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Ask HN: Why are there no public social networks?

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Re: Ask HN: Why are there no public social networks?

#61
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a meme that we can use for "most" or is it a lie because you can find outliers so every single government entity technically isn't terrible at technology? What I grow tried of is the defense of general government ineptness using outliers. Can't call a spade a spade because of the minuscule amount of times it might be a shovel. I suppose when making the comment GP made, they have to put an asterisk to say "mo…

It's the expectation that I dislike. Feels like people are resigned to poor systems. "Hey most public stuff is crap, this is bad" - Fine by me. "Don't make that public, it'll be bad because public stuff is bad" - Not fine. Also it implies the inverse, that private is always good, or at least better. Good is good. Better is better. Private can be good, and is best for most things. Public can be good, and is best for s…

Sure, yet another way to say "expectation" at this point is learning from past mistakes. Is it fine to say "don't give these institutions money that have made bad public stuff"?

I think the only reasonable answer here is to require the public entity making/maintaining such a system organically grow the system as a private company would. That is difficult to do with a public coffer because, while altruistic motivation may exist individually, as a whole waste will often take hold. Oddly enough, unlike the private sector, the only way to do this without large amounts of public waste is to not grow employee-wise.

Kind of a tangent, but in summary, take a small, focused set of devs, build a the system with features you want, and resist the urge to grow the feature count (beyond reason) and only grow the maintenance employee count, not the development employee count. And don't politicize it (however one does that).

Re: Ask HN: Why are there no public social networks?

#62
post #47

So you would rather trust the government instead? They mostly work with private companies to run their IT stuff so at the end of the day your data would end up on some private servers anyway.

That's a false dichotomy - in many countries, there are public institutions that are (somewhat) independent on the government. (In Czech Republic, we have universities, radio and TV station that are run like that.) It could also be a cooperative, or a non-profit.. there are many models.

I think the problem is slightly more complex for a large-scale social network. When we look at the cost of running something like facebook, we're looking at hiring an army of expensive developers (someone has to build that platform and maintain it), buying or renting an army of expensive servers to make sure it's up and running 24/7, designers so people can actually use it, extra offices in order to host everyone, etc. It seems to be a money issue as well as an organizational issue.

The scenario we'd be looking at would be a small internal network for a university or a small organization. I believe any government could handle such a thing. For something like facebook we're looking at a lot of money and a bunch of skilled people. Not sure that's in line with governments...

Re: Ask HN: Why are there no public social networks?

#63
I might go so far as to say that our potential for a publicly operated social network is already here, or right close, but is being severely and intentionally hampered by ISPs more than anything or anyone else - and by extension recalcitrant, ignorant or paid-for representation.

Unrestricted symmetrical broadband would be a more than adequate foothold for robust frameworks that could fulfill the aspirations of one voice among billions in a truly decentralized fashion as well as provide a true springboard for thoughts, ideas and actions.

I believe the only role government should have here is ensuring access to the pipes that are regulated as an unhindered, affordable utility whose content is regulated only by you.

I also believe there are no words worth censoring. Yes, even nazi fucks. Let them speak and their words will prosper or fail on their own merit. We can't treat symptoms or causes if we drive unwanted words into darkness where they can fester and puss.

Re: Ask HN: Why are there no public social networks?

#64
A nation state running a social network removes an essential political fig leaf, mainly that these networks are not affiliated with the government. Obviously they've been co-opted, but people tend to ignore that in practice. The government is also technologically slow-moving, which makes it great for large and essential research projects in basic science (like every major advance in the 20th century) but not great for consumer-facing and short-term technological applications in the market.

Re: Ask HN: Why are there no public social networks?

#66

As much as everyone likes to shit on crypto, this is exactly what public programmable blockchains will be used for.

It depends where you plan to leverage blockchains. They have well known limits around transaction rates and given basic functions such as private-messaging on social platforms, they have the potential to have a much higher txn rate than anything else currently using blockchain.

Re: Ask HN: Why are there no public social networks?

#68
I suggest you consider the current situation in China. They have state-run social network. They use it to keep up their state surveillance and censorship apparatus. A government run social network is one where you can and will be indicted for anything you say which is at all against the law, and your comments will always be in the public record.

Re: Ask HN: Why are there no public social networks?

#69

SMS could and should be expanded to include more social primitives within the protocol. Lately, I find myself using group chats in SMS more than any social network. Facebook and Twitter have a dis-incentive to do this, but Apple and Microsoft both make phone operating systems and don't have large social networks to compete with an open protocol. It is really annoying whenever I run up against walls like 'You can only…

Google-backed RCS standard is trying to address this.
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