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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

#151

Post by acomjean »

mitchdoogle wrote: post #124
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'…

It's not decentralized, but doesn't meetup.com satisfy some of those ideas?

meetup.com I think does. I know a couple people that organized groups and myself was a member 10 years ago. Its business model was to charge the organizers of groups a yearly fee, which is nice for the members (to not get ads..). A lot of the groups were quite good and some of the tech ones are still going.

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

#152

Post by michaelbrave »

mitchdoogle wrote: post #121
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 can't help but think that kids today are doing something like this in their own way. And that the real thing people miss when they wax nostalgic is youth.

I see kids today doing this a lot with "Among Us", Fortnite and Minecraft still. Among us basically functions like a chat room but you can control who enters, password protect it, set rules for the game etc

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

#153

Post by mellavora »

ceejayoz wrote: post #91
deanc wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not going to be the commenter that goes on and on about the negative impact Facebook is having across the world, as this is disruptive to genuine arguments. To give a clear counterpoint to the idea of using Facebook groups - forums had anonymity. You could be a different version of yourself - for better or worse. It's not possible to do that on Facebook without accountability.

> It's not possible to do that on Facebook without accountability. Sure it is. Our local town Facebook groups have a wide variety of clear sockpuppet accounts. Facebook's detection and processes for this are laughably bad; quite a few people have reported the "Count von Brokenhymen" style ones to no avail.

Yes, well, my son cannot get a facebook account because his first attempt was a sock puppet account (photo was a gecco, username "Gordon". Kid has class). He's tried 4 times since and usually gets shut out within 30 seconds.

so sock puppet might not be as easy as it once was.

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

#155

Post by karaterobot »

I agree with all the problems they note about large social networks: not being in control of the software, the data, the rules, and so on. I think this approach solves many of those problems. But, some of other the problems with systems like Twitter and Facebook are inherent to the style of communication, and are not solved by just hosting your own Twitter and Facebook clone.

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

#156

Post by olah_1 »

captainmuon wrote: post #38

For me this kinda misses the point of social networks. I don't need a special site to stay in contact with my actual friends (nor could I convince them all to join my site). I also don't need something to talk with total strangers. I want something in the middle, a site to explore the fringes of my social graph. Look up people that I barely know. Understand who is connected to whom, who is a friend of a friend. And h…

> I want something in the middle, a site to explore the fringes of my social graph. Look up people that I barely know. Understand who is connected to whom, who is a friend of a friend. And have a low-key way of staying in touch with people who are not in my closest circle.

This is what Iris is going for. https://github.com/irislib/iris-messenger

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

#157

Post by xboxnolifes »

GekkePrutser wrote: post #122
toyg wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All dating sites have effectively two sets of users: people who use it until they get a long-term partner (A), and people who can use it forever because they are unlikely or unwilling to get a long-term partner (B). That is effectively intrinsic to the activity they are born to serve (dating). This said, there are enough people belonging to the B set to keep them in business pretty much forever. There is also the opt…

There's also an influx of (A)s of course because it doesn't always work out :)

Even if it did work out, both (A)s and (B)s are constantly born and growing up.

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

#159

Post by olah_1 »

egypturnash wrote: post #29
spurgu wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes Pleroma different from for example Mastodon? Why would one choose one over the other?

My experience as a Mastodon admin is that Pleroma is popular among people with anime girl avatars who like to post swastikas, ethnic slurs, and right-wing propaganda.

So you'll stick with more inefficient software for the sake of political ideology? The thought of that is very funny to me. It highlights everything wrong with software design today.

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

#160

Post by jrm4 »

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…

Yup. A bigger point on "small social networks" that it's taken years for me to learn; I've always dabbled in the idea of social networking as its grown up, hacking together a little thing that looked like twitter before twitter for my friends, etc.

Here's the thing that may save you if you're trying to pull one of these together: You can't do it without something else. Meaning, the idea of a "local" Twitter/Facebook killer is great but (if you're me) no one will see the value and you won't be able to onboard ANYONE without some sort of "social carrot" separate and apart from the mere idea of "hey, new social network."

(This is one of those ideas that nerds like me just have trouble digesting, so hopefully it helps someone get through this. I've tried and failed this many times over. Will probably do it again :) )

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