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- A non-profit that provides a social network without ads/tracking. Similar to what facebook was like (profile+direct messaging+photos+groups/forums) before the

- A non-profit that provides a social network without ads/tracking. Similar to what facebook was like (profile+direct messaging+photos+groups/forums) before they expanded into all markets. Charge a fee of $1-2 a year to keep spam away and maintain the cost of servers. The hardest part of this is getting a critical mass of users.

lucakiebel 4y ago
The EU seems to try something like this, which I guess is the scale you need to get traction without being Meta or ByteDance. Though there’s only about a dozen users right now
- xigoi 4y ago
  Where?
  - homarp 4y ago
    see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31193768 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31193768 or directly at https://social.network.europa.eu/about https://social.network.europa.eu/about Note that they only provide accounts on their instance for EU institutions, bodies and agencies.
    - samemail88 4y ago
      But mastodon is more like twitter and less like facebook. I don't everything I post to be public, I just want my friends to be able to see it.
camdat 4y ago
Re: charging a fee Whatsapp tried this. People are generally unwilling to pay any amount of money for a service if a free (ad-backed) version exists.
- mikkergp 4y ago
  It's strange to realize when push comes to shove how little we value social networking, given it's ubiquity.
- samemail88 4y ago
  Whatsapp was succeeding and profitable (though peanuts in profit compared to now) with charging a dollar. Thats why if a non-profit was managing it, its goal wouldn’t be to maximize profit but to provide quality service to its users.
Sohcahtoa82 4y ago
Does Mastodon satisfy this? Or are you looking for something centralized?
- samemail88 4y ago
  When I think of a social network, I think more Facebook and less Twitter. I want something similar to Facebook where I can view friends photos, see their profile/wall and join various forums/groups. Twitter/Mastodon is more a public square where everybody is talking thinking everybody else is listening to them.
  - Sohcahtoa82 4y ago
    Ah, I didn't know Mastodon was designed to be public like Twitter. In that case, yeah. It would be nice to see an alternative to Facebook that respected privacy.
  - homarp 4y ago
    how about https://friendi.ca/ https://friendi.ca/ then?
    - samemail88 4y ago
      Close, but without centralization, I can't imagine non-techies would use this.
stonefellow 4y ago
I launched something called a social utility. It's a facebook clone but I gave the profile pages value I thought folks might pay for. I call it a calling page and it's a cross between a domain name, phone number, website and linktree page. It's hosted on a 3 digit .io numeric domain I call a domain code and users register an io#. Similar to an area code and a phone #. xxx.io/your_value It's currently invite only. I'm looking for some feedback.

lucakiebel 4y ago

The EU seems to try something like this, which I guess is the scale you need to get traction without being Meta or ByteDance. Though there’s only about a dozen users right now

xigoi 4y ago
Where?
- homarp 4y ago
  see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31193768 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31193768 or directly at https://social.network.europa.eu/about https://social.network.europa.eu/about Note that they only provide accounts on their instance for EU institutions, bodies and agencies.
  - samemail88 4y ago
    But mastodon is more like twitter and less like facebook. I don't everything I post to be public, I just want my friends to be able to see it.

camdat 4y ago

Re: charging a fee Whatsapp tried this. People are generally unwilling to pay any amount of money for a service if a free (ad-backed) version exists.

mikkergp 4y ago
It's strange to realize when push comes to shove how little we value social networking, given it's ubiquity.
samemail88 4y ago
Whatsapp was succeeding and profitable (though peanuts in profit compared to now) with charging a dollar. Thats why if a non-profit was managing it, its goal wouldn’t be to maximize profit but to provide quality service to its users.

Sohcahtoa82 4y ago

Does Mastodon satisfy this? Or are you looking for something centralized?

samemail88 4y ago
When I think of a social network, I think more Facebook and less Twitter. I want something similar to Facebook where I can view friends photos, see their profile/wall and join various forums/groups. Twitter/Mastodon is more a public square where everybody is talking thinking everybody else is listening to them.
- Sohcahtoa82 4y ago
  Ah, I didn't know Mastodon was designed to be public like Twitter. In that case, yeah. It would be nice to see an alternative to Facebook that respected privacy.
- homarp 4y ago
  how about https://friendi.ca/ https://friendi.ca/ then?
  - samemail88 4y ago
    Close, but without centralization, I can't imagine non-techies would use this.

stonefellow 4y ago

I launched something called a social utility. It's a facebook clone but I gave the profile pages value I thought folks might pay for. I call it a calling page and it's a cross between a domain name, phone number, website and linktree page. It's hosted on a 3 digit .io numeric domain I call a domain code and users register an io#. Similar to an area code and a phone #. xxx.io/your_value It's currently invite only. I'm looking for some feedback.