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How to run a small social network site for your friends

runyourown.social

171–180 of 218 posts

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

#171
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'…

Space Twitter is like that if you follow carefully, mute ruthlessly and say things that others in the community agree with enough to follow you back.

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

#172

> Friend Camp is anti-free-speech, at least in the sense that freedom of speech is commonly understood as a value. This is repulsive to some people on both the left and the right, and it's important that people with that core value find somewhere other than Friend Camp to set up their online home I like this perspective because free speech is considered fundamental to the point that if you don’t uphold it, you’re con…

Nuance is where all the bullshit is. That's where soft power thrives.

Why is a nuanced perspective bullshit?

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

#173
post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuance is where all the bullshit is. That's where soft power thrives.

Why is a nuanced perspective bullshit?

No, that's where the bullshit is, not that nuance is bullshit. Nuance is great for certain things, like art. But, like art, there's a lot of room for interpretation, misunderstanding, impersonators, and even deceptive dishonesty.

Nuance requires everyone is on the same page. What looks like a masterwork to you, might look like something a child could paint to the teeming millions.

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

#174
post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Mostly I stick with it because life’s too goddamn short to try and get something else up and running, never mind kludge together some way to import the existing accounts and posts, it’s what was there when I was willing to spend a couple of weeks making a place for my friends to talk.

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

#175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

In Valve's defense, not a ton of games make it past a decade with a healthy playerbase, right?

This is true, the game felt like it was waning in popularity around 2014. But I attribute that to the then new instant play and other UI changes which favored valves servers over community servers which were effectively on "page two". The communities dried up as a result.

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

#177
post #37

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…

Ah, the earlier days of Counter Strike were my version of this. Custom maps galore created by the community, custom game modes. WarCraft mod was my favorite, building XP for abilities on the server - definitely had a good community as the skills for use in game were earned and contained on the individual server.

A shame this vibrant and creative element of the game was stamped out.

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

#178
post #108
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…

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…

I used to play on a specific cod multi-player server back when cod was only a single title. Knew handles of people on the server even though I didn't socialize much (would say hi and the like but nothing much more than that).

My second year of college my roommate and I were chatting and found out we both frequented that server and knew each other by our handles.

Even though I didn't use the dedicated servers as a social mechanism, just hanging out and playing with/against each other for countless hours was enough to seed a lasting friendship when we did meet irl.

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

#179
post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Mostly I stick with it because life’s too goddamn short to try and get something else up and running, never mind kludge together some way to import the existing accounts and posts, it’s what was there when I was willing to spend a couple of weeks making a place for my friends to talk.

That’s fair. I don’t see why you need to knock a more efficient implementation though.

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

#180
That's was the initial purpose of Subreply.com just for friends, but it evolved past that and now I have to review each new account. It's still great because everyone it's verified.

I wish there was a service to allow only real people to sign up on small sites / forums.

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