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Show HN: A Socialist Social Network

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Re: Show HN: A Socialist Social Network

#21

Post by bifrost »

mickdaisy wrote: post #18
bifrost wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for clarifying, it sounds more like you're talking about Voluntaryism and Libertarian ideas. People paying an amount that they feel is fair vs prescribed is very forward thinking and I wish you luck! PS: I'd avoid anything that actually returns funds since its likely to end up being called a Ponzi scheme...

Sure thing, thanks for taking an interest. And yeah, that sounds about right. Although my dream is to gradually push this into the hands of some kind of meritocratic collective ownership, where the "workers" own the "means of production", which in this case would be the students/activists being able to fork the data, app code, and devops for free at any time. RE ponzi scheme... hmmm... so when a Patron makes a $10 co…

Meritocratic -> You could look at postings/content as "points" and then keep a running tally and let people use their "points" for things. Medium does this AFAIK (although apparently they turn them into dollars for their pro authors).

HN just uses karma points for moderation/access so its not quite as handy but I think people respect people with lots of Karma. Like I know there's one person with over 300k karma points here, he's a pretty cool dude and I think his points reflect that.

Re: Show HN: A Socialist Social Network

#22

Post by mickdaisy »

losteric wrote: post #20
mickdaisy wrote: post #15

Hi all - Thank you for killing my baby! In short, the thinking here is that instead of building a community with the intent to monetize the users and their data, we can become sustainable through patron contributions - half of which get redistributed to the users. My thinking is that this incentivizes us all to keep costs very low and also incentivizes members to impress one another, instead of exploiting one another…

Just some feedback: * Anything with a sign-up feature needs an elevator pitch somewhere on the homepage: "What" and "Why" for the layman, two short paragraphs but ideally a single-sentence elevator pitch. * Eliminate the ideology, focus messaging on the value and support. "Socialist" is a very broad and burdened term. * Explain how tf this is socially owned. All I see a dictator, however benevolent, and a very ineffi…

Thank you for this. I've added each of these to the Retrospective post here:

https://www.karma.fm/p/67VCB/karma-retrospective-1014

RE the first bullet: did the introduction modal not pop up for you? If not, there's a bug. Anyone who hasn't visited should see the following:

https://i.imgur.com/p4J4oib.png

Thanks for taking time out of your day for this.

Re: Show HN: A Socialist Social Network

#23

Post by mickdaisy »

bifrost wrote: post #21
mickdaisy wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure thing, thanks for taking an interest. And yeah, that sounds about right. Although my dream is to gradually push this into the hands of some kind of meritocratic collective ownership, where the "workers" own the "means of production", which in this case would be the students/activists being able to fork the data, app code, and devops for free at any time. RE ponzi scheme... hmmm... so when a Patron makes a $10 co…

Meritocratic -> You could look at postings/content as "points" and then keep a running tally and let people use their "points" for things. Medium does this AFAIK (although apparently they turn them into dollars for their pro authors). HN just uses karma points for moderation/access so its not quite as handy but I think people respect people with lots of Karma. Like I know there's one person with over 300k karma point…

Love this. Thank you.

My "cobbled together" implementation is as follows: every user begins with a fixed number of "bolts"; they can unlock more bolts through various "virtuous deeds" (TBD), or they can earn bolts through their comments/posts; their general "bolt throughput" is a proxy to how much "karma" they've earned and given to others.

Though this was cobbled together without any real understanding of behavioral economics and with a whole bunch of untested assumptions, so as it evolves, I'll have to study the tried-and-tested models of Medium, Reddit, HN, and think about what works, what doesn't, what Karma users need/want, and then innovate upon that assessment if needed. I have some thoughts on that but I'm still battling some stability dragons over here...

Thanks again for poking around and helping out.

Re: Show HN: A Socialist Social Network

#24

Post by RugnirViking »

Hi there. I left a comment on the site, but I'm not sure if it got through because it went down again before I could check to see. The main problem I have found so far trying to use the site is that you've made a huge variety of communities and posts using a reddit scraper. I understand the urge to have content, but starting small will allow users to actually find places where other living users are rather than an endless wasteland of bot posts with no comments.

In addition, having user-driven content from the start will (hopefully) lead to a community and a unique style forming - with people sticking around because they enjoy the content and discussion already there, and posting more of the same themselves. If you want to shape the community, the best way would be to make one or two posts yourself, and try hard to comment and engage with other user's posts in the way you hope future users will.

Also, the personality of the first few active users will have a large effect on how the site's culture will evolve. If you're interested in left-wing politics, perhaps try to publicise the site in the kinds of places people already talk about left-wing politics - specific subreddits or discord servers. Of course a lot of places won't like straight-up advertisement, but if you pitch it as an ongoing project and ask for ideas, people will likely be happier to accept it.

Re: Show HN: A Socialist Social Network

#25

Post by mickdaisy »

RugnirViking wrote: post #24

Hi there. I left a comment on the site, but I'm not sure if it got through because it went down again before I could check to see. The main problem I have found so far trying to use the site is that you've made a huge variety of communities and posts using a reddit scraper. I understand the urge to have content, but starting small will allow users to actually find places where other living users are rather than an en…

It went through and I responded! I apologize for the performance headache. I'm in uncharted territory over here.

https://www.karma.fm/p/SGXFV/once-upon-a-time-i-accidentally...

My response:

Thanks so much @Rugnir. This is absolutely a problem; I'll quote you over on the most recent retrospective.

I have a question: when you visit the homepage, all posts are human (filtered for "non robot posts"). You can then include bot posts by manually disabling this filter. On Tribe pages, the filter is "off" by default. Would you like to see the filter controls on the Tribe pages, with it "off" by default?

~~~

In addition, having user-driven content from the start will (hopefully) lead to a community and a unique style forming - with people sticking around because they enjoy the content and discussion already there, and posting more of the same themselves. If you want to shape the community, the best way would be to make one or two posts yourself, and try hard to comment and engage with other user's posts in the way you hope future users will.

Also, the personality of the first few active users will have a large effect on how the site's culture will evolve. If you're interested in left-wing politics, perhaps try to publicise the site in the kinds of places people already talk about left-wing politics - specific subreddits or discord servers. Of course a lot of places won't like straight-up advertisement, but if you pitch it as an ongoing project and ask for ideas, people will likely be happier to accept it.

^ YES! This is all gold. Thank you.

Re: Show HN: A Socialist Social Network

#27

Post by anoncake »

losteric wrote: post #20
mickdaisy wrote: post #15

Hi all - Thank you for killing my baby! In short, the thinking here is that instead of building a community with the intent to monetize the users and their data, we can become sustainable through patron contributions - half of which get redistributed to the users. My thinking is that this incentivizes us all to keep costs very low and also incentivizes members to impress one another, instead of exploiting one another…

Just some feedback: * Anything with a sign-up feature needs an elevator pitch somewhere on the homepage: "What" and "Why" for the layman, two short paragraphs but ideally a single-sentence elevator pitch. * Eliminate the ideology, focus messaging on the value and support. "Socialist" is a very broad and burdened term. * Explain how tf this is socially owned. All I see a dictator, however benevolent, and a very ineffi…

> * Eliminate the ideology, focus messaging on the value and support. "Socialist" is a very broad and burdened term.

No. Eliminating the ideology is never possible. If you try, you implicitly support the dominant one. Avoiding the term is a good idea though.

Re: Show HN: A Socialist Social Network

#28

Post by anoncake »

lukifer wrote: post #9
johnday wrote: post #3

The site seems to not currently functioning, which... doesn't bode well? I am interested in how a social network can be socialist, per se.

Not only does socialism suffer from a "No True Scotsman" problem (there is a wide disparity, from within and without, regarding what the term means), I dare say that's true of just about every -ism under the sun. (TODO: invent a political ideology that includes a formal specification.) :)

"Socialism" being an ambiguous term would not be that much of a problem if people stopped pretending it isn't and every socialist is a tankie. It's hard to believe someone is arguing in good faith if they criticize anarchists for trying to build a totalitarian dictatorship.

We have a problem with people seeing Ms. Scott from England, thinking her skirt is a kilt and getting angry when she claims she can't play the bagpipe.

Re: Show HN: A Socialist Social Network

#30

Post by averros »

anoncake wrote: post #28
lukifer wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only does socialism suffer from a "No True Scotsman" problem (there is a wide disparity, from within and without, regarding what the term means), I dare say that's true of just about every -ism under the sun. (TODO: invent a political ideology that includes a formal specification.) :)

"Socialism" being an ambiguous term would not be that much of a problem if people stopped pretending it isn't and every socialist is a tankie. It's hard to believe someone is arguing in good faith if they criticize anarchists for trying to build a totalitarian dictatorship. We have a problem with people seeing Ms. Scott from England, thinking her skirt is a kilt and getting angry when she claims she can't play the ba…

Totalitarians have used anarchists to achieve their goals in the past. Anarchists themselves may believe they're fighting the Man, but they're just being useful idiots.

When the general populace gets fed up with anarchist antics and rioting they start clamoring for tougher law enforcement (and stronger leaders). That's when totalitarians come in.

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