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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?

#371

Post by wink »

> Each user could take part in many social circles. This inherently limits reach and therefore reduces the burden of misinformation, abuse, and moderation.

Why would I limit myself here in any way? I think that's a terrible idea. But then again, maybe I'm using my social networks wrong and the difference (to my blog for example, which has technical content) is exactly that I don't want to send my "I've discovered a nice brand of coffee today" message to a 10 person coffee circle (I don't care enough), but to the people who follow me. This only makes sense because I've been successfully using Twitter for 13ish years with <200 followers and following.

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

#372

Post by hardnose »

solardev wrote: post #70
hardnose wrote: post #59

Seems like a recipe for elitism. The groups of interesting people would be virtually impossible to get into, and the pleb groups would be boring. One of the things that worked about internet discussions of the past is that they prioritized quality of ideas, not importance of identity or who you know or any of that. Social media turned that on its head, I think a successful model might involve turning it back. More li…

The early net was nice because it didn't have billions of people on it. It was a self selecting crowd of early tech adopters who had the time and money to have an online presence, a rarity back in the day. It was its own moderation system because there weren't that many people. Even the web index used to be manually curated. Then the internet became a victim of its own success and the signal to noise ratio plummeted.…

Let me make a counter argument - the signal to noise ratio was always awful. Look at UseNet, at Eternal September.

What changed wasn't the signal to noise ratio, but rather how the internet judged reputation of speakers. We went from forcing everyone to analyze the ideas presented, to offering them shortcuts in the form of "curation" or "moderation" that selected for better content.

Then, the gatekeepers of the "curation" and "moderation" systems developed cliques and hugboxes. They built balkanized, loyal audiences in this way. Call this the Fark, SomethingAwful, Bodybuildingforums, etc. era.

The strong balkanized cliques formed by this iteration pivoted their cliques into social media, and content began to be selected for based on who you were - how much money you had, who was on your friends list, what job positions you held. These cliques established fairly stringent, unwritten ideological litmus tests for admittance. And nobody is better at passing ideological litmus tests than motivated power seekers (i.e. activists) in fields like politics, academia, and journalism, who quickly discovered that they could blackmail/extort their way into the gatekeeping positions.

That leads us to today, where myopic moderation by ideological activists is sold to the public as "curation" and your ability to choose which speakers to hear is sold as a negative externality and a threat to public safety.

So what's the path forward? I posit that we could achieve much by actively suppressing these newer forms of gatekeeping, and returning in as much as possible to the original form that allowed internet discussions to thrive - anonymous text coupled with broad based evaluation of ideas, not speakers' allegiances, possessions, and public personas.

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

#373

Post by kyleyeats »

SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #369
kyleyeats wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The phone would have the same physical security features. But 'signing out' would be more of an ostracism thing.

Ah, ok, so it's just a pain to get back into the social network. Isn't this just adding friction for friction's sake?

No, it's adding friction for honesty's sake. You don't have six thousand friends. You have five friends, tops, and like two hundred acquaintances tops[0].

There's nothing to "get back into"-- it was all just a lie to flatter you. The network effect stops working for you in the low three digits. You're just part of a people directory owned by some corporation.

0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number

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

#374

Post by svnt »

shanebellone wrote: post #358
svnt wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Excuse me for being direct, but do you mean to say you don’t care about other people, only whether what they say is accurate and whether they can communicate it without emotional reaction?

I view all interactions as transactional. Some interactions are net-positives, but most are net-negatives. I value those who reciprocate and avoid those who do not. From my perspective, your question is quite nuanced. I do not value people (in general) because I place no value on life. We are born, we live, and then we die. In time, we will all be forgotten. The outcome is absolute.

Out of curiosity, do you work closely with hardware/embedded systems or similar concepts?

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

#375

Post by shanebellone »

svnt wrote: post #374
shanebellone wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I view all interactions as transactional. Some interactions are net-positives, but most are net-negatives. I value those who reciprocate and avoid those who do not. From my perspective, your question is quite nuanced. I do not value people (in general) because I place no value on life. We are born, we live, and then we die. In time, we will all be forgotten. The outcome is absolute.

Out of curiosity, do you work closely with hardware/embedded systems or similar concepts?

I have not. Why do you ask? You have certainly piqued my interest.

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

#376

Post by SpeedilyDamage »

holler wrote: post #331
dasil003 wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

100%. I've been going through this exact concept in building https://sqwok.im . I got a ton of positive feedback but also "it's not fully baked yet", "not quite there", "missing X feature". It's a challenge but you have to believe in it and keep pushing, try new things, and constantly collect feedback.

Then you're not providing a "gain" for the user, if people are saying it's "incomplete".

You need to figure out what problem your users are having and solve that. Random feature bloat in search of a magical fit is Hope as a Strategy (TM), and it's not typically effective.

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

#377

Post by outsidetheparty »

shanebellone wrote: post #133
outsidetheparty wrote: post #119

You've just re-invented group texts. The thing is: people don't want limited reach. Why would anyone sign up for a network that limits everything they say to be visible to less than a dozen people? What's the incentive? With numbers like that I could just go outside. So many "Let's solve a problem about social networks" ideas turn out to be "let's remove or limit the reason people use social networks in the first pla…

What piece of technology do you use that wasn't pitched like this: Like product but differentiating feature . Reach is the fundamental flaw from both operational and social standpoints. It makes the world worse. We regulate heroin for the same reason. Although this argument makes me a bit of a hypocrite because I do believe all drugs should be legal and regulated. I'm not entirely sure which opinion will hold after I…

Well, sure, but this is "like product but minus the thing that makes product compelling.

If you want people to use a service, you have to give them a reason to use it -- "because it's good for you" isn't exactly going to fill your onboarding funnel, however true it might be.

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

#378

Post by holler »

SpeedilyDamage wrote: post #376
holler wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100%. I've been going through this exact concept in building https://sqwok.im . I got a ton of positive feedback but also "it's not fully baked yet", "not quite there", "missing X feature". It's a challenge but you have to believe in it and keep pushing, try new things, and constantly collect feedback.

Then you're not providing a "gain" for the user, if people are saying it's "incomplete". You need to figure out what problem your users are having and solve that . Random feature bloat in search of a magical fit is Hope as a Strategy (TM), and it's not typically effective.

I do agree with you. I've had more positive feedback than negative and there's been a cohort of supporters who seem to enjoy it.

Def have to be careful about building features, throwing darts, etc. For this project the genesis was that I wanted to use the product myself and didn't see it in the market; I wanted to scratch my own itch, so I did indeed just build it.

But when I initially did a Show HN[1], the client wasn't far along other than supporting the basic chat feature. By the 2nd Show HN[2], the client had matured a bit and it both withstood the hn blitzkrieg and led to people from all over the world having realtime public conversations - the core idea in action. But people were asking for expected features including tags, search, message permalinks, and other stuff that wasn't there yet.

So that's what I've been building since...

All that said I could be blind to my own biases and it's taken awhile to bring it to maturity. I've also had slowdowns due to outside normal job stuff etc.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25470672

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31160302

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

#379

Post by tmaly »

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 still think there is an issue of trust.

What happens when you meet a bad actor vs someone you have known your entire life?

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

#380

Post by svnt »

shanebellone wrote: post #375
svnt wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of curiosity, do you work closely with hardware/embedded systems or similar concepts?

I have not. Why do you ask? You have certainly piqued my interest.

This level of optimization away from other humans in my experience tends to come from specific forms of introverted high intelligence (interaction with others is a net loss) but also specialization functionally/professionally away from interaction with humans (typically toward machines, or at least into more constrained work environments).
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