[HN Gopher] Show HN: Slow Social, a social network built for fri... ___________________________________________________________________ Show HN: Slow Social, a social network built for friends, not influencers Author : CitrusFruits Score : 358 points Date : 2022-04-16 17:09 UTC (5 hours ago) (HTM) web link (slowsocial.us) (TXT) w3m dump (slowsocial.us) | jdrc wrote: | this is more like a journal than a social network then | gtirloni wrote: | FAQ: How do I export my data? | _greim_ wrote: | Upon following the magic link I got this: 500 | Cannot find module '/var/task/node_modules/party-js/lib' | Error: Cannot find module '/var/task/node_modules/party-js/lib' | CitrusFruits wrote: | :( | | That's happened before, but I thought I fixed it. I guess I'll | just take out the party. | CitrusFruits wrote: | If you reload and go to /onboard it might work, otherwise you | can just go to `/`, you'll just have to find your way around | by yourself. | SmallBets wrote: | Constraints can be liberating and increase focus and creativity. | See limited budget films vs formulaic blockbusters, or even | twitters orignal 140 limit and how it led to the platform | flourishing. | | I think there is definitely room for a product like this, and | maybe even some kind of max follower limit could also skew more | to connection over influencers. | riffic wrote: | I love this segment of an interview with Charles Eames | regarding design's need for constraints: Q: | Does the creation of Design admit constraint? A: Design | depends largely on constraints. Q: What constraints? | | A: The sum of all constraints. Here is one of the few effective | keys to the Design problem: the ability of the Designer to | recognize as many of the constraints as possible; his | willingness and enthusiasm for working within these | constraints. Constraints of price, of size, of strength, of | balance, of surface, of time, and so forth. Each problem has | its own peculiar list. | | https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Charles_Eames | | https://www.vitra.com/en-us/magazine/details/what-is-your-de... | engineer_22 wrote: | You need an android app. | CitrusFruits wrote: | I need an iOS app too. | darawk wrote: | As other people have mentioned but I think not quite nailed | perfectly, restrictions on behavior aren't quite the right | solution to the problems that plague social media. Some people | think that the right move is to eliminate engagement optimization | algorithms, and I think that's not quite exactly right either. | | IMO the right solution is personal executive autonomy over | content presentation and algorithmic optimization. By which I | mean, I want to be able to make an "executive" choice over what | kind of experience I want to have on a social platform. By | "executive" I mean, I want to be able to make that choice | explicitly, not implicitly by my behavior. For instance, an | implicit choice is walking by a beautiful chocolate cake and | being unable to resist eating it. An explicit choice is being | able to architect my environment in advance, such that there are | no beautiful chocolate cakes to tempt me. | | The biggest problem with social media right now is that the | incentives of the existing platforms do not allow people to make | these choices explicitly. They do not allow us to craft our | information environment using our higher order executive | functions, they force us to do it using our reptillian brains, | one moment at a time. Essentially, they force us to choose: | either you get none of what social media has to offer, or you | take every aspect of it, whether you like it or not. | | Being able to explicitly say "for the next hour I want to be fed | thirst traps and rage bait, but then I want that turned off" | would be an amazing feature. People have a right to that kind of | content if they want it. But they equally have a right to engage | their higher cognitive functions and choose not to be expose to | it if they don't want it, or choose to be able to architect the | manner in which they are exposed to it. | [deleted] | mhink wrote: | I mean, for what it's worth there's an aspect of this on | Reddit, in the sense that you can choose which subreddits to | join (and can maintain multiple accounts to keep your | experiences separate). | | Although I'm sure it's not perfect, it's not terrible either. | Especially if you follow the perennial Reddit advice and | unsubscribe from the massive default subs. | alephaleph wrote: | I kind of disagree about this: maybe it's different if you're | more mature but reddit was my first social media platform, I | used it a lot in middle school, and in my experience rage | bait was a huge problem. Rage bait subreddits become more and | more extreme over time, losing the ability to distinguish the | people they hate from parodies of the people they hate and | effectively building up an effigy/totem of "the other side" | to concentrate that hate onto. When all you have is a hammer, | everything looks like a nail. I eventually realized I had to | quit reddit because the extent to which I engaged in rage | bait made me a worse person. | mountainriver wrote: | Yeah I agree, had the same experience. I found I literally | couldn't get away from the rage bait either. They keep | putting things in your feed even if your aren't subscribed. | | Reddit is also just an awful hive mind. | alephaleph wrote: | oof it's probably worse now than it was for me lol, when | I used it I don't think they even had an algorithmic | feed, just a subscribed and /r/all. | | and yeah the hivemind stuff is pretty bad. I'm reminded | of a talk that ViHart of all people did where they argued | that in a McLuhanist "the medium is the message" way, | reddit's focus on up and down votes and karma creates an | extremely judgy and kind of adversarial experience that | eventually breeds hiveminds. I'd also argue that reddit's | focus on small communities managed individually by | specific moderators creates an undercurrent of site drama | that reliably rears its ugly head every few months or so, | but I guess that's neither here nor there. | idealmedtech wrote: | I think such a network, while great in theory, would mostly be | filled with techies like us, because by design, it favors | intentional interaction over mindless swiping, giving | advertisers less incentive to fund you and thus eventually | struggling to remain solvent. | | Now, if we put some regulation on dopamine loop limitations, | such a network might absolutely THRIVE! | | Just my personal take! Do I wish people engaged more actively | with the idea that these products can be living breathing | things that we also can exhibit influence over? Absolutely. Do | I think the critical mass of such users exists today? Sadly | not, but I hope one day to be proven wrong! | solstice wrote: | This sounds like https://fraidyc.at which is delightfully weird | and really functional at the same time | distantsounds wrote: | It's called RSS. and a feed reader. | | I swear, people are too busy re-inventing the wheel when it | already exists. use one of the literal hundreds of free | services to write what you want and syndicate it. and use the | same system to ingest exactly what you want. | | We hit the nail on the head 2 decades ago. It's been rusting | since. | hk__2 wrote: | Are there some readers that do some content curation for you | _on top of your subscriptions_? The biggest issue I had with | RSS (besides content discovery) is that some people blog | multiple times a week while others only once in a while. I | would like something that limits the amount of content I get | based on how much they post: posts from people who blog only | once in a while should be more prominently visible than | others. Some way to mark posts as "I want more of that" or | "I don't want more of that" would also be helpful to improve | the curation without having to manually tweak parameters. | jimkleiber wrote: | That works for the consumption side, but at least from what | I've seen (it's been a while), the feed readers don't have so | much share/comment/like side to them. Frankly, they seem to | miss the social side. Again, maybe I'm just not using the | right feed readers, but when I use some these days, they feel | somewhat isolated, just receiving info, not also sending it. | derekzhouzhen wrote: | Shameless plug: Airss does that. https://airss.roastidio.us | | The reader can be used without login. To comment and share, | you need to login to https://roastidio.us (free open | registration) | | Warning: I have very few users. So you will still feel | isolated, unless you can gather a community yourself. | tejtm wrote: | Ahhh the original web vision and promise of the Semantic Web. | Snippets of machine readable datum everywhere fetched and | assembled for you by your own "intelligent agent". | | The competition would be innovating better personal agents and | data tagging. | | I think TBL found the mother of all misunderestimations when | they made http servers and browsers as step zero. | a-dub wrote: | so, basically blogs and rss readers... with privacy features | and channels for subscriptions. | | sounds good to me. | pandesmos wrote: | > _Being able to explicitly say "for the next hour I want to be | fed thirst traps and rage bait, but then I want that turned | off" would be an amazing feature._ | | Did you use Google Plus? I found the circle system to be so | good for this. I like following artists, and sometimes they can | be exceedingly political/depressed/self destructive and I can't | take them in my "main feed". With G+ I could drop those people | into a circle and then "dip into" the madness for a bit and | hunt for gems, then leave before becoming overwhelmed. | | Being able to "sort people" into groups on social media (using | a single account) was just excellent. Here are my programmers, | here are my RPG people, here are my RPG people that have a | different core belief than the previous group of RPG people, | here are my Artists, here are my Writers, here are my Sad But | Brilliant people. | | Then when they added collections so I could present the | different "facets" of my interests and allow my followers to | unsubscribe from those facets was excellent. I'll tag this post | as gaming, this one as music, this one as bullshit hot takes, | and you, my follower can say "I hate his taste in music" and | never see it. | | I miss it so much. | pandesmos wrote: | Also, the original ability to "circle share" was exceptional | (and it's truly sad it was apparently abused into the ground | by spammers). It allowed "real people" to curate groups of | other real people around a certain topic, and then a new user | (assuming they could find the curator) could then mass | follow/watch those people. | | "Here is a group of people who are creating things and having | great conversations with each other. Check it out." | | It was like someone opening a hidden door to a very nice | party. | | Don't know how to make something like that non-abusable or | how to mitigate the abuse that killed it, but then I never | saw it because I wasn't following spam circle shares. | blondin wrote: | google+ loss was a true tragedy. | civilized wrote: | I think Google+ was just ahead of its time. Now a huge chunk | of people are ready for a different platform. | [deleted] | grumple wrote: | When Facebook was first created, there was no feed. We flocked | to it because it was useful for a few important reasons: 1) | communicating with friends, 2) finding events to go to, 3) | organizing groups, 4) storing and sharing photos, and 5) | meeting new people (sometimes). It was great as a tool to | supplement your social life. | | When they introduced the feed, Facebook gradually became worse | at all of those things. Facebook became less about being a | useful tool and instead became a media sharing instrument for | serving advertisements. Your entire post is about that aspect | of it though, and really it's the problem with all social | media. The feed design is fundamentally incompatable with | providing the utility that was initially offered by Facebook. | The feed is purely a tool for distribution and consumption, not | forging connections or otherwise improving the lives of users. | scarface74 wrote: | The feed was introduced in 2006. Facebook was founded in | 2004. Not many people "flocked" to Facebook before the feed. | jimkleiber wrote: | I think the feed was chronological for a while. Did it | switch to being non-chronological in 2006? I thought it was | later than that. | scarface74 wrote: | The algorithmically generated feed was introduced in | 2011. | alephaleph wrote: | the first social media platform I used was Reddit where you | really _can_ choose to be fed thirst traps or rage bait for the | next hour by exclusively browsing one or two specific | subreddits and I 'm not sure I'd say that's much more healthy | than fully algorithmic social media, it just has different | problems. | | Particularly the rage bait: I basically had to quit reddit | because I realized the extent to which I engaged in rage bait | made me a worse person. | DennisP wrote: | It can have that problem if you make that choice. I use | reddit extensively, mainly subscribed to a bunch of mostly | small subs for my own set of narrow interests, and it works | great. | alephaleph wrote: | yeah, that's fair. I was also in middle school at the time | which is probably a bit too young to be using reddit, but I | think that it's important to recognize that a social media | platform that gives you high level control of the kind of | content you see won't completely solve the problem of | unhealthy social media usage, it will just make it easy for | your usage to be either very healthy or very unhealthy. And | that those unhealthy users will end up causing problems for | the healthy users. | | In a weird way I actually think that the weird stuff | twitter has been doing to try to make it look like they're | doing something about unhealthy social media usage (all the | "remember the human" stuff) would probably be more | effective on a reddit-type social media platform. | Karrot_Kream wrote: | I think this is a good example of the folk wisdom that | kids don't have the best decisionmaking skills. I spent | time in many an IRC flamewar as a middle schooler myself, | so I'm not judging :) of course. Reddit first came out | while I was in high school and subreddits became a | feature near the end of my time in HS. I definitely was | making better choices about the content I consumed as a | high schooler and I've gotten better as I've gotten | older! | | I deeply appreciate Reddit's openness to customizing the | experience. The defaults suck, I agree, but you can | choose to curate the experience how you like. Moreover | despite lots of jaw clenching over financial incentives, | Reddit still offers the Old Reddit interface _and_ an API | which lets power users consume Reddit however they like. | These values were pretty common among other fora/BBSes at | the time. The experience one got on 4chan's /a/ or /jp/ | was very different than /b/ or /pol/ or /soc/ (and most | of 4chan's famed toxicity came from the latter 3 boards.) | Forums were usually partitioned by topic. | | > In a weird way I actually think that the weird stuff | twitter has been doing to try to make it look like | they're doing something about unhealthy social media | usage (all the "remember the human" stuff) would probably | be more effective on a reddit-type social media platform. | | I don't think the algorithmic feed as-is is compatible | with healthy usage, no matter what rhetoric a company | uses. ML models need to not only take engagement as input | but also some sort of personal toxicity input. I need to | be able to say "content X is addictive to me but not for | a good reason." The model also needs to offer as much | transparency as possible to the user, offering things | like partial dependence plots for auditing by the user. | I'm not sure whether a ranking model trained that way can | still provide good ad targeting performance. Moreover | knobs like this are probably just too complex for a | layperson to interact with. Many engineers don't | understand how a partial dependence plot works let alone | laypeople. | | My problem with social media is about the lack of choice. | I have no qualms that the majority will continue to use | social media the way most people in the past would spend | time mindlessly flipping TV channels or window shopping | at malls and boutiques. But there was always | alternatives. People that didn't want to spend time | window shopping could be found in libraries, bookstores, | bars, playing sports, or outdoors. Once you became an | adult this was expected. That didn't mean I was | ostracized from them. I encountered people in college who | hung out in very different places than me but still | connected with me over shared interests. | | In the social media age every form of social media is | siloed. If you're not on Twitter you can't engage with | people on Twitter. If you're not on Facebook you can't | see people's Facebook content. You _have_ to join the | platform to reach people on the platform. I'd love to see | a world of federated social media where we can all talk | to each other no matter our hobbies and third places. | jimkleiber wrote: | Yes, I've been yearning for platforms really to just let me | control the database query, basically. I want to be able to | create custom filters/sorts/queries, or even choose some from | an algorithm store, that lets me control how I view things. | | For example, on Twitter, I love having the "latest tweets" | option. But maybe I want to also have "only tweets from | verified people with over 100 retweets from other verified | people." This is somewhat possible on Tweetdeck, but not | possible directly within Twitter itself. | | It reminds me of the Facebook Graph Search, which I loved--"my | friends of friends who speak Spanish who live in San | Francisco." But FB shut that down a few years ago. | | Makes me wonder what are the main reasons they don't implement | such options to help us better choose how we see the data--is | it technically difficult to implement? Does it run counter to | the business model of placed advertisements? Does it really | just unleash too much power in the hands of the users and make | these companies afraid what might happen? | | I'd love if they did implement the changes you suggest and I | wonder why they haven't. | thr0wawayf00 wrote: | > Does it really just unleash too much power in the hands of | the users and make these companies afraid what might happen? | | Social media companies spend incredible resources trying to | continuously improve the stickiness of the app so users keep | coming back to it. Giving users total control over curation | creates two big problems for this. | | 1) if I can cut out all of the BS in the feed, I can utilize | the app more passively which likely reduces overall usage. I | would try to get my social media into a weekly feed, which is | not compatible with the business social media companies are | trying to run. It's all about DAU's. | | 2) total curation makes researching and optimizing the UX for | eyeballs more difficult because you introduce an entirely new | set of variables into the equation. This increases the | likelihood that behavioral research draws erroneous | conclusions based on the patterns being observed. By | controlling the drip of the content to the users, the company | can control for this much more easily. | CitrusFruits wrote: | I agree, it's not perfect. Maybe, just maybe though, it's | better than other alternatives out there. | | Your suggestions for being able to apply our "higher order | executive function" to our social networks is honestly a great | take, and a great suggestion. Unfortunately though, that's not | something I can really build, even if I had the time, | resources, and personnel. That sort of social network requires | critical mass of content and would by definition almost, have | to be a competitor or aggregator of other social networks. | However, that's not the sort of social network I personally am | interested in building either. | | I think what you're describing definitely falls into our modern | definition of a social network, but I also think that | definition falls very short of the potential for technology to | facilitate relationships. In my opinion, the "thirst traps and | rage baits" totally have there place (they're a lot of fun!), | but I don't think their place is in the same app as your best | friend sharing about their mixed feelings of loss and euphoria | as they move from one job to another. | | That all being said, I think you bring up a really good talking | point, one that I hope the people at Instagram, Snap, TikTok, | etc. all pay attention to. As for me though, there's nothing I | can really do about it other than start discussion. | darawk wrote: | Totally get that, and to be clear I think what you're doing | is super cool. I should have given a more relevant example to | you. I think the general category of "user autonomy" over | how/what kinds of content they see or don't see is a better | abstraction than restrictions on behavior. | | So, for something like your network, that might mean rather | than limiting how frequently people can post, give users the | option to aggregate content from frequent posters in their | feed. So, maybe I have a switch I can toggle that says, "show | a unit of content from one person no more than once per day", | where that single block of content is expandable, and gives | some aggregated summary of how many things they posted / what | its content was, that I can drill into if I want to, or | quickly skim over if I don't care. | civilized wrote: | This is exactly what I was trying to say in my other post. | | Currently I suspect the logic behind social media engagement | algorithms is something like "feed the user more of what they | have clicked on in the past". But in real life, I don't just do | more of what I did in the past. Sometimes I choose to do | different things. But in legacy social media like FB I can't | choose to be offered anything different than what I clicked on | in the past. I can't ask for the culture wars and political hot | takes to fuck off so I can see normal friends and family posts | (or vice versa). | | This lack of choice in what we're offered is what's essentially | inhuman about legacy social media. | alar44 wrote: | Neat idea but literally no one wants that. You think the | average Joe wants to explicitly configure his social media | algorithms? | | Get real. | tacocataco wrote: | Does everyone in Path of Exile create their own loot filters? | | You could, but most people download neversinks or someone | else's custom filter. | ChicagoDave wrote: | Crippling frequency isn't the answer. North sure there's anything | else to say here. | xtracto wrote: | Way back in the day there was a great social platform called | Multiply.com. it allowed you to post videos, pics and blog posts. | I felt it was better than Myspace or Facebook. Unfortunately it | didn't survive, but I hope this SlowSocial gets better traction! | omoikane wrote: | The "new friends do not get to see old posts" seems very | limiting, I would certainly want the option of being able to | share some of my old posts with new friends, given that often new | friends are made because of some overlap in real life history. | | I understand that this platform is perhaps deliberately not | trying to attract strangers, but other platforms that had taken | this stance eventually all faded away because all my friends want | to play at where the parties are at, and those tend not to be | private networks of this sort. It might be possible to avoid this | demise if this network grows to be sufficiently large, but it's | hard to grow when all existing contents are invisible to new | users. | CitrusFruits wrote: | You can share old posts with new friends, it's just on a post | by post basis. But yeah, more fine grained control would be a | nice feature. | moffkalast wrote: | > Posts are shared with all of your confirmed friends once | published (let the people in your life know what you've been | up to) | | That part also seems weird to me, and also why I never really | post anything to facebook these days (even if I used it more | than once a month). Unless the things you're writing are | stupidly generic they won't appeal to all your friends, | especially since "social media friends" these days also means | family, coworkers, acquaintences, that one guy you did a | college project with and never talked to again, etc. Not | actual friends. | | I know which of my friends are interested in what, and I can | share what I know they'll be interested in hearing via DMs, | leading to more productive discussions. I'm not sure what the | appeal of friend-only self posts even is these days, unless | you're planning a get together of some sort. | | If you're making a self post, there must be people that you | don't know about that can see it, so there is some chance | that you'll find someone new that's interested in what you | posted. E.g. posting in fb or discord groups or in public | like on reddit or here. | riffic wrote: | really dig the "slow" idea. Will you federate? There's a good | argument for this here (you would have a built-in audience of at | least 5m accounts): | | https://www.michellelim.org/writing/into-the-fediverse/ | | Federation could be your "moat" to avoid joining the _Club of | Abandoned Social Apps_ (it 's a harsh ecosystem, ask Clubhouse or | App.Net). | CitrusFruits wrote: | Probably won't federate. TBH, federation doesn't appeal to me | that much. I recognize it has benefits, but it also introduces | significant complexity. | | Plus, Slow Social is already designed to work with the most | widely adopted federated platform: email. Posts can be sent as | emails, and there is no comment system other than opening up an | email and starting a conversation with them that way. | anarchogeek wrote: | Closed source and no information about who's making it.... this | is better how? | yosito wrote: | Love this idea, and love that it supports email updates. I think | that makes it useful even if most (all) of my friends don't use | it yet. That's something a lot of attempts at doing social | networks differently miss: it needs to be useful even without all | my friends being on it, or I'll just stop using it. I submitted | my email and I'll check this out more in the coming days. | bananamerica wrote: | The only thing I dislike is not allowing everyone to see my | preview posts. If I write something cool that remains relevant, | I'd be sad to see it go. I might end up just posting in a more | permanent place instead. | shlurpy wrote: | It sounds like a great idea. I did notice a carveout in the | privacy policy for "if we get acquired, they can do whatever they | want with any information" which seems... undermining, given how | getting acquired by one of the worst data brokers is generally | assumed for any successful social media startup. | slater wrote: | Not sure if it's your site, but the sign-up and magic link went | straight to my GMail's spam folder, with the link removed. | riffic wrote: | curious who they're using for transactional email. there are | unfortunately a few hoops to jump through to ensure | deliverability. | CitrusFruits wrote: | Supabase does the auth emails. If you make a post and have | the service email it for you, it uses Sendgrid which seems to | make it past the spam folder most of the time. | aaaaaaaaata wrote: | Can you update here what you learn? | | This is a huge sticking point for new projects and | businesses. | riffic wrote: | make sure you got the right dns records in place as well. I | haven't looked at your mail headers yet[0] but you probably | want to send from a separate subdomain than the one you use | for everyday use (like for team@slowsocial.us). | | [0] This may be seen as a back-handed way of saying I have | no intention of signing up, but I didn't intend for it to | be. | CitrusFruits wrote: | Yeah, sadly I couldn't figure out how to not make it happen. | The SSO OAuth providers tend to work better. | | If you mark it as "Not spam" it will fix it on a case by case | basis. | formerkrogemp wrote: | If enough people start marking it as "Not Spam," would that | make things better? | CitrusFruits wrote: | I'd hope so! Ideally I'd be able to send the Magic Link | from my own domain, but I haven't found a way to do that | yet through Supabase. | NanoWar wrote: | Missed opportunity to call it "Slowcial" ;) | rglullis wrote: | The one question I have is: what can I do here that I can not do | with a messaging group? | TekMol wrote: | It's cool. A bit rough around the edges. I see a lot of "NULL" | and "UNDEFINED" in the interface. | | What is your stack? | | For how long have you been coding? | CitrusFruits wrote: | Yes, definitely rough around the edges. | | The DB, Auth, and File Storage is all Supabase. The web | framework is SvelteKit, and I'm using Sendgrid to send emails. | Also using Tailwind. | | I've been coding for a long time, but have been working on this | mostly in off hours so I haven't been able to give this the | polish I'd like to. If you have any screenshots of the nulls or | undefineds I'd be happy to fix them. | TekMol wrote: | Thanks for the info! | | "A long time" is very relative. I sometimes meet coders who | have been coding for 3 years and call it a long time. But for | me, "a long time" means 20+ years. So I am still curious :) | | The "NULLs" and "UNDEFINEDs" went away after I set my user | name. | stefanv wrote: | My first thought after reading the frontpage: this is my | "liberation" from Facebook and all the things that FB is doing | wrong. I click on "join today" and I see "continue with | Facebook". Why? | x86_64Ubuntu wrote: | Because for them to even think of approaching a userbase size | that can enjoy network effects, they will need to make signing- | up as easy as possible. Using some of the other OAuths is a | smart business decision in my opinion. | [deleted] | Method-X wrote: | To minimize the friction of switching over for most regular | folks. It doesn't force you to use Facebook. You can use your | email, Google and GitHub too. | CitrusFruits wrote: | Yup, this is exactly right. Facebook was the last OAuth | provider I added because I don't love being tied to them, but | at the end of the day some people just want the easiest way | to authenticate possible, and Facebook is one of the largest | authentication providers available in the world. | | And to put it into perspective, yes Facebook is able to | collect information about you when you use them as an | authentication provider (like when you log in, how often, how | long your sessions are), but beyond that it's a pretty narrow | interaction. | privatdozent wrote: | Question: Does encouraging people to sign up with FB (bc it | is faster/easier) also have the unwanted consequence of | preventing them from leaving FB in the future? If they are | signed up through to Slow Social via FB, can they still log | in manually if their FB account has been deleted? | loceng wrote: | I see it as more of providing a false signal of adoption | or success: if people need the friction to be as little | as clicking a single button to "sign up" then they're not | very convinced or committed to trying something new and | likely not willing to invest time actually engaging with | the system; all major platforms today used tricks or | first mover mechanics for engagement to keep enough | people on the platform long enough to make it sticky, | rather than adding or creating or providing a wide | breadth of usefulness/function to a wide variety of | demographics - providing candy to the 80% at very low | cost of ingredients vs. creating something of quality | (product and service); dumb inflammatory sugary candy vs. | quality nutrients that is trying to milk clicks and time | engaging on a platform attempting to control and retain a | user every moment. | judge2020 wrote: | A lot of human time is sacrificed to maintain passwords | for different websites; having a one-click sign in option | saves a lot of people the time and headache of having to | deal with a compromised account or forgotten password | years in the future. | CitrusFruits wrote: | It's really about reducing friction, not pumping up | numbers. This is bootstrapped, not investor backed so | there's no reason to skew the numbers. | | As for the candy analogy, I think that's a bit cynical if | all you're critiquing is the login system without looking | at the actual application. Lots of quality applications | provide login via Facebook: Spotify, Notion, Airbnb, etc. | It has nothing to do with the actual apps itself, it's | just the doorway. | Jugurtha wrote: | You can also sign up with GitHub, Google, and email. | derekzhouzhen wrote: | How is it any different than old style blogging? | | The whole social network thing is a attention grabbing game. | Blogging, on the other hand, is talking into the void: I don't | need anyone. All past attempts to combined the best parts of both | has been combining the worst part of both: no freedom of speech | and no audience. | CitrusFruits wrote: | I'd argue it's different because it has better privacy | controls. Instead of all your content being public, it's all | private and you can share it to a non Slow Social member via | email. Additionally, it's a more focused, concentrated | experience. | | Otherwise, feel free to make blog posts. I think blogs are | great. | markstos wrote: | Email has privacy controls and is decentralized. Just send | HTML emails to the friends you want to get it. | derekzhouzhen wrote: | Privacy is great; however requiring everyone to login adds | frictions, which kill engagement. | | Anyway, it is always good to see someone challenging the | status quo. Good luck. | zaik wrote: | Does this built on existing Internet standards like ActivityPub | or XMPP? | olah_1 wrote: | This is awesome, but I'd like to see it built on top of something | like https://Manyver.se (SSB) where the content lives on user | devices! | ryanschneider wrote: | Honestly if this was geared towards teams inside a company I | would probably lobby for it at my job. Have you considered an | "enterprise option"? :) | CitrusFruits wrote: | Something I hadn't considered. I'm not sure I'd go in that | direction but I'm curious what this would look like. Are you | thinking of something like a weekly status update on | projects/etc? | ryanschneider wrote: | Ya exactly. Basically to replace daily status updates in | slack or scrum or tickets or where ever. | theplumber wrote: | So it's a blogging app, right? | jedberg wrote: | I think your magic link is broken. I put in my email addy and got | an email that said "click here to confirm your email" but there | was no link. | faraaz98 wrote: | How long until this too succumbs to influencers or dies out? | formerkrogemp wrote: | Buy my new book to find out! Or something along those lines. | CitrusFruits wrote: | If I'm running it, I have no intentions of letting it become | that way. The whole point of the product is that it's about | friends and not influencers. People, not money. This is | something for myself, my friends, and people like them more | than. | | If Slow Social had any measure of great success I'd love to | make it a B-Corp. | civilized wrote: | Respect the effort, but I think it's not going in quite the right | direction. I don't think people need paternalistic restrictions | on post frequency. People need to be liberated from engagement- | optimizing algorithms and allowed to choose which activity is | presented to them and in what order. | chrischen wrote: | I agree. What I'd like is to be given control so that I can at | least work on _improving_ my social life and interactions. I | want _pro software_ but for socializing. Something like my | calendar app, email app, Photoshop, etc. | | Imagine if our email app changed their goal from empowering | users to engaging users. We'd have email apps that surfaced | only engaging emails you received and buried the rest. It would | maximize our short term app usage engagement to the detriment | of long term goals (getting work done). Gmail shows it's | possible to meld good algorithms (spam detection) with good | user empowering features, while also being an ad-supported | model! | CitrusFruits wrote: | I don't think your first and second sentence are necessarily in | conflict with each other. In fact, Slow Social has no | algorithms for engagement-optimizing, it's part of the design | of the application. | | That being said, you absolutely _could_ be right on the | restrictions on post frequency. Perhaps its not something any | sort of large user base might not want. However, as far as I | know it hasn't been tried before, and I think that makes it | worth a shot. | | Lastly, it's possible that restrictions on post frequency serve | a segment of the population that might be underserved by | current social media, and its something those people would | thrive one. At this point we can't say for sure, but I'd love | to find out. | civilized wrote: | Slowing things down has the virtue of being a much easier | means of social engineering than figuring out how to empower | users to control the flow of content that comes to them. I | only have some sketchy ideas of how exactly it would work. | | Definitely the starting point is to let users have a simple | chronological option. | linuxdude314 wrote: | How does slowing things down make social engineering | easier? | | That's a security term, and I'm not quite sure how it's | relevant to the OP. | civilized wrote: | Social engineering isn't just a security term. The use in | security is inherited from a broader and pre-existing | concept. It's about setting up conditions that influence | people to behave in a desired way. | psyc wrote: | I assume they mean herding cats. | Barrin92 wrote: | I think 'the algorithm' truly is the bogeyman of our time. Have | you considered that it is precisely people themselves who crave | engagement and that it is the often reviled paternalism which | liberates people from following their worst instincts? | civilized wrote: | Paternalism isn't categorically bad but I see it as a last | resort. People have never had the _option_ to filter out | garbage from their feeds. If they did, there might be little | _need_ for paternalism. | moffkalast wrote: | People crave engagement as much as they crave unhealthy food. | Having a person stand behind you at all times with an | infinite amount of the exact kind of burger you like isn't | gonna help make you get thinner lol. And that's like the | whole point of personalization algorithms. | Barrin92 wrote: | > isn't gonna help make you get thinner lol. | | sure as hell isn't but do you actually think the reason 65% | of the American population is overweight is burger ads, | rather than the simple fact that people unless very | explicitly told not to will stuff their faces with cheap | and delicious fast food? Do you think that requires | coercion? Like in a world where McDonalds doesn't run ads, | they all start working out and eat salads? | | The algorithm itself only exists to satisfy a never-ending | demand by people, it's nothing else than an internet | conveyor belt. | | When you walk into Twitter HQ and turn the algorithms off | you think the people will greet you in the streets as | liberators with flowers and open arms? You'll have a riot | because Instagram and TikTok don't work any more | [deleted] | dansiemens wrote: | I agree to some extent. The "medium is the message"; let the | outcomes of post frequency be determined by the structure of | the platform. Whether that structure should be more | prescriptive than descriptive though is certainly up for | debate. | whatshisface wrote: | I think the idea of paternalism comes from seeing people harm | themselves by undertaking actions they were manipulated into | taking, and confusing that with actions they'd have done on | their own, independently. | civilized wrote: | What I object to is we skipped straight from exploitation to | paternalism. Freedom was never an option on offer. | lotsofpulp wrote: | I have WhatsApp/iMessage groups for immediate friends and | family who I don't mind getting real time updates from. | Everyone else, I am okay with periodically contacting as | desired via text/audio/video call. | | It seems pretty liberated, and I am not sure what more a social | network website could offer. Outside of about 5 people, I have | no interest in real time updates...I can wait to see photo | albums next time I call or visit, like in the times before | broadband. In fact I prefer it, so that there is a jumping off | point for things to talk about. | civilized wrote: | I have the family SMS group as well. | | I can't imagine having much use for a social network after | all these years of social networks being awful, but maybe a | truly different and more liberated one would offer some | possibilities. | [deleted] | skippyboxedhero wrote: | One way to look at it is a restriction on post frequency, but | the reason why modern social is so harmful is because unlimited | post frequency means unlimited read frequency. | | It isn't restricted post frequency, it is restricted read | frequency. | CitrusFruits wrote: | Yeah, I definitely thought of this. It's kindof a chicken or | the egg thing. Some of my friends had the suggestion of a | weekly digest or something like that. | | In the end, I opted for this since, from my perspective, | there's a sort of solace knowing that I'm only "expected" to | write at most once a week. | civilized wrote: | I must be some sort of freak libertarian. People are always | talking about how they want or need their lifestyle to | force them to do this and that. I would always rather have | the choice. | skippyboxedhero wrote: | It is a choice. The choice is: I will only write/read | once a week, that is you making a choice about how you | want to allocate time. | sunshi23 wrote: | What value does this provide at all? This reminds me of Chinese | online games will block teenagers at night. (Fang Chen Mi ) | Except that the government forced all online games to do so. | Because if some does some does not, teenagers just play the one | that does not block them. | | Maybe we should build a system that have user's actual password | to FB IG TWTR TIKTOK, and user only has password to that system | and when they post go through that system as a proxy. Then the | system can truly restrict the frequency of post. | | But this violates the term of service of all the social network | listed above | DreamFlasher wrote: | Great work! Wish it were built on Mastodon and e2e encrypted. | vmception wrote: | Minutiae seems to do this decently | | Lets you use the app for one minute a day at a random time, and | during that minute you get to see a random users old feed | | You might think it's a different use case, but i think it's | tackling the same problem and in a more succinct and simpler way | | https://minutiae-app.org/faqs | CitrusFruits wrote: | This is a really interesting concept! | | I'm trying to solve the problem of creating space for people to | share more thoughtful, potentially longer form content, while | this seems to be solving for transient "what are you doing | right now" type content. I'd say they're different enough, but | both seem to be a reaction to similar concepts. | vmception wrote: | Try it out! Maybe you can incorporate it into your sentiment | of solving this goal for a broader population | | I know some people whose lives it changed by not being able | to curate their images they post during their 1 minute (a | prerequisite to viewing others images in the 1 minute). They | realized they were sitting at a desk every time and didnt | want their life to be that way so it was a catalyst to taking | more drastic steps to doing something else. | CitrusFruits wrote: | Hey everyone, OP here. | | I, like many others tend to waffle between loving and hating | social media, so this is my take on what I think a better | solution looks like. This is something I've been working on for | the past couple of months and a concept that I think will be | though provoking, if nothing else, to the HN community. If you | want to read more on my thoughts and the story behind this, you | can check out my blog post here: | https://dev.to/duensing/introducing-slow-social-4a90 | | Besides that, I'm happy to answer questions and take criticism. | mind-blight wrote: | I'm really curious what your business model is and how you make | money. I looked under those sections on the about page, but | they don't actually answer the question. | CitrusFruits wrote: | The app is just launching, and it's a side hustle. Everything | right now can run on a free tier, and I'm fairly certain I | can support a _very_ sizeable amount of users for < $100 of | operating overhead, which is cash I'd totally be willing to | spare if I had thousands of users enjoying the app. | | But, if I get there, the plan would be to explore charging | something reasonable for a plus tier which would offer more | formatting options, more pictures per post, and a couple | other things, for something nominal like $3 of a month. That | could help cover the overhead, and maybe would result in some | cash on the side. | and0 wrote: | I think there's a lot of honesty and practicality in your | response but not the transparency or clarity needed for | this to scale. These networks require buy-in / critical | mass to function as intended, and not knowing if I (or my | friends) will agree to the pricing terms after I get my | network on board is a hard stop for me. | | I do like the idea. Well designed limitations can add a lot | of appeal, and in social spaces especially they can be fun | to play within. | ada1981 wrote: | None of the other social networks you were an early | adopter of told your their future monetization plans did | they? | and0 wrote: | The two that I used to maintain personal connections and | communicate in ways worth archiving were Myspace and | Facebook. For Myspace I was a teen. Same with Facebook. | My connections were from school so if either disappeared | I'd just have to talk to them the next day. Also both had | attained critical mass at some sort of scale by the time | they popped up on my radar, and were fairly new ideas so | it's not like I was able to shop around. I just went | where my friends were. | typeofhuman wrote: | If it hasn't been mentioned, you should learn from the social | media app Path. | | It limited the amount of friends you could have. As a result, | people didn't add friends because they didn't want to give up a | space for a potential future connection. The scarcity worked | against Path. | | You might find the same result where people won't post because | they'll be afraid of using up their allotment when they may | have a better one later. | CitrusFruits wrote: | Thanks, that's a good tip! I'll definitely check them out. | | And yup, definitely a concern. Makes me think that perhaps | there's a possibility to not cap the posts, but rather have | any posts outside of the first one in a week have something | like a "secondary" tag. Then again, you might run into the | problem that Instagram has where everyone stopped posting as | soon as stories caught on. | | Alas, it's a tricky problem. | adfm wrote: | Attenuate with a temporal component. Share short bursty | material with the people you frequently interact with and | dither out over time. Pin things you want your infrequent | contacts to see. You keep your "free" speech while slowing | the spread of batshit insane brain worms naturally. | pjerem wrote: | Why not just allow your users to write their weekly post | during all the week (and saving it while not publishing it) | but just allowing to publish once a week ? | | In doing so, there would be no real scarcity for the writer | (the post can be edited to the infinity) and you encourage | writing long prose. | | Your UX should show that editing the post is the default | option and publishing it should be some ritual (maybe send | a notification when it is possible?) | Husafan wrote: | I think the weekly post idea really applies to the reader, | not the writer. Perhaps you could get around this with a | "digest" style of posting. I.e. I can write as many posts | as I want, but it will only be published once a week as a | digest of posts. This might fit better with human behavior | too as it lowers the cost of a single post while still | achieving the goal of updating friends on what's happening | at a spaced interval. | | Anyway, love the idea. Good luck! | prismatix wrote: | Maybe you can only see one post per friend per week in | the feed, but then you can click into their profile to | see the whole of their posts. | bornfreddy wrote: | I would definitely not cap the posts, nor would I limit in | any way their consumption. If I have something to say, why | should I not be able to? And if I am interested in what | someone does, I don't want to wait for a week to read it. | | That said, it is important how the posts are presented. A | person who posts all the time about each plate of food... | might not be as interesting as another friend who writes | only once a month, but usually about really interesting | things. A good UI which puts control in the hands of the | consumer (but easy to use - convenience matters) is the | most important thing here imho. | | Best of luck! | metamet wrote: | The ability to edit the weekly post seems like it could | remedy this. Would probably see folks embrace the | journaling approach by using headers to timestamp them. | typeofhuman wrote: | That would be great! | | I'm sick of articles needing follow ups or corrections | instead get a separate, unlinked post. | | Articles become stale but they get shared and referenced | as if they're the final point on the subject. | subpixel wrote: | This is exactly the app idea I pitched my wife with the working | title "What's Happening". Which she had turned into a joke at | my expense. I wish you luck! | [deleted] | murphyslab wrote: | The rate limitation sounds good for a general audience of one's | connections, but there are a lot of times when life calls for | more frequent updates, particularly in times of emergency and | medical crisis where the changes to one's life circumstances | change by the day, if not by the hour. Posting, "Andy is in the | hospital", then needing to wait a week to post, "Andy died 1 | hour after being admitted to the hospital". One suggestion | might be to allow posts to be threaded, so that updates to an | initial post can be added without waiting an entire week. | bityard wrote: | Not the OP but I think the answer for this is that | communication of medical/health issues is best handled by a | more private form of media. | murphyslab wrote: | For medical issues, I agree that private is usually best; | or at least restricted to close friends and family. | Imminent death often has an adjacent position, where people | commonly wish to share with a broader audience. | | However it was just an example of an emergency where one | might strongly desire to update a broad range of friends | and family quickly. Other situations might be natural | disasters or a house fire where one "We're alive!" post | might require a follow-up the next day with more details, | needs, or grief. | | It's just to say that an unyielding, global rate limit | would not serve peoples' interests well. | FFRefresh wrote: | I sometimes wonder whether our goal of making everything | as convenient & frictionless as possible is part of our | problem. By serving _some_ of our short-term interests, | are we jeopardizing our long-term interests? | | I'm personally okay with seeing products that have well- | intended friction built into them. | nightski wrote: | I don't have skin in this game and will probably never use | it anyways, but to me that is a non starter for this whole | project. Why would I want to limit how often my friends can | post? The problem with FB isn't that my friends post to | much, it's that I never see what my _friends_ post. | Jeff_Brown wrote: | I'd want to use both. Using private media is more reliable | if you remember everyone relevant but that's hard. | Lamad123 wrote: | One post per week is too limiting!! There are days when I want | to talk to or mention 10 friends! | manmal wrote: | Why not IM those friends? | [deleted] | mabbo wrote: | FYI: when I gave my email address to sign up, the very bare | email that hit my gmail inbox went straight to spam. | | You're going to need to do more to keep it on the 'not spam' | list, I think. | ccorcos wrote: | Have you talked to Joe Edelman? He would have all kinds of good | ideas for you. | CitrusFruits wrote: | Who is Joe Edelman? | ada1981 wrote: | Def talk to Joe Edelman. | lvl102 wrote: | Looks great and love the concept. What's the tech stack behind | it? | CitrusFruits wrote: | I'm using Supabase, Sveltekit, Tailwind, SendGrid, and | Netlify. | | SvelteKit has been a lot of fun but definitely has a few | rough edges. Supabase has been awesome, but as you can | probably see, from the comments elsewhere, has some kinks | around magic link based authentication. | throwaway892238 wrote: | Facebook without comments or statuses or groups or likes would be | a pretty good social network. I'd also only show mutual friends. | hrdwdmrbl wrote: | Anyone interested building a social network should read: | https://www.eugenewei.com/blog/2019/2/19/status-as-a-service | | tl;dr - There is a specific reason that we like to use social | networks, and it's the receiving of status or accumulate capital. | From this theory, a network like Slow Social cannot succeed | because there isn't enough social capital that can be consumed. | charcircuit wrote: | One big issue with this model is that you can't build an | audience. You can't make friends. What's the point of using the | site when all of your posts go to the void. Even if you add a | friend all of those posts you worked hard on are gone. | | If it takes a long time before there is new content to see, why | would people visit the site instead of forgetting about it? How | are you going to make it a rabbit for people to go there? | xixixao wrote: | This is true for messaging social networks and they thrive. I | don't think this is necessarily a huge blocker. | tsuujin wrote: | You make friends in real life and then include them in this | platform, not the other way around. Not building an audience | seems to be a feature. | | I view this as a great way to keep in touch with people you | actually know. | CitrusFruits wrote: | Yeah, this is basically my take. Not everyone will feel like | this, but I often find I have enough friends, but not great | ways to connect with them in online spaces. In other words, | I'd rather build a tool that helps people understand and | relate to each other, not a tool that connects people to | others who have the capacity to understand and relate to them | but might not necessarily already be in their lives. | flipdot wrote: | I tried to sign up, but the confirmation email got automarked as | spam by Gmail and didn't contain any links. | walterclifford wrote: | Same, you have to not only tell gmail it looks safe but also | mark it as not phishing (from the three dot dropdown), then it | will be in your inbox AND have a link to click. | flipdot wrote: | Thanks! First time dealing with this Gmail's "feature". | (deg[?]deg`) | lobstey wrote: | just like the WeChat way of dealing moments. | kqr wrote: | > The goal of the company is to equally value the customer, | environment, and profits. In other words, the model isn't to | maximize profit like an investor backed startup, but rather to | create a lean, useful piece of software that grows with its users | and can sustain itself from every angle from day one. | | If the owners are separate from the users, it's not set up for | sustainability. If someone other than the users bear the risk of | loss and upside of profits, it creates weird incentives whether | you want it to or not. | | Have you considered running it as a co-op? Every user has an | equal stake in costs and profits and an equal voice in decisions. | This model literally grows with its users, and it's the only one | that does so. | | I like this but it sounds like you've chosen the wrong model for | running it. If I was going to use something like this (which I | would like to, I think, if nothing else to share updates with | families/close friends) I would want to own it equally with the | other users. | simulate-me wrote: | Has any technical product ever organized as a co op and been | successful? Such a weird criticism... | beaconstudios wrote: | Quite a few! | | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platform_cooperative | | I think it's a valid concern to ask about incentive alignment | - if you're wanting to do a tech-for-good project, you | probably want to make sure that profiteering doesn't become | the primary driver at a later date by making a Ulysses pact | [1]. | | 1: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulysses_pact | longtimelistnr wrote: | It's not a weird criticism. May not be unrealistic to be a | co-op, fine that's difficult. But don't lie and say there's | no profit incentive to be had when there clearly is if owners | of the platform are separate from individual users | itslennysfault wrote: | The jury is obviously still out, but I think The Drivers | Cooperative is pretty successful, and I'm optimistic that it | will continue to be. | | https://drivers.coop/ | planb wrote: | Has any social network ever focused on users well-being and | been successful? I think it's not criticism but an | interesting idea. | CitrusFruits wrote: | I too, am curious. It seems like Mastodon and other | federated networks definitely have user well being and | autonomy as a goal. However, for whatever reason, most of | the more popular federated networks seem to aspire to be | "X, but federated" instead of having drastically different | user experiences. | mr90210 wrote: | What an idea! | nsomaru wrote: | I'm not sure how this works in the US but I would be worried | about attracting liability for what happens on the platform. | | How does that work? | gglon wrote: | That is exactly why I think one post per week and lack of | global space is a great solution for a startup; it massively | simplifies spam and other hostile content early detection and | removal. | CitrusFruits wrote: | That's an interesting idea! No I haven't considered that. | B-Corp is what I was imagining, but a co-op is a great idea as | well. | Biologist123 wrote: | Lovely concept. Have a look at the work Commonwealth have | done on digital platform cooperatives. https://www.common- | wealth.co.uk/reports/digital-co-ops-and-t... | throwaway892238 wrote: | Couchsurfing converted to a B-corp, but that didn't work out | well (for the members). I think co-op would put the emphasis | back on the member experience and would have prevented | Couchsurfing from killing its community and ruining its | brand. CS also claimed that the B-corp meant it couldn't | accept donations or do open source development, though I have | no idea if that was true. | | If you go for co-op, you could go one further and try for a | non-profit co-op: https://smallbusiness.chron.com/nonprofit- | coop-66008.html | civilized wrote: | RStudio, in my opinion one of the greatest companies in the | world today, is a public benefit corp. | fabianhjr wrote: | There are several advocacy groups that could help out: | | https://ioo.coop (Internet of Ownership Coop) (Edit: | currently down, a snapshot is available at | https://web.archive.org/web/20211207224925/http://ioo.coop/ ) | | https://platform.coop (Platform Cooperativism site) | | A good short read on the topic could be Nick Srnicek's | Platform Capitalism; it covers concisely a lot of the | economics involved. | severak_cz wrote: | I like the idea of experimenting with a different styled social | network. | | I have built one such network myself. It's called Kyselo and it's | for refugees from now-defunct social network Soup.io. | | It's very different from today's social network in these things: | | - it has strictly chronological timeline | | - everything (except DM) is public (this makes leaks from | seemingly private spaces impossible) | | - but it encourages pseudonyms | | - you can colour/style your profile page as you like - see for | example my page - https://kyselo.eu/severak | | - it's small and mostly meme based | | Small userbase size and chronological timeline makes it very time | saving (except when you are trying to find a right meme in your | collection :-D). | | It works fine for me but it will need some polishing before it's | open to wide public. Now it's in semi-open beta (you have to ask | me for invitation code). | chetanbhasin wrote: | Tried to sign up but got the rate limit error. | CitrusFruits wrote: | Oh, fascinating. Was it a Supabase thing? I haven't run into | that before. If you have any more details, I'd love to hear. | You could comment here or email team@slowsocial.us | quijoteuniv wrote: | Good stuff! Keep going! | hypertele-Xii wrote: | "Frequently asked questions | | What's your business model? | | The goal of the company is to equally value the customer, | environment, and profits. In other words, [...] | | How do you make money? | | The goal of the company is to equally value the customer, | environment, and profits. In other words, [...]" | | What? | | https://slowsocial.us/about#business-model | davesque wrote: | I'm assuming that was a typo? | [deleted] | Qahlel wrote: | As the world becomes a more digital place, we cannot forget | about the human connection. | | If you're going to build a business that's based on community, | your business has to have community in it. | | If your business is the right business, then money will never | be an issue. | amelius wrote: | Market has been spoiled, everybody thinks social media should | be free as in beer. | CitrusFruits wrote: | Yeah, there's a bad copypasta there. I'll see if I can update | that real quick. | | EDIT: The FAQ has been updated. | bfrog wrote: | I kind of love it, but it sort of feels like the burn of social | networks at this point is less about the bite sized crap stream | and more that some entity now has my social network and interests | saved for the purpose of targeting ads. Ads are the evil that | drives the crap to keep us doom scrolling. Has this somehow found | another revenue stream? Ads as a revenue stream is the issue, not | the size or rate of posting. | CitrusFruits wrote: | Low overhead costs and charging users something like $3/mo | would be the target for sustainability if the network ever | starts to have significant operating expenses. Until then, it's | really cheap to keep running. | [deleted] | ghiculescu wrote: | Great to see more ideas in this space! A few years back my wife | and I tried something kinda similar, Sundayy. We even launched on | HN - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25848793 | | Some people still use Sundayy but it didn't really take off. I am | really glad we did it, but I'll admit it got less exciting to | work on when most users would fizzle out after a few weeks. My | gut feel on why is that we didn't do enough to compete with the | dopamine drip feeding of typical social networks. Social networks | are (amongst other things) a way to kill time and we didn't offer | that. This made it hard for users to make Sundayy core to their | lives unless they were really committed, and then even if they | did that it wasn't very rewarding if none of their friends were | equally committed. | | For me personally I stopped using the product when I had some big | personal news I needed to keep secret for a few months. It was | very hard to write about other stuff on Sundayy because it was | all I thought about. So I ended up writing nothing and broke the | habit. That sucked - maybe I'll pick it up again now I think | about it. | | Good luck OP. I hope this gives insight into some challenges you | might face. I don't have solutions to these challenges but | hopefully you find some :) If you want to chat more on the topic | feel free to reach out by email. | [deleted] | CitrusFruits wrote: | This is really cool! And those are some great insights. I just | might send you an email. | noobermin wrote: | Sorry for the nitpick but the f in the typeface they chose is | unfortunately distracting for normal text. | felipemesquita wrote: | Nice to see what I think is a trix[0] editor for the rich text | posts. | | [0] https://trix-editor.org/ | CitrusFruits wrote: | Yup! It's Trix alright. I was pretty amazed out how heavy and | complicated most rich text editors are. But then again, it's a | pretty complex interaction they have to design around. | ubicomp wrote: | Re-doing social networks based on one size fits all social | activity streams seems like it's going in the wrong direction. | Especially since these social shapes typically necessitate | funding requirements like ads or pay to play. | | I wonder when we'll go back to forums to connect. Earlier "slow | social" methods (mailing lists / message boards). Forums can be | free. People can self-host. They can run for years and years and | years. Folks can organize around a single subject or a series of | subjects and grow together over time at various levels of | engagement without resorting to a one size fits all model that | social networks force on users. | | I really enjoyed running forums for my friends. I never had to | pay giant server fees because it was just a few of us. We had | 100K page views per month. We never had to have ads. We had forum | permissions and mods and a lot of fun times. | | I see Discord being similar to this vs. social media, where you | can slowly join communities and get nearer to the core. More of | an onion model of community. I'm looking forward to seeing what | happens in this space. | CitrusFruits wrote: | > Especially since these social shapes typically necessitate | funding | | I would actually argue, that with today's technologies and | cloud offerings, this isn't necessarily true. The operating | costs for a high availability sites aren't all that high. You | can easily support a million users for under $1000 a month. The | real cost to most other social networks is the need to generate | infrastructure and growth engines around returning investment | to venture capitalists and other stakeholders. | | But regarding your other points, I definitely sympathize. I've | actually tried to get my friends onto forums, and thoroughly | enjoy Discord. Slow Social, however, is for a niche that I | don't think those other options fully serve. | Simon_O_Rourke wrote: | What a fabulous idea! I'll bet Zuckerberg hates it, which makes | it even better. | CitrusFruits wrote: | I'd be amazed if the Zuck ever heard about it. | | Also, I think this is something that could co-exist with Insta, | Facebook, and WhatsApp. | AndrewSChapman wrote: | "4. WHEN AND WITH WHOM DO WE SHARE YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION? | | Affiliates. We may share your information with our affiliates, in | which case we will require those affiliates to honor this privacy | notice. Affiliates include our parent company and any | subsidiaries, joint venture partners, or other companies that we | control or that are under common control with us." | | I would much prefer that this simply read: We do not share your | information with anyone. | CitrusFruits wrote: | I don't plan on sharing personal information with any sort of | entity, certainly not for profit. But, the personal information | is stored on machines and manipulated by other companies, | namely Supabase and SendGrid since its necessary for the site | to function. | javajosh wrote: | It's admirable that you're aware of the risk you're placing | on your users, and willing to assuage them. If you're | audience is HN, you might want to simply list the 3rd party | runtime components you're using (and to go one better, review | _their_ privacy notices, recursively -- I can imagine a | malefactor doing a backroom deal with a component provider to | get kickbacks on data being shared down the line.) I would | also include any front end components in this notice, like | Cloudflare or GA. | | Last but not least, it would be nice to know who's behind | this, because none of these assurances mean anything if | you're _really_ a malefactor. I would recommend putting a | real name or two in your "About" page. | hn_user2 wrote: | If this is the case, I would recommend a stronger word than | "affiliate". My data is always being sold to marketing | affiliates. | fridental wrote: | Never ever I would sign up into a social network that doesn't | publish any real-world contacts. Who are you, guys? Americans? | Russians? Chinese? Why should I trust you with my online life, if | I don't even know, where you live, what are your names and how | your faces looks like? | | And, in Germany, publishing of the real-world information is | mandatory. | [deleted] | throwaway0x7E6 wrote: | >And, in Germany, publishing of the real-world information is | mandatory. | | thankfully, nobody outside Germany has to give a fuck about | German laws | aaaaaaaaata wrote: | Safe to assume they're not Germans, then! ;] | CitrusFruits wrote: | I mean, there's an email address and, if your really curious, | you could have read the blog post linked in the main site that | has my name associated with it. | | https://dev.to/duensing/introducing-slow-social-4a90 | | But I see the larger point, there's trust that needs to be | built, but I think the standards are going to be different for | different people. The German legal requirements are also | something I didn't know about. I do my best to protect and | guard the personal information, and only request what's | directly relevant for the app. | CitrusFruits wrote: | Also, I'm American and all the data is being stored | stateside. | sandworm101 wrote: | >> all the data is being stored stateside. | | Which brings up all manner of privacy issues for those not | stateside. | [deleted] | [deleted] | waveywaves wrote: | If rich text formatting is your feature proposal for a social | media network should I even care about it. Users care about a | larger abstracted view about what you can do differently with | what you can do with the smn interface. Flaunting rich text | formatting feels like a core developer's achivement rather than a | technology achievement. Do correct me if I am wrong. | CitrusFruits wrote: | I think what I was trying to get across is that you can do | things more in a blog post styles as opposed to Twitter style | quick bites. But maybe you're right it's not worth mentioning. | The copy for the site hasn't gone through any focus group | testing or anything like that. | civilized wrote: | I think it's a good feature. The FB text box is almost | insulting in its lack of features and options. | [deleted] ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-04-16 23:00 UTC)