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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

#51

Post by grishka »

kody wrote: post #6

I wish there were a way to broadcast "I am a in " and generate a decentralized forum (i.e. phpbb 15 years ago). Growing up, all online friends lived hundreds of miles away; as an adult, all my friends have wildly different interests. Nowadays Discord is The Answer but it's not nearly as intimate as a good message board. Maybe that's a function of growing up, but I can't help but feel disillusioned that $someone hasn'…

My project[1] will have discussion boards in groups at some point. But not exactly "broadcast", it's more like Facebook groups that you join and do things in.

[1] https://github.com/grishka/Smithereen

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

#52

Post by zimpenfish »

kody wrote: post #6

I wish there were a way to broadcast "I am a in " and generate a decentralized forum (i.e. phpbb 15 years ago). Growing up, all online friends lived hundreds of miles away; as an adult, all my friends have wildly different interests. Nowadays Discord is The Answer but it's not nearly as intimate as a good message board. Maybe that's a function of growing up, but I can't help but feel disillusioned that $someone hasn'…

Much as I don't want to promote them (it was a toxic hell working there), Kalido were trying to do this kind of "match interest in area and generate introductions".

https://www.kalido.me

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

#53

Post by eevilspock »

grishka wrote: post #50
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.

One-to-many messages can be encrypted with end-to-end encryption by encrypting a copy for each recipient using their public key.

Apple essentially does this with iMessage, both for sending a message to each of your devices as well as to each recipient in a group chat.

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

#54

Post by jkepler »

dmje wrote: post #30

Really great perspective from a community point of view (if you want a good read, check out the 20-year-old "Design for communities" book - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Design-Community-Derek-Powazek/dp/0... ). From a software pov I'm less convinced. Seems to me that "just make a Telegram / WhatsApp / whatever" group is where most online communities seem to be coalescing...?

Problem is, Telegram stores all conversation data in their cloud with homemade encryption, and WhatsApp is proprietary, owned by Facebook, and has been target of numerous security breaches... So, something encrypted via open standards and self-hostable (matrix anyone?) does a better job guarding data privacy and security.

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

#55

Post by brnt »

drorco wrote: post #37
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…

This has been like that with many multiplayer games to some extent before the age of matchmaking. Someone sets up a dedicated server with certain mods/game configuration, and that would be yours and other randoms favorite server. Over time, you'd actually become a community. I've gone back to play Unreal Tournament 2004 this past year in such dedicated servers, and it made me realize how badly matchmaking ruined the…

Perhaps it isn't surprising that when interaction is designed to be disposable and replaceable, i.e. matchmaking, no real community can form.

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

#56

Post by grishka »

eevilspock wrote: post #53
grishka wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

One-to-many messages can be encrypted with end-to-end encryption by encrypting a copy for each recipient using their public key. Apple essentially does this with iMessage, both for sending a message to each of your devices as well as to each recipient in a group chat.

The problem with that is that you now have to have a "client" to decrypt and display those posts. And it has to manage keys. And you have to shift some of that burden onto the user because otherwise the key could be accessible to the server.

People do somewhat expect this stuff for messaging, but it'll get really messy really fast for posts and photos and similar long-lived content. It'll get even messier when you consider that privacy options in this style of social network are the likes of "friends only", so they include dynamic collections of users.

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

#57

Post by sjg007 »

rtpg wrote: post #45
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.

It definitely stops the seagull effect where people Just fly in and shit uninformed opinion all over stuff. Not to mention downvotes by the flock.

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

#58

Post by dustymcp »

brnt wrote: post #55
drorco wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has been like that with many multiplayer games to some extent before the age of matchmaking. Someone sets up a dedicated server with certain mods/game configuration, and that would be yours and other randoms favorite server. Over time, you'd actually become a community. I've gone back to play Unreal Tournament 2004 this past year in such dedicated servers, and it made me realize how badly matchmaking ruined the…

Perhaps it isn't surprising that when interaction is designed to be disposable and replaceable, i.e. matchmaking, no real community can form.

This is what killed wow classic when dungeon signup was introduced

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

#59

Post by skinkestek »

zimpenfish wrote: post #52
kody wrote: post #6

I wish there were a way to broadcast "I am a in " and generate a decentralized forum (i.e. phpbb 15 years ago). Growing up, all online friends lived hundreds of miles away; as an adult, all my friends have wildly different interests. Nowadays Discord is The Answer but it's not nearly as intimate as a good message board. Maybe that's a function of growing up, but I can't help but feel disillusioned that $someone hasn'…

Much as I don't want to promote them (it was a toxic hell working there), Kalido were trying to do this kind of "match interest in area and generate introductions". https://www.kalido.me

I tried looking at it briefly and the first thought that hit me is if someone except MeWe[1] is finally trying to recreate the great parts of the social network part of Google+.

Would this be correct?

Edit: I searched HN and the only reference I could find to Kalido was your comment(!).

It looks so promising yet from the comment it doesn't seem like either something I shouldn't want to touch (like Something Awful) or something that wouldn't survive long.

Is there anyone here either you or anyone else who wants to share some lore?

Edit 2: It seems on a closer look to look more like a weird enterprise cross breed between linkedIn and Google+, not a general social network. Still interested to hear more about it, I feel I am reasonably well informed about such software and yet this has slipped by.

[1]: I had great hopes for MeWe, but last I checked they were still lacking a great deal IMO, especially in that they don't seem to see the value of not broadcasting my actual identity to everyone.

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

#60

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

andreyk wrote: post #44

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…

I set up an SMF site, about ten years ago. It has about a thousand members. A number have passed away, during its tenure.

And tumbleweeds and dust bunnies.

Facebook killed it.

I keep it going, but no one really uses it.

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