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Ask HN: If Social network is created today, what do you want to see?
If someone has to create a social network today, what would you like to see in it?
- TikTok/Instagram like engaging videos?
- Twitter/Reddit like discussion panel
- Your own public diary journal
- or, Latest events happening across the world from your feed?
Building one here - https://qocial.com and would love your feedback.
- slater 2mo agoPrivacy first. Everything else is secondary.
- kocial 2mo agoWell, what I understand is that you mean - no selling of your content, no third-party SDK, and no sharing of your data. What does the other thing include in privacy?
- slater 2mo agoNo dark patterns hiding new or changed settings. And any new settings should ALWAYS default to what the average user would likely choose, not what the marketing department cooked up this week and "absolutely must be enabled by default!!!11~"
- kocial 2mo ago- Interesting; see what we see on today's network, like Facebook/Twitter/Instagram/Tiktok is not hidden settings but snooping from one platform to another, including what your eyes see and where. Your eyes don't unlock your phone; they also unlock what you are seeing on your phone. Your speech doesn't just enable verbal communication; it also sends a message to your phone about what you are discussing. Many of these can only be avoided by avoiding social networks where such tech is used.
- kocial 2mo agoFacebook has several patents related to eye tracking and gaze detection. You've probably already heard someone complaining about talking about shoes on WhatsApp and then seeing those ads on Facebook and Instagram.
- greenregiment 2mo agoSlater is a miserable loser with 0 life accomplishments
- bdangubic 2mo agotrue social network - I choose my network - I never see anything (literally) that isn’t a post from someone in my network - full stop - post are chronological that’s it. I have been off all social media platforms since 2017 but would “return” if true social network existed. there isn’t one anymore, the best description of what we have currently are ad networks, there is nothing social about today’s social networks to the point that it really makes no sense that we still refer to them as social
- kocial 2mo agoSo, - a closed social network, where you see what you follow. - posts are usually chronological unless some posts are muted/promoted. That's a very common thing; many social networks already have: On Facebook/Twitter, you see what you add/follow.
- krapp 2mo agoNot entirely - both Facebook and Twitter also show you "suggested" content and contacts and quoted/reposted content from people outside of your network. Social media algorithms are designed to maximize engagement and encourage adding to your social graph. OP seems to be suggesting a social network where algorithmic feeds don't even exist and all content is whitelisted. I want to suggest federated social media like Mastodon, which is pretty close but it still has boosts and quote tweets, although you can turn them off in your settings.
- kocial 2mo ago- Interesting; so see what you follow and cut the other crap. - Mastodon is cool, but I'm not sure what its future is.
- krapp 2mo agoMastodon will stick around for as long as people want it to, I don't see it disappearing any time soon. It isn't a centralized platform beholden to shareholders so growth isn't a priority. Individual instances are another issue, however. People like to point out instances disappearing because of "drama" but far more likely is that smaller instances shut down because they can't afford to keep running.
- purplemoonx 2mo ago[dead]
- vednig 2mo agono ai bots no social engineering freedom to say whatever you want however you want
- kocial 2mo ago- No AI bots; agreed - No social engineering; curious what this means here - you mean no social influencing on any topic? - For freedom, the world always comes down to the jurisdiction and law of your country. If you violate the law, the platform needs to cut .
- vednig 2mo agoFreedom as in Free Speech, if you can speak it you can post it. Any form of targetting over the content posted by Government or Private Entities regardless of motive should be condoned. Thus making it an integral part of conservation of democracies where it exists and better tool for voicing concerns where there isn't democracies. And by Social Engineering, what I meant was no base algorithm implemention for suggestions, just if you follow a topic you'll be able to see all it's post on selection of posts based on what's liked better by others or those who follow you or those who whom you follow. Or a feed spiraled into making you spend time on platform, it should be like Newspaper/Event + Community Responses(excluding bots).
- gojkoa 2mo ago- no bots, ai slop stopped at the door - feed from people I actually follow, in an actual chronological timeline (not optimized for engagement, not deprioritized because it has an external link) - topical feeds with topical filters (e.g. I don't care about politics but care about tech news)
- kocial 2mo ago- Filters; very interesting, something like you can create a tab for like #tech and on tap all chronological posts about it from the network?
- PaulHoule 2mo agoLike instagram but focused on still photos but with less annoyances like dm scams, text in pictures, sexy selfies, etc.
- rufasterisco 2mo agoA business model that does not exploit users, ever. If you make it one where loss of trust leads to immediate loss of revenue and forces you to take the user side on all matters, well then all features are there to improve and maintain trust.
- kocial 2mo ago- Not sure how any social network can exploit users apart from filthy ads and spammy traffic. - But I think a platform like Twitter is already taking great initiative in that under Elon Musk.
- mr1337 2mo agoIf it's free, you are the product. Not saying it's not possible, it's just unlikely to happen, unfortunately.
- kocial 2mo agoYou just signed up to say that? Are you Elon Musk? Lol
- rufasterisco 2mo agoI would not know what that business model could be, it was a wish :) But open source thrives, is free, and we are not the product. In theory redirecting ads money towards users, could be a path, in practice it seems the economic value is not there.
- kocial 2mo ago- Redirecting ad money towards users is like asking users to be vulnerable to get paid.
- faangguyindia 2mo agoHuman greed has no limits; just because you pay for a product doesn't mean your data will not be sold and mined for additional profit, or that dark patterns and ads will not appear.
- markus_zhang 2mo agoI just need forums, social network can go away.
- kocial 2mo ago- Hell Yeah, 2000-2010 era :) best. - Tons of forums coming from PHPBB, vBulletin, mybb etc.,
- markus_zhang 2mo agoYep and BBS is good too. Like, HN actually only has part of the functionality of a BBS — back then you could post pictures on BBS, download warez, and even play games. It is way more colorful and fast than any other format afterwards. If we enjoy HN, we should enjoy more about BBS. The only problem is that people don’t know about it.
- kocial 2mo agoI think Mastodon is trying to do what forums used to be back then.
- mr1337 2mo agoI do miss the golden age of forums, before centralized general-purpose sites like Digg and Reddit.
- mpeg 2mo agoI think the reason it feels that way (I agree) is that forums had real community; I met irl friends in forums, people I stayed close with for many years The modern day equivalent is probably discord, there are servers with really close communities where everyone knows each other
- linguae 2mo agoI want 2006-era Facebook. No algorithmic feed. No viral posts. No AI slop. Just updates from my friends and acquaintances.
- kocial 2mo agoThere was no feed on Facebook in the first half of 2006; it was just a kind of scrapbook. The feed was added in the second half, and that's what took off.
- nicd 2mo agoAn emphasis on driving users towards IRL socialization, and strengthening geographically local communities.
- kocial 2mo ago- Yup, local social first, since we lost that in the online game. Doing something similar on qocial.com
- cbare 2mo agoWhat would it look like if social media were optimized for flourishing rather then engagement? Bring your own filter/ranking algorith? I wonder if there's not a fundamental conflict. Social media is essentially _addictive_ media. The most pro-flourishing move you can make is to disengage from social media.
- kocial 2mo ago- Bringing your filter is nice; I will add that. - _ addictive_media: maybe some option you can turn on and off when it is addictive and when it is not, something like that?
- Garlef 2mo agoInteresting thought - but you can measure engagement... how would you measure flourishing?
- nicbou 2mo agoI think it would need a deeply human touch. It would require a human to connect related threads together, guide people to existing information, and shoo toxic users away. You need to create a culture of kindness and helpfulness, even when we are predisposed to be curt and unpleasant online.
- derwiki 2mo agoWe don’t need one. Fool me once, shame on me.
- kocial 2mo ago- Singularity, Loneliness: we are already heading towards it. /future - says hi.
- mikewarot 2mo agoEverything posted publicly should have a permanent url that anyone can see. There should be arbitrary and orthogonal ranking dimensions, that can be created by users at will. You should be able to have your own algorithms to decide what you want to see. For instance, a post could be funny 0, in US English 1.0, political 0.5, physics 0.0, etc. Every rating tied back to the person or bot that did the rating. And of course you can rate the ratings or raters. Confusing, but soooo powerful
- nicbou 2mo agoKindness as the default. If it wouldn't fly in a face-to-face conversation, it does not fly on the network. One thing that keeps HN pleasant is dang's enforcement of good conduct.
- kocial 2mo agoMaintaining/Asking for good conduct among educated people vs A crowded network of a mix of educated, spammy keyboard warriors is different. On HN, we mostly have educated people, so with good conduct rules, they all behave well. On social networks, you see many keyboard warriors and spammy people, where educated people get overshadowed.
- ksudb 2mo ago[dead]
- cindyllm 2mo ago[dead]
- yamilg 2mo agoallow me to pay, no more than $2.99/month. don't ever sell my data. don't act "smart" about what I may want to see. allow me to follow and only see content from profiles i follow. if you want content, allow some kind of monetization. something like a revenue share for people who actually invest in creating relevant content for the rest of the group. or a simple tipping system.
- JaviLopezG 2mo agoAlmost all the descriptions have a simple answer: Mastodon :) However, I think we should come back to IRC it gave us so beautiful moments.
- boredyeti 2mo agoI've built Cosmos47, which is a public social feed that shows all posts chronologically and there are no likes or upvotes. It's one single feed that appears the same to all users, from all over the world. No algorithm or ranking people by popularity. All posts are analyzed with AI when posted and each post gets tagged with its language, topics, tone, format, length, location, and other characteristics. Then, readers can then filter the feed themselves (if they wish) to see only specific languages, only posts from people they follow, posts related to specific topics, etc. The idea is that distribution comes from relevance rather than popularity. It’s still an early experiment. Most of the content currently on the platform is actually AI slop test content that I created to test multilingual feeds, filtering, moderation, embeds, search and indexing. https://cosmos47.com https://cosmos47.com