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How to run a small social network site for your friends

runyourown.social

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Re: How to run a small social network site for your friends

#41

Post by INTPenis »

hemloc_io wrote: post #13

I have what I think is a unique perspective on this. Private small self run social media already exists. It's personal Minecraft servers. When I was younger I ran a Minecraft server out of my toaster of a PC. Friends hopped on, made their own little houses, built stuff and talked. Friends would pass in and out and in order to get in you had to be invited! I'd say max there were 10-20 people on there somewhat consiste…

Yes games have been a social forum for over 2 decades. But they're not federated like ActivityPub nodes are.

Re: How to run a small social network site for your friends

#42

Post by taccie »

Not really meant for friends, but for organizations and companies we have build Open Social as open-source platform: https://www.drupal.org/project/social and SaaS at https://www.getopensocial.com/

We are happy to have the backing of orgs as the UN and the European Commission. Goal is to go fully decoupled using React and GraphQL next year.

Re: How to run a small social network site for your friends

#44

Post by andreyk »

I actually tried to do this with Diaspora and a couple dozen of my closest friends. We tweaked it to not have like buttons, and like other fun stuff. The idea being that it'd be our own little space and we could be weird on there and design it as we felt like.

Sadly, it just did not catch on, people were not invested enough in it. These days, I'm not too sure there is a point to this kind of thing instead of a group WeChat/FB or Discord or what have you chat.

I do wish the community of HN had a forum kind of site, not quite social media but something with more persistent interactions on topics and perhaps among users.

Re: How to run a small social network site for your friends

#45

Post by rtpg »

Nerada wrote: post #14

I miss how every hobby had a forum running on phpBB, SimpleMachines, Invision, etc. HN is great, but it's very point in time. If I find an interesting topic posted over a day ago, it's never getting new replies. It's a snapshot of the thoughts on that topic for that single day, nothing more.

Yeah honestly forums counteract soooo much of the weird incentives that lead to a lot of yelling (yes there is still yelling in forums)

I’ve been in two “tiny forums” in the past and honestly I prefer that to the idea of a Twitter clone. Let’s people put in more effort, have real topics (like about events) and isn’t just streams.

Re: How to run a small social network site for your friends

#46

Post by mocheeze »

hemloc_io wrote: post #13

I have what I think is a unique perspective on this. Private small self run social media already exists. It's personal Minecraft servers. When I was younger I ran a Minecraft server out of my toaster of a PC. Friends hopped on, made their own little houses, built stuff and talked. Friends would pass in and out and in order to get in you had to be invited! I'd say max there were 10-20 people on there somewhat consiste…

Did the same thing in a Minecraft predecessor called Blockland. Even ran a big mod pack that was all about social stuff like having IRC inside the game client. And what you say about invite-only is totally true. I used to run a fansite about an Xbox game that was still "unannounced" and the community was very non-toxic because I started a private forum on the IGN message boards where it was only full of people that mentioned the game elsewhere. What a time!

Re: How to run a small social network site for your friends

#48

Post by bertil »

I'm not sure that many people would want to share what they put on social networks with their local computer enthusiast. Talk about hobby, neighbourhood questions, lost child—sure. But a lot of conversation on there are gossiping, private information, the occasional password.

A lot has been said here about privacy and how social media company might abuse it; the reality, is that they don’t care much about your private conversation, unless they can target ads based on this, or grab your attention. They don’t have the time or the inclination. Your colleague who can see all private message on Slack without notification and probably does religiously (yeah, that’s a thing) on the other hand…

Re: How to run a small social network site for your friends

#49

Post by darcys22 »

The best social network these days is a smallish closed group chat on your favourite platform.

There are apps that exist already to keep these private if you wish. But the key is curating the chat so there is good signal from friends who arnt starting flame wars.

Re: How to run a small social network site for your friends

#50

Post by grishka »

bertil wrote: post #48

I'm not sure that many people would want to share what they put on social networks with their local computer enthusiast. Talk about hobby, neighbourhood questions, lost child—sure. But a lot of conversation on there are gossiping, private information, the occasional password. A lot has been said here about privacy and how social media company might abuse it; the reality, is that they don’t care much about your privat…

You can't guarantee privacy in a federated system and it's important to understand. I'm working on my own ActivityPub project and I don't even support any kind of non-public content for now. I'll be exploring the options for e2e encrypted instant messaging later tho.
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