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How to run a small social network site for your friends

runyourown.social

181–190 of 218 posts

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

#181
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same thing for me, Minecraft servers were part of my "social media usage" when I was younger. I like how they offered different degrees of interactions. You have basic chat and private messages, but you can also go on Skype/Mumble/etc and talk to people. These days I kind of have the same thing with a private Discord server (5 people including me) and Twitter. My Twitter account is private, most of my friends (~10 pe…

I've heard some positive reviews about gather.town[0] for virtual co-working, though I've never used it. The demos look cool though. It lacks the creative element of Minecraft though. I'm not sure to what extend the worlds are customizable. Curious if anyone has used it and has an opinion. I've tried FocusMate, though that is along the "match-making" model, and I didn't get much out of a random pairing for 1 hour at…

For me the real lack of gather.town is not the creative element but 3D. I have great immersion in 3D spaces, but really poor immersion in 2D spaces. From what I see and from my point of view, it's a very small improvement over a Discord server with multiple vocal channels.

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

#182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GDPR and the upcoming online safety bill and the EU's digital economy regulations makes it nearly impossible for almost anyone to run a forum. That is now only possible by big tech.

Why would a non-European forum operator care about GDPR?

Exactly. If my US-based sites get a GPDR complaint, GeoIP blocks will go up and the entire EU can suck a lemon.

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

#183
post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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.

I suspect they mean Jackson Pollock:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackson_Pollock?wprov=sfti1

I personally lack sufficient “nuance” to appreciate his work.

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

#184
post #139

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…

Yeah they don’t want you to realize that it can all be done locally much more easily now Wireguard or similar simple VPNs would make file sharing 1:contacts makes everything easier now. Kubernetes + Kilo obsoletes cloud DCs. But you won’t get to participate in agency manipulating big business that way.

> can all be done locally much more easily now

> Kubernetes + Kilo

How is maintaining an app on top of a Kubernetes cluster easier than setting up a Minecraft server on an old PC back in the day? Who pays for that and maintains it?

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

#186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Couldn't the person running the forum simply not abuse their users by not exploiting their personal data for commercial gain? How hard is that?

GDPR is harder than that, there is a bunch of legal stuff and having to have someone legally responsible to follow the more vague parts of the GDPR. GDPR is not just "not exploiting their personal data for commercial gain" but a lot of busy work with massive fines if you make any mistakes. How is most community forums going to work with that?

If I don't collect any PII, even to the point of not bothering with analytics, and the only cookies I use are for auth or other absolutely necessary functionality, are there GDPR rules I need to worry about?

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

#187
post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

My experience of Pleroma is primarily looking at the timelines of people who have been reported by my users. A large percentage of those reports come from white supremacists with anime girl avatars who are using Pleroma. After several years I am increasingly inclined to get a report, look at the offending user, see that they're on a Pleroma, and just block the whole site then and there without any further investigation.

I am pretty sure I am not the only Mastodon admin who feels this way; anyone coming to the Fediverse should probably be informed that this is a reputation this particular software has.

If this bugs you then do something to clean up Pleroma's overall act and make the racist trolls know they are no longer welcome to use it.

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

#188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely you meant UT99... ;-) A sprawling list of servers to join. Ahhh the memories. headshots jumping off the upper area of deck16. Console gaming and auto joining servers like in CoD. Bleh. Zero sense of community. Before we all met on IRC quakenet in random clan channels.

Speaking of UT99... it's still getting patches https://github.com/OldUnreal/UnrealTournamentPatches > OldUnreal took over maintenance of the Unreal Tournament code base after reaching an agreement with Epic Games in 2019.

Thank you for the heads up!

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

#189
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 follow the same arc. I grew up lugging network cables around to setup LAN parties for Warcraft and Command and Conquer. Then went to college and setup a Halflife server that our entire dorm got into. Even the non-gamers got into it creating their own characters (some of them naked... the characters not the players although you never know what's going on down the hall), and it was a source of bonding that I'll never forget.

Pretty soon after that World of Warcraft was introduced and games started getting more "massive" and I lost all interest in endless games with people I didn't know personally.

Almost 20 years later and when I'm able to sneak a game in, I only play single-player mode to follow the storyline.

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

#190
post #143

This reminds me of a blog post that I can’t find anymore. I sort of remember the title being a riff on “Cooking for One” but it might have been “Programming for One”. It was about the author making a little photo sharing app just for their family. Kind of like a snapchat clone, but invite only for friends and family, no public feed at all. Does this ring a bell for anyone?

[An app can be a home-cooked meal]( https://www.robinsloan.com/notes/home-cooked-app/ )

Thank you so much! This has been itching my brain for a while.
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