3 ms·
Ask HN: Is there any interest in building a private community platform?
My brain is selectively looking at topics and threads that are targeting social media addiction, twitter, etc. Ultimately I think these things are not going away but every decade we see a rebalancing as we start to move to new behaviours and new platforms. But that doesn't mean the old ones leave our psyche. If anything they become a staple of our daily lives. I want to try break away from some of this. I find Twitter useful but only when following a small subset of users. I think moving to something private with people you know might be a better alternative.
If it's of interest let me know. I'd really like to build it with people.
- LewisVerstappen 3y agoSo what’s the difference between this compared to discord, WhatsApp, iMessage, etc
- eimrine 3y agoMost of private services on Internets are just worse version of email. Most of public services on Internets are just worse version of web forums. Are you seriously thinking you are able to enworsen Twitter? Why do you need email, considering that a random email account created in '20s is going to live significantly less than typical email account from '00s?
- asim 3y agoThat's sort of a random comment. Email came from a need and turned into global digital identify. Web forums became a place for internet conversations. Any iterations we made were for public real time communication and that served us well for a time but we need something that takes us back to private, async comms and using email as identity seems pretty key for those who have it. Without it, how are you governing invites and identity?
- eimrine 3y ago> how are you governing invites news.ycombinator.com/register?invite=mycoolusername > identity I would like to participate in identity-less places kind of good old IRC or web forums like HN, not like Discord or Facebook. Let's be honest, the only reason why the webmaster requires the users to provide him any bits of identity (working email, phone number, number of working credit/debet card) are just webmaster's try to squeeze some income from "dumb fucks" the users. This is uneven because chatting in general does not require participants and/or listeners to provide any data to anybody. If I need to talk to someone or limited group of people privately I would use Jabber+OTR or Tox; if I need to talk to bigger audience I would like to use a public weblog; if I have an urge to discuss something within some living community I would prefer that kind of communities which do not require the bits of identity I have mentioned (working email, phone number, number of working credit/debet card). > but we need something that takes us back to private, async comms and using email as identity seems pretty key for those who have it. I do not agree with any statement packed into this words (but I am open to discuss it). Especially I do not agree with "back" word of the quote, there were no both private and async communities anytime back. > Email came from a need and turned into global digital identify. Email came from a need to connect someone's computer to the next door guy's one and eventually it has been forced to become some kind of security theater.
- rapnie 3y agohttps://freenet.org https://freenet.org are building one right now.
- asim 3y agoThanks for sharing. Having seen that. I started writing a manifesto with similar sentiment but realised it's really hard to attract the attention needed to get it off the ground. If it's of interest https://mu.xyz/manifesto https://mu.xyz/manifesto
- mnky9800n 3y ago> I would like to make a new CRUD app that does social media better then ever before. Do you? Tbh I don't see anything taking over discord anytime soon.
- asim 3y agoI wouldn't say that's the goal. Most of these platforms are VC owned with the goal of growth. Meaning a lot of public usage. Not my goal.