Servers should just be public utilities, and no further associations should be given to them; leave the people who use them to decide what a community is!
How to run a small social network site for your friends
191–200 of 218 posts
Re: How to run a small social network site for your friends
#192I 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'…
Re: How to run a small social network site for your friends
#193Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 co…
Can't all that be modelled with keys/signing? Can you elaborate more on the risks around automated key management?
Probably? I don't know. The problem is that it gets really complicated really fast. When someone adds a friend, how do you grant that new friend access to their older friends-only posts? How do you revoke that access, and access to any future posts, when they unfriend someone?
> Can you elaborate more on the risks around automated key management?
The biggest problem for my project in particular is that it requires the ability to run arbitrary code and reliably store valuable data on the client side. And client-side rendering. I can't quite do that. I have a requirement that everything must work in a regular web browser and JS is mostly optional.
And even ignoring that, question remains: how do you make sure the server doesn't have access to the key while the client does, while keeping the user experience sane?
Re: How to run a small social network site for your friends
#194Earlier 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.
Old-school Unix systems. Mainframes. BBSes. Mac vs. PC. Hondas sporting spoilers. F150s sporting certain bumper stickers and exhaust modifications.
In cases, this becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
For at least a signficant portion of the Fediverse, Pleroma use has come to be associated with a certain set of users, to the point that the servers are blocked on sight.
Which those seeking to join the Fediverse might care to take into account.
Re: How to run a small social network site for your friends
#195I 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'…
Not affiliated nor currently active, but I want to plug Aether for its moderation and discovery systems. I wish it wasn't a dedicated app, but that's also part of what makes it tick, for now. Trigger warning: there is a blockchain element to it; one of the very few useful cases for it, imo.
Re: How to run a small social network site for your friends
#196In my admittedly limited experience as a human being on this planet, you are not going to be able to form and maintain a cohesive group of more than about 50 to 100 people who all basically agree on values and moderation rules and that sort of stuff. I run a FB group with 5,000 members. It's active daily, on a controversial topic but I don't do a moderation actions more than a couple times a week. I'm in reddit with…
There's also a distinct difference between total registered members and current active users. Especially on any group more than a few years old, there will be many registered-but attrited members who aren't regularly active. The active membership may be anywhere from half to 1% of the nominal registered count (and even smaller on very large groups). Unless you've got accurate insights into those patterns, I'd discount your experience strongly on these grounds as well.
Looking at Google+ groups in the months prior to that service being shut down, I noted a number of patterns. Peak engagements, indicated by visible post, comment, and +1 (equivalent to "like") activity seemed to peak on a per-user basis at around 10,000 users or so. Not only were there far fewer very large groups (1 million+ members) than would be expected, but those that did exist were far less active than their raw size would suggest. Post activity was a much stronger predictor than size for engagement. Spot checks of larger groups showed many were overrun by spam and low-effort posts. (This despite Google's own anti-spam and anti-abuse measures.)
If you're in but not moderating that large subreddit, I'd also tend to discount experience. Reddit also has its own automated anti-abuse systems, though AFAIU it relies far more on moderators, and the load and tools are a constant source of contention between the site and its (nominally) unpaid volunteer admins. Lack of trasnparency also leads to many suspicions and complaints (most unfounded, some not) against mods.
Re: How to run a small social network site for your friends
#197I 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…
Re: How to run a small social network site for your friends
#198I 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…
Re: How to run a small social network site for your friends
#199Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
Contrary to all the BS the tech lobby says, you don't even have to have a cookie banner today I'd you don't collect datat beyond what is technically needed.
Re: How to run a small social network site for your friends
#200Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…