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Not just anyone can start a water company. The capital investment is massive and it’s a natural monopoly unless you want five redundant networks of pipes. At t

by api 3y ago

Not just anyone can start a water company. The capital investment is massive and it’s a natural monopoly unless you want five redundant networks of pipes. At this point a few competent programmers who knows web tech and can either use cloud or set up their own operations on cheap bare metal servers can start a social network. The bar only gets lower over time as it gets cheaper and easier to run large Internet services. The barrier is even lower if you include running your own simple web forum, board, or a fediverse node. Anyone who knows a little sysadmin and can afford a $20/month VPS can do that. I do agree that there should be regulations around net neutrality that prevent ISPs and backbone carriers from discriminating against any legal form of traffic since those are more like the water company, but the fact that everything is encrypted these days makes that kind of discrimination hard anyway.

dragonwriter 3y ago
Sure, the barrier isn’t infrastructure (like a water company) or technical skill, its network effects. You can build what would, with a critical mass of users, be a competitive social network, the hard part is getting users, which is why Threads (bootstrapping from IG) is so advantaged over other new alt-Twitter options.
- api 3y ago
  The days of One Big Social Network are clearly coming to an end. We are in an unbundling and diversification phase in that space. As with most open systems, big social is succumbing to spam. In the case of social the primary form of spam is outrage porn and similar lizard brain engaging material. The bigger a social network is and the less moderated it is, the more this material dominates. If you try to moderate you drive people away toward niche networks. If you don’t try to moderate, all the toxic rage bait and trolling drives people away to niche networks. This is how big social dies. The future is niche networks with niche moderation policies, private boards and chat rooms, and the fediverse which is actually thousands of niche social networks in a trenchcoat.

by api 3y ago

dragonwriter 3y ago

Sure, the barrier isn’t infrastructure (like a water company) or technical skill, its network effects. You can build what would, with a critical mass of users, be a competitive social network, the hard part is getting users, which is why Threads (bootstrapping from IG) is so advantaged over other new alt-Twitter options.

api 3y ago
The days of One Big Social Network are clearly coming to an end. We are in an unbundling and diversification phase in that space. As with most open systems, big social is succumbing to spam. In the case of social the primary form of spam is outrage porn and similar lizard brain engaging material. The bigger a social network is and the less moderated it is, the more this material dominates. If you try to moderate you drive people away toward niche networks. If you don’t try to moderate, all the toxic rage bait and trolling drives people away to niche networks. This is how big social dies. The future is niche networks with niche moderation policies, private boards and chat rooms, and the fediverse which is actually thousands of niche social networks in a trenchcoat.