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Ask HN: How might HN build a social network together?

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Re: Ask HN: How might HN build a social network together?

#281

Post by mikewarot »

Instead of having a oversimplified up/down voting of content, there should be multiple dimensions on which to rank/rate things. Anytime you force things into a hierarchy, you lose generality. Recently I've wished that many of my social media networks offered simple non-verbal ways to express factuality, humor, relevance, snark, sarcasm, interesting, worth-watching, but-what-about, etc. in a way that could be collectively used.

Corrections should link to previous versions of a post. The posts themselves could be stored in a content addressable storage model as used in GIT.

Re: Ask HN: How might HN build a social network together?

#282

Post by SketchySeaBeast »

SoftTalker wrote: post #253
kayodelycaon wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first problem I see is separating my online identity with my real identity. I really don't want anyone at my job finding out which dog I am on the internet. My coworkers and family really wouldn't appreciate my shit posting. :) The second is friends of friends can get really awkward. There are some people who are friends with me that are also friends with people who never want to see me again.

> My coworkers and family really wouldn't appreciate my shit posting. Shit posting is one of the biggest forms of toxicity online. It would be nice if it went away by tying posts to real people. Some people don't care and would shitpost anyway, but most people only shitpost because nobody knows who they really are.

It would appear there is some irony in this SoftTalker.

Re: Ask HN: How might HN build a social network together?

#283

Post by Jerrrry »

autoexec wrote: post #273
scrame wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yeah, was also more annoying to use. it read trying to solve the problem of broadcasting everything to everyone, so it had this concept of circles, whereas Twitter people WANT everyone to see everything they say, either for like or conflict. Facebook was similar, but you could throw sheep at your friend/girl you liked, and it might be ambiguous. plus made you define your social circles as literal "circles", that's no…

> Facebook was similar, but you could throw sheep at your friend/girl you liked, and it might be ambiguous. Throwing sheep is an idiom I'm unfamiliar with and urban dictionary isn't helping ( https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=throw%20a%20... ) what does it mean in this context? I liked the idea of circles. It solves the problem of having to create multiple accounts (one for work, one for friends, one fo…

>Throwing sheep is an idiom I'm unfamiliar with

He likely meant "throwing shade."

Re: Ask HN: How might HN build a social network together?

#284

Post by SpeedilyDamage »

Step 1: BUILD IT!

Ideas are addicting; the longer you have them the more you idolize them and become over time immune to the idea's criticism.

The general principle in startups is that you know remarkably little about what actually is valued in the market until you do some very specific validation research, which involves putting some kind of real, meaningful solution to a person's pain in front of them to see how they react.

Re: Ask HN: How might HN build a social network together?

#285

Post by SketchySeaBeast »

kyleyeats wrote: post #228
ineptech wrote: post #129

Fleeting idea that could be combined with that: a web-of-trust social network where you can only "friend" people in real life, by tapping phones. When you do so, the app might say, "The person you just met claims to be Joe Schmoe, do you want to vouch for them?" If you approve them, they can message you and vice versa. A friend of Joe's can see you in his friend list, and try to message you, and you can accept it if…

I've always liked this idea! I think it should be device-level too, and not have a separate ephemeral identity. In other words if you get a new phone you have to start over.

So does the person who finds the phone inherits the identity? Can we have influencers selling off their circles? When I get robbed is my mugger now friends with my grandma?

Re: Ask HN: How might HN build a social network together?

#286

Post by kerkeslager »

Over two decades into social media, I still see nothing I want from it as a user. Removing toxicity doesn't change that.

> It requires a fundamental change from the reach model towards concentric social circles. The social network would allow users to arrange into small topical groups called social circles. These social circles would have a cap of 10 (arbitrary number) members. Each user could take part in many social circles. This inherently limits reach and therefore reduces the burden of misinformation, abuse, and moderation.

I have group texts that work basically that way. Maybe group texts could be improved in some ways, but you haven't described anything that would be an improvement. In a sense, the killer features of WhatsApp or Signal are basically just that: making text messages work internationally and privately.

> This model closely mirrors real social interactions and allows for both private and intimate communication. It also offers a profitable advertising opportunity. A social circle reflects its members’ interests and context.

From the user's perspective: fuck advertising, and fuck advertisers. If I want a product I'll go looking for information about it, and even then I'm not interested in hearing from you, because you're not exactly an unbiased source of information. Advertisers are liars: even when they're not actively lying, they're misleading by leaving out relevant information about competing products.

As long as your social media platform is in bed with advertisers, it's going to be fundamentally broken, because that money is going to force you to serve advertisers and not users. You can't serve both well--their interests are not compatible. Either you're serving advertisers and helping them lie to users, or you're serving users by keeping advertisers away from them.

Re: Ask HN: How might HN build a social network together?

#287

Post by kayodelycaon »

mywacaday wrote: post #264
kayodelycaon wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first problem I see is separating my online identity with my real identity. I really don't want anyone at my job finding out which dog I am on the internet. My coworkers and family really wouldn't appreciate my shit posting. :) The second is friends of friends can get really awkward. There are some people who are friends with me that are also friends with people who never want to see me again.

I had a conversation recently about the problems of social media and the growing extremes of political viewpoints. We agreed the a good part of the problem is partially caused by the online echo chamber but mostly by the increasing physical isolation of people in the real world. In the past the majority of men would have worked in manual labor with lots of other people, women would have worked at home and spent a lot…

To some degree, I agree. But I also grew up before social media. Very little has changed about the fundamental ugliness of human behavior we try to tuck into a corner.

As someone who was seriously hurt by forced conformity, I’m not exactly pining for the way things used to be.

It wasn’t that long ago when people were expected to drink themselves to death rather than seek help.

Re: Ask HN: How might HN build a social network together?

#288

Post by some_furry »

benji-york wrote: post #276
some_furry wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't speak to my neighbors. My blood family consists of violent homophobes that would shoot my house up if they ever learned I'm gay (or where I live). I have a dedicated online persona (fursona, really) that I keep compartmentalized from people I distruat. Some of my friends are trans. Some of my friends have abusive ex-partners and stalkers. Some of my friends are sex workers who need social media to find custom…

This idea may not fulfill every use case.

It's fine if it doesn't fulfill all use cases, but demonstrating any thought to some of them would help flesh out the details of what's being proposed.

Are you building a social network, or a chain of trust?

Are identities fungible, or irrevocably linked to a person's legal name and physicality?

Etc.

Re: Ask HN: How might HN build a social network together?

#289

Post by nashashmi »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #142

I feel like we already have I have gotten jobs off of HN, started organizations with people I met here, hired people from posts, argued and agreed and flamed and shared ....all the stuff you do with social networks It's just that this network minimizes the "personality" driven aspects of social networks because it's not driven to optimize profit or engagement. It's seemingly driven to optimize for civility. I think t…

I think a news feed is probably what’s missing. See friends. Track them. Pick fights every time they say something you disagree with. Upvote every time you agree with them. Done.

/s

Re: Ask HN: How might HN build a social network together?

#290

Post by dasil003 »

SpeedilyDamage wrote: post #284

Step 1: BUILD IT! Ideas are addicting; the longer you have them the more you idolize them and become over time immune to the idea's criticism. The general principle in startups is that you know remarkably little about what actually is valued in the market until you do some very specific validation research, which involves putting some kind of real, meaningful solution to a person's pain in front of them to see how th…

I wish I could upvote this more than once.

The first rule of social network is that it's useless without many people on it, and there has to be some hook to get them in. But you won't figure that out just by thinking about it and imagining how people will behave. In practice it's a billion subtle factors which you can't reason about without a tangible product that people are interacting with.

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