your own Twitter and Facebook clone.

SavantIdiot 5y ago

Every time this article shows up on HN I give mastodon a shot. I've tried to launch mastodon multiple times over the past few years. It is non-trivial for someone who doesn't know the dozen components involved, and not just the docker image. I hope someone makes a better docker container that is a little more plug-and-play with AWS or DigialOcean.

bthallplz 5y ago
Have you checked out Pleroma? I've heard that it's much more light-weight, and it interoperates with Mastodon.

scionthefly 5y ago

At first glance it seems like people are reinventing the BBS.

lcnmrn 5y ago

That's was the initial purpose of Subreply.com just for friends, but it evolved past that and now I have to review each new account. It's still great because everyone it's verified. I wish there was a service to allow only real people to sign up on small sites / forums.

rpmisms 5y ago

This is Discord. I have several small friend groups who meet and talk through Discord without having to deal with running our own service.

hayley-patton 5y ago

All the complications with federation and fitting poorly-defined "communities" into well-defined servers, and the author's idea of "neighbourhoods", are incredibly prone to failure. From experience, I only got along with a few people in such small "communities", and, at best, felt no connection whatsoever with the rest; thus I can only reject the idea that having a small and rigid community is ever a good idea. I seriously think that having to pick just one community, and then manage everything via a community, is the cause of most moderation/administration/management/etc disasters on the Fediverse. Servers should just be public utilities, and no further associations should be given to them; leave the people who use them to decide what a community is!

popfastful 5y ago

I am creating two new webapp for you! alovez.com alternative to facebook.com and snapfeel.com alternative to instagram.com