An idea like this could truly make you a multi-millionaire!*
*one minor catch is that you’ll have to start as a billionaire
Ask HN: How would you launch a privacy-first, Instagram-like social network?
41–50 of 120 posts
Re: Ask HN: How would you launch a privacy-first, Instagram-like social network?
#42It's called a private group chat, and it exists everywhere. No "recommendations," no ads, no moderation, no randos butting in trying to derail conversations, just shared social norms among the participants. It's not something you can scale or monetize, and that's exactly why it's the perfect social network.
Re: Ask HN: How would you launch a privacy-first, Instagram-like social network?
#43Why would you build it? That isn't being snarky, it is the question you need to answer. Why would people join it? What problem are you solving for them? Why are celebrities and influencers on those platforms to begin with? When you can detail out those answers, those answers tell you what you need to do to launch. You have to match the table stakes of existing platforms, which means you need to know not only what tho…
Thanks for your comment! Honestly, I didn’t expect anyone to respond to such a vague post. The reason I’d build this platform is to help people connect without the distractions of sponsored content or random memes. I stopped using Facebook about seven years ago because I wanted a space where I could simply engage with the people in my network and their thoughts. AdBlock helped for a while, but eventually, my feed fil…
Three observations: "The OC Problem", "Useful for n==1", and "Build an Internal Internet".
1) OC, aka: Original Content. Most sharing has trended towards reposts, memes, etc. That is the toxic cancer that has spread throughout most "social" networks. Somebody finds a funny meme, or ridiculous tornado picking up a car while someone dances a jig in front of it, and that drowns out "real" pictures of peoples kids or cats or whatever.
2) Useful for n==1. I believe it was an interview with the founder of del.ico.us (one of the OG bookmarking sites) who said "if you want users, you have to make something that's useful for _just that one user_, and if more users use it, then it gets better". It was shockingly insightful! He made delicious where I was motivated (for myself) to save bookmarks / links. If other people saved the same link, a counter went up (social proof?). I (and others) could explore shared tags (eg: `#tech`, `#javascript`, whatever), and that had an exponential utility based on number of users, BUT BOUNDED IN THE n==1 CASE!
3) Build an Internal Internet: I had a blog once upon a time (still do, and still nobody reads it ;-), and then twitter came along. Of course it grabbed my attention, of course I tweeted to be cool like the cool kids. Then I got upset with myself: "I like this micro-blogging thing, but it's taking away from my own blogging!" So I made `tweet.sh`, which did `echo "$1" > "~/blog/entries/tweets/$DATE-tweet.md"` and then styled it appropriately.
Putting it all together, build an INTERNAL instagram to help people back up, organize, showcase their photos (n==1). SOCIALIZE it via cooperating / federated instances (exponential utility). Allow tagging/repost/non-OC suppression (and SOCIALIZE that... eg: allow people to anti-socialize reposts).
For monetizing? Good luck. It's got to be better than iPhotos.
Re: Ask HN: How would you launch a privacy-first, Instagram-like social network?
#44>privacy first
>social media
you don't. you just killed your only decent revenue source, and will never out compete others. Social media live and die by their users.
Re: Ask HN: How would you launch a privacy-first, Instagram-like social network?
#45Pixelfed is already what you are looking for. You could contribute yourself, fork it, or just use it in your server.
What I don't see often, and I think it was a neat idea is a copy of Path. A social network for a very very small set of people to share their things. I think path was like 2 members.
I imagine that just a whatsapp/telegram conversation chat is more than enough for this case tho.
Re: Ask HN: How would you launch a privacy-first, Instagram-like social network?
#46If you’re passionate about this idea, launch it! Your initial costs will be on the low end. If it does grow to the point you need to worry about costs, that’s a good problem to have which you can then handle appropriately at that time.
Re: Ask HN: How would you launch a privacy-first, Instagram-like social network?
#47Having it be decentralized is more important than anything IMO.
True privacy comes from having control over your data.
Re: Ask HN: How would you launch a privacy-first, Instagram-like social network?
#48> One challenge I'm anticipating is attracting celebrities and influencers who are already established on Instagram and TikTok. I would rather like to see the solving the problem of not attracting any celebrities or influencers , or companies and just getting normal people for social connections, like Facebook was originally. This is the hard problem. Money and fame usually destroys the platform in the end, as it aim…
That’s an interesting perspective—thanks for sharing it! My thought was that having celebrities and influencers could help generate revenue in some way.
Curiously enough, influencers' pages are actually ad pages, because some of them get paid to promote products. But of course they won't be paying you. Celebs might also promote their latest movie/song/coffee machine/perfume cooperation. Are these ads?
So the "no ads" model falls apart there.
I wonder if a non-targetted ad could be considered privacy-preserving. Then of course I thought but I'd want some targetting, e.g. by country, because for example having an ad for a spa in Helsinki would be quite irrelevant for users in Bangladesh... then how about by age-range, or gender, etc.
At least I'd welcome when the app transparently says e.g. "You're seeing this ad because it's targetting males over 40 with the geo-ip location of Europe".
Re: Ask HN: How would you launch a privacy-first, Instagram-like social network?
#49Apple photos is my privacy first social network. I have "shared albums" with my families, different friend/hobby groups. There is an activity feed so whenever someone shares a photo I get a notification, can like like, comment. It just has the basic features and works really well. Here's the thing, I pay $40 a month for the icloud bundle. So technically they've monetized it already. I've always wondered if others use…
Do you mind if I ask how this works 1) with people who aren't on icloud/iOS? 2) publishing-wise? Like are they getting 'feeds' in their imessage apps or...?
1) it doesn't work outside of iOS/macOS really.
2) it's an app on both platforms with it's own communication protocol
You can use Google Photos similarly and it's cross platform. Not sure about commments tho
Line and Facebook also have "private" social media feeds. By private I mean only people you approve can view. No idea how mined they are for data for ads
Re: Ask HN: How would you launch a privacy-first, Instagram-like social network?
#50There exists a federated Instagram clone in case you want to look at previous attempts: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pixelfed
How is this private?
As far as I'm aware, federation tends to be opposite to privacy because there can't be centralized control of access. e.g. none of the federated social media support private profiles but Instagram does, so Instagram is actually more private than most of these.