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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

#101

Post by mariusor »

cocoflunchy wrote: post #90
mariusor wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not really there yet, but I'm working on having something close to this possible in the near future. It's not exactly in a forum format, I am partial more to old reddit's interface paradigm, but it will allow a person or a community to easily bootstrap a discussion platform that speaks ActivityPub (the same thing Mastodon does) and that can be plugged into the bigger Fediverse ecosystem. An example instance is at…

Quick feedback: that name is not very inviting...

Thank you. The name doesn't matter that much for me, I wanted to make a pun on littering and it stuck over time.

The same content can be found at brutalinks.tech (but I doubt this domain is much better :D)

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

#102

Post by account42 »

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.

As much as I like threaded discussion like on HN I think it makes following discussion over a longer period of time almost impossible as you need to look all over the tree for new replies. Even reddit's highlighting of new posts does not really fix that and is s paid feaure anyway (except in the subs you moderate) so won't have any effect on the nature of the community. Maybe having both a threaded view for the first time you want to read through a thread and a more linear view for updates would make sense.

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

#105

Post by matheusmoreira »

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…

I had that experience as well but with Tibia instead of Minecraft. It was essentially IRC with an embedded MMORPG. Everyone I knew played it. We'd gather somewhere to train our characters and chat. Good times. At some point I started hosting Open Tibia servers for my friends, even opened it up for strangers later. Lots of fun and was my first programming experience with C++ and Lua.

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

#106

Post by pawelmurias »

jeffparsons wrote: post #71
endisneigh wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can’t even send photos with Minecraft though. It’s certainly a social experience but in no way comparable to say, Facebook or instagram like Friendcamp in the article

That sounds like a feature to me. If I was hanging out with a friend in person and they kept showing me pictures of other stuff in their life I'd get bored pretty quickly. If I'm hanging out with someone, I want to be talking with them and doing stuff with them, not getting a slideshow of their most glamorous recent moments. Each to their own, I guess, but I find the normal mode of interaction on "social media" (incl…

Showing pictures of stuff we talk can be pretty interesting. Having friends show me a video of how the procedurally animated spider created walks, some crazy place they visited or how the new girl they are dating looks like isn't boring.

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

#107

Post by Grumbledour »

worldofmatthew wrote: post #78
Zababa wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why that would be the case. GDPR is mostly about personal data (that you don't really need for a forum). The online safety bill would at worst get your forum get blocked in the UK, but I haven't been able to find clear expectations for a forum outside of what I would call "regular moderation". I also didn't find much about the EU's digital economy regulations. Would you mind expanding on why it's n…

People can post a lot of personal information to an internet forum without asking the owner and even email addresses count as personal information. Labour and the Tories are trying to extend The online safety bill to put forum owner in prison if found to be causing harm (whatever that means) and you would have to pay for staff to monitor the forums 24/7 (no one is going to help out if they risk going to prison). All…

People posting their PI on their own in public is however not something the GDPR really covers and so would not affect a forum operator. Leaking users email addresses is another thing of course, but was undesirable before there was GDPR. (Though it might be totally possible to run a forum without requiring email if one is really worried)

You are not wrong though that running forums or any website with user generated content is becoming increasingly difficult for individuals, though the real culprits here on EU level are the recent copyright reform which requires you to remove infringing content quickly and the upcoming Anti-Terror regulation which requires removing content in one hour. Though it might be true, that many of these laws might be toothless against individuals or non-profits, even though they do not specially exclude them. But it really seems lawmakers don't think much of the internet beyond facebook, twitter and google.

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

#108

Post by np- »

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…

That’s actually interesting—I used to really be into multiplayer games when I was a teenager into my early 20s, and have some great memories of virtual hangs with friends both real and offline. My interest in online gaming basically dropped to zero (or even negative) after that, which seems to coincidence with when matchmaking started becoming a thing. I think it was it Halo 2 that was the first big matchmaking game that I played and I just really couldn’t get into it at all, I just more or less assumed I was just getting older and losing interest in childhood hobbies but never connected it to the loss of community in my head. Thinking about all those multiplayer lobbies from yesteryear gives me pangs of nostalgia.

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

#109

Post by raspyberr »

MisterTea wrote: post #100
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…

> 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 sense of community in MP games. I used to enjoy playing TF2 until 2013/14 or so. I settled into the No Heroes servers and after a while you get to know people. You pop on, see familiar names, say hello and you'd have a good time. It was like a small town which had a lot of…

I still really like TF2 but you've got to stay away from the official servers. Community ones are still great e.g. https://uncletopia.com/servers, https://creators.tf/servers
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