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Show HN: A Socialist Social Network

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Re: Show HN: A Socialist Social Network

#31

Post by mickdaisy »

anoncake wrote: post #27
losteric wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What do you think about embracing the controversy embedded within the term as a means of educating people around its underlying principles, getting people talking/thinking about it, etc?

Re: Show HN: A Socialist Social Network

#33

Post by mickdaisy »

easytiger wrote: post #32

Can you explain some of the design? I.e. backend stuff

Sure thing!

The application architecture is simple - it's an n-tier app (front end > business layer > SQL server).

The business layer is .NET/C#. I use Entity Framework as an ORM and then migrate the slower bits to Dapper + raw SQL whenever I need to trade maintainability for performance.

I'd be happy to expand on anything specific you're curious about :)

Re: Show HN: A Socialist Social Network

#34

Post by anoncake »

mickdaisy wrote: post #31
anoncake wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> * 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.

What do you think about embracing the controversy embedded within the term as a means of educating people around its underlying principles, getting people talking/thinking about it, etc?

I'm afraid the term makes many people stop thinking. They hear Karma is socialist and conclude that it's bad. Ideally, you would tell people Karma is socialist only after they have evaluated it.

On the other hand, even the most faithful anti-socialist should recognize that you aren't building a totalitarian dictatorship here. So it may make them think after all.

Re: Show HN: A Socialist Social Network

#36

Post by anoncake »

bifrost wrote: post #5
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.

Maybe its for "Social-Ists"? Like a weird way of saying people who like to be social? And hopefully not the kind of socialism that Russia/DPRC employ, that would be the worst of all worlds.

> socialism [...] Russia [...]

Welcome back! A lot has changed in the 30+ years you were in coma.

Re: Show HN: A Socialist Social Network

#37

Post by anoncake »

natechols wrote: post #4
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.

The jokes practically write themselves...

The dev must have used a dysfunctional programming language. They should have used a functional one, without classes and state.

Re: Show HN: A Socialist Social Network

#38

Post by lukifer »

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…

No dispute. Obviously decades of anti-Soviet propaganda (which does encapsulate many legitimate critiques) have muddled the conceptual landscape, both in terms of oversimplification, and in emotional charge. And, we have significant status quo bias regarding our particular neoliberal form of capitalism; you can't tell a fish about water.

Still, even correcting for those historical factors, I think every -ism, or school of thought, suffers from similar problems in subjective perception: it's easy to find nuance and diversity of opinion if one looks for it, and equally easy to find bad actors, tribalist talking points, sloppy thinking, etc, if one looks for it.

> 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

#39

Post by bifrost »

anoncake wrote: post #36
bifrost wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe its for "Social-Ists"? Like a weird way of saying people who like to be social? And hopefully not the kind of socialism that Russia/DPRC employ, that would be the worst of all worlds.

> socialism [...] Russia [...] Welcome back! A lot has changed in the 30+ years you were in coma.

I was talking about actual Russia not Ukraine/etc.

We could talk about the USSR but not everyone gets what that is anymore...

Re: Show HN: A Socialist Social Network

#40

Post by anoncake »

bifrost wrote: post #39
anoncake wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> socialism [...] Russia [...] Welcome back! A lot has changed in the 30+ years you were in coma.

I was talking about actual Russia not Ukraine/etc. We could talk about the USSR but not everyone gets what that is anymore...

Russia isn't socialist at all, not even in the Soviet sense.
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