DEV Community

Valentin Silvestre
Valentin Silvestre

Posted on

If you switched to a new Social Network, what could be your reason ?

I want to build a social network "for fun" but also to see how hard the privacy subject and I'm trying to guess what could make it cool for people

Top comments (25)

Collapse
 
cotcotcoder profile image
JeffD
  1. self-hosting (on platform like raspberry)
  2. open-source *
  3. end-to-end encryption available
  4. external bridge for network like Twitter and so on and ActivityPub
  • allow us to adapt interface for old people (Grand'ma) and childrens.
Collapse
 
nektro profile image
Meghan (she/her)

end-to-end encryption wouldn't work for a social network. and you're probably looking for Mastodon - joinmastodon.org/

Collapse
 
cotcotcoder profile image
JeffD

Of course EtE encryption was only for DM. Mastodon is a good solution but I prefer a blog-like social network (like Diaspora) :)

Collapse
 
vasilvestre profile image
Valentin Silvestre

This is so exciting, I'm already imagine the code behind it ahah
Thanks a lot :) really intresting

Collapse
 
vasilvestre profile image
Valentin Silvestre

Isn't Mastodon what you need ?

Collapse
 
thejessleigh profile image
jess unrein • Edited
  • safety and anti harassment features built in from the start: human readable TOS, reporting, blocking, and muting. Ability to delete my account and content. Geotagging disabled by default.

  • does not integrate with my phone’s contacts. Ability to suspend or dismiss “suggested contacts” functionality

  • customizable page with sensible defaults.

  • ability to tag content

Idk. If I could have something that’s like a cross between MySpace, LiveJournal, and Reddit I’d be very happy. But safety and anti harassment features are really the biggest. I like Mastadon in concept but keep forgetting it exists and never checking it in practice.

Tbh I’m thinking of leaving social behind for the most part and focusing my effort on an RSS feed of content I care about and topic specific hubs like dev.to or GYWO. Centralizing all of our personal and professional information and interests into a few all encompassing social hubs was a mistake, imo.

Collapse
 
qm3ster profile image
Mihail Malo

The first two bullet points deserve dev.to adding an angery react.

Collapse
 
thejessleigh profile image
jess unrein

As in my reply makes you angry and you want the world to know? Or an angry react is a useful community safety tool? I’d love to hear more.

Thread Thread
 
qm3ster profile image
Mihail Malo

Strictly both. My knee-jerk reaction to the phrases "safety and anti harassment features", "human readable TOS" and "does not integrate" is unbounded rage.
But assuming "does not integrate" just means it's possible to opt out (before it begins, of course, not once it's got your data) and the "reporting" goes to for instance group/community moderators, not some network-wide authority that would cause network-wide harm to the reported user, I actually agree even with those points.

Centralizing all of our personal and professional information and interests into a few all encompassing social hubs was a mistake, imo.

Truly, a few is too many. Should be one single hub, made out of tightly integrated decentralized opt in components.

P.S: What's GYWO?

Thread Thread
 
thejessleigh profile image
jess unrein

Huh. Okay. Well, I think it's pretty clear that we want different things from social networks, so I'm interested in digging into why. What about "safety," "anti-harassment," and "human readable TOS" is so objectionable to you? Also, I don't know how flippant you were being, but I think that it might be worth it to critically examine why your immediate unquestioned emotional response to seeing something you disagree with is "unbounded rage."

I totally take your point that for things like contacts integration, the solution is probably to have an explicit opt-in rather than it being an automatic process. The question in the post is what do you want out of a social network, and I'm listing things that I would want, but that doesn't mean that a lack of certain integrations is a one size fits all solution for every user, for sure.

I agree that content or user reporting should go to group level or localized moderators, rather than a global authority, since the global authority probably lacks context and might not be familiar with group norms. I really like the way Reddit handles this (except for the fact that Reddit's success is predicated on unpaid labor from those folks. I don't know the best way to deal with that).

I personally hate how centralized our social media has gotten, and would probably opt out entirely from a hub that acts as a single source of truth (which would leave me disconnected from the world, making your utopia my dystopia 😅). I've been working on disentangling my personal and professional online presences, and it's actually been really freeing. Someone who reads my writeup on my ~/.bash_profile customizations doesn't need to know about how many stars I gave Atlas Shrugged or Twilight. Someone who sees that I've commented on an IntelliJ tutorial video asking for clarification does not need to know that I'm gay. No one else is owed the entire content of my online life just because they've glimpsed evidence that I exist.

GYWO is a writing community - Get Your Words Out. Just a random example of an interest that doesn't necessarily intersect with other interests of mine, and doesn't need to be connected to a central hub :)

Thread Thread
 
qm3ster profile image
Mihail Malo

Reddit's success is predicated on unpaid labor from those folks

Volunteers make some of the best things in the world right now.
I guess you'd really dislike the pay to be mod system that I've seen taking place recently. :v

No one else is owed the entire content of my online life just because they've glimpsed evidence that I exist.

This is yet another thing we actually agree on, and I addressed it in my top level comment - I demand that the tightly integrated ecosystem allow easy use of multiple identities, thus segregating aspects of your life as you wish.

GYWO is a writing community - Get Your Words Out

That's unlike anything I'd ever imagined existing. At a glance seems more like chains.cc/ than some kind of deviantart?

how many stars I gave Atlas Shrugged

Are you serious? You can't do this. I must know at once!

Collapse
 
qm3ster profile image
Mihail Malo • Edited
  • A monetization model where the user is not the product: A combination of rewarding services like self-hosting and actual membership fees would be ideal.

  • Immutability and local backups: People often say "Allow me to delete my data." Hell to the no! If I had access to something once, it is mine to own. How can we possibly prevent FOMO if I might lose access to comments that were deleted, old versions of comments that were edited, old posts of a group that I was banned from?! The 24-hour TTL "Stories", implemented with the explicit intent of causing FOMO are the worst offenders, of course.

  • Multiple identity: Not only should anonymous/real duplicate accounts not be punished, there should be built in features to have segregated identities under one authentication account/UI. Depending on group/community policy, completely anonymous posts can be allowed. Anonymous comments, with verified same identity as OP or previous comments can be used. The identity of anonymous posts and comments can then be claimed by the author if they choose to do so. Group membership, friends, etc is done by identities not authentication accounts. (Authentication accounts are nothing but baggies of identities, never exposed directly.)

  • Tracking media lineage and metadata: This improves the quality(fidelity, resolution) of our content, as well as giving credit where credit is due. Someone uploaded a screenshot? The post in the screenshot should be linked (without notifying the original post) to. Someone downloaded and reuploaded a video instead of sharing? link.
    Someone uploaded a video consisting of two others and a music track? 3 links. Same for links and other copypasta. Then we can have a tree view of how memes propagate, also identifying the source of fake news.

  • Better search tools and tagging: A combination of manual and automatic tagging, combined with the immutability above, would produce much better, enduring information that communities can form around instead of an anxiety inducing stream of personalized, isolating diarrhoea.

  • Better singleplayer mode: The same rich organizational tools should allow content shared with only me as a first class citizen. There should be no fear involved in using the same service as Facebook and Dropbox. It should be ergonomic to maintain your privacy.

  • Import all the data: Parse (and retain for potentially improved reparsing) the Google and Facebook "export my data" .zips. Connect to all platforms with maximum capability request and scrape the rest. Run crawlers from the user's machine. Take EVERYTHING you can see, not just data entered by this user.

  • Be an open standard: Enabled by better monetization methods, there could be a distinction between the API-only service and official frontends.

Collapse
 
dylankilkenny profile image
Dylan Kilkenny

memo.cash/ is built on top of the bitcoin cash blockchain. All actions (likes, posts, polls, follows, names, tips, etc.) are recorded on the blockchain and therefore immutable.

The protocol is open, so anyone can create a new site using the same protocol.

Collapse
 
vasilvestre profile image
Valentin Silvestre

Don't you fear having content that 99% doesn't want ? Like hardcore porn or pic of dead people, in violence ? :/

Collapse
 
6temes profile image
Daniel

I think that your 99% is way too high. You'd be surprised about what people really like.

In any case, in Mastodon you choose who to follow. If your kink is PHP, for instance, you can curate your timeline to see a lot of PHP.

Collapse
 
hydroweaver profile image
Karan

But why switch in the first place?

Collapse
 
vasilvestre profile image
Valentin Silvestre

Why ?
Because actual popular social network have addictive pattern, there's no filter to help teens to get how important it this to value your moral health
So many studies show how negative reinforcement is present on SN, so I got a little project to build a SN. First for fun, then maybe not for real :)

Collapse
 
qm3ster profile image
Mihail Malo

That's the question posed here yes, why.
What could be the reason that would make you actually switch?

Collapse
 
hydroweaver profile image
Karan

I won't switch, I think, quit them all rather.

Thread Thread
 
qm3ster profile image
Mihail Malo

RIP

Collapse
 
nektro profile image
Meghan (she/her) • Edited

I definitely suggest joining Mastodon - joinmastodon.org/

Collapse
 
ferricoxide profile image
Thomas H Jones II

Well... As a user of Google Plus, my reason would be "they're blowing up my house".

 
vasilvestre profile image
Valentin Silvestre

So you show first what you do not want then you add the filter ?

 
vasilvestre profile image
Valentin Silvestre

What's different between filters and a "censure"? If the censure is made good by the centralized network, it could be fine no?

Thread Thread
 
redoxeon profile image
Michael Harding • Edited

I think the difference between filter and censor is that a filter is something where you personally get to choose what is hidden and can remove the filter at any time, while a censor is across the board, you don't get to choose what is deemed in need of filtering and you can't remove this forced filter unless the centralized network authority takes it down themselves.

(Edited because typo)