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Show HN: Slow Social, a social network built for friends, not influencers

slowsocial.us

41–50 of 391 posts

Re: Show HN: Slow Social, a social network built for friends, not influencers

#41
post #13

> The goal of the company is to equally value the customer, environment, and profits. In other words, the model isn't to maximize profit like an investor backed startup, but rather to create a lean, useful piece of software that grows with its users and can sustain itself from every angle from day one. If the owners are separate from the users, it's not set up for sustainability. If someone other than the users bear…

That's an interesting idea! No I haven't considered that. B-Corp is what I was imagining, but a co-op is a great idea as well.

Lovely concept. Have a look at the work Commonwealth have done on digital platform cooperatives. https://www.common-wealth.co.uk/reports/digital-co-ops-and-t...

Re: Show HN: Slow Social, a social network built for friends, not influencers

#42

Respect the effort, but I think it's not going in quite the right direction. I don't think people need paternalistic restrictions on post frequency. People need to be liberated from engagement-optimizing algorithms and allowed to choose which activity is presented to them and in what order.

I agree. What I’d like is to be given control so that I can at least work on improving my social life and interactions. I want pro software but for socializing. Something like my calendar app, email app, Photoshop, etc.

Imagine if our email app changed their goal from empowering users to engaging users. We’d have email apps that surfaced only engaging emails you received and buried the rest. It would maximize our short term app usage engagement to the detriment of long term goals (getting work done). Gmail shows it’s possible to meld good algorithms (spam detection) with good user empowering features, while also being an ad-supported model!

Re: Show HN: Slow Social, a social network built for friends, not influencers

#43
As other people have mentioned but I think not quite nailed perfectly, restrictions on behavior aren't quite the right solution to the problems that plague social media. Some people think that the right move is to eliminate engagement optimization algorithms, and I think that's not quite exactly right either.

IMO the right solution is personal executive autonomy over content presentation and algorithmic optimization. By which I mean, I want to be able to make an "executive" choice over what kind of experience I want to have on a social platform. By "executive" I mean, I want to be able to make that choice explicitly, not implicitly by my behavior. For instance, an implicit choice is walking by a beautiful chocolate cake and being unable to resist eating it. An explicit choice is being able to architect my environment in advance, such that there are no beautiful chocolate cakes to tempt me.

The biggest problem with social media right now is that the incentives of the existing platforms do not allow people to make these choices explicitly. They do not allow us to craft our information environment using our higher order executive functions, they force us to do it using our reptillian brains, one moment at a time. Essentially, they force us to choose: either you get none of what social media has to offer, or you take every aspect of it, whether you like it or not.

Being able to explicitly say "for the next hour I want to be fed thirst traps and rage bait, but then I want that turned off" would be an amazing feature. People have a right to that kind of content if they want it. But they equally have a right to engage their higher cognitive functions and choose not to be expose to it if they don't want it, or choose to be able to architect the manner in which they are exposed to it.

Re: Show HN: Slow Social, a social network built for friends, not influencers

#44

Respect the effort, but I think it's not going in quite the right direction. I don't think people need paternalistic restrictions on post frequency. People need to be liberated from engagement-optimizing algorithms and allowed to choose which activity is presented to them and in what order.

I think 'the algorithm' truly is the bogeyman of our time. Have you considered that it is precisely people themselves who crave engagement and that it is the often reviled paternalism which liberates people from following their worst instincts?

Paternalism isn't categorically bad but I see it as a last resort. People have never had the option to filter out garbage from their feeds. If they did, there might be little need for paternalism.

Re: Show HN: Slow Social, a social network built for friends, not influencers

#45
post #30

It's cool. A bit rough around the edges. I see a lot of "NULL" and "UNDEFINED" in the interface. What is your stack? For how long have you been coding?

Yes, definitely rough around the edges.

The DB, Auth, and File Storage is all Supabase. The web framework is SvelteKit, and I'm using Sendgrid to send emails. Also using Tailwind.

I've been coding for a long time, but have been working on this mostly in off hours so I haven't been able to give this the polish I'd like to. If you have any screenshots of the nulls or undefineds I'd be happy to fix them.

Re: Show HN: Slow Social, a social network built for friends, not influencers

#46
post #13

> The goal of the company is to equally value the customer, environment, and profits. In other words, the model isn't to maximize profit like an investor backed startup, but rather to create a lean, useful piece of software that grows with its users and can sustain itself from every angle from day one. If the owners are separate from the users, it's not set up for sustainability. If someone other than the users bear…

Has any technical product ever organized as a co op and been successful? Such a weird criticism…

Re: Show HN: Slow Social, a social network built for friends, not influencers

#47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have WhatsApp/iMessage groups for immediate friends and family who I don’t mind getting real time updates from. Everyone else, I am okay with periodically contacting as desired via text/audio/video call. It seems pretty liberated, and I am not sure what more a social network website could offer. Outside of about 5 people, I have no interest in real time updates…I can wait to see photo albums next time I call or vis…

I have the family SMS group as well. I can't imagine having much use for a social network after all these years of social networks being awful, but maybe a truly different and more liberated one would offer some possibilities.

[deleted]

Re: Show HN: Slow Social, a social network built for friends, not influencers

#48
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

curious who they're using for transactional email. there are unfortunately a few hoops to jump through to ensure deliverability.

Supabase does the auth emails. If you make a post and have the service email it for you, it uses Sendgrid which seems to make it past the spam folder most of the time.

Can you update here what you learn?

This is a huge sticking point for new projects and businesses.

Re: Show HN: Slow Social, a social network built for friends, not influencers

#49
post #30

It's cool. A bit rough around the edges. I see a lot of "NULL" and "UNDEFINED" in the interface. What is your stack? For how long have you been coding?

Yes, definitely rough around the edges. The DB, Auth, and File Storage is all Supabase. The web framework is SvelteKit, and I'm using Sendgrid to send emails. Also using Tailwind. I've been coding for a long time, but have been working on this mostly in off hours so I haven't been able to give this the polish I'd like to. If you have any screenshots of the nulls or undefineds I'd be happy to fix them.

Thanks for the info!

"A long time" is very relative. I sometimes meet coders who have been coding for 3 years and call it a long time. But for me, "a long time" means 20+ years. So I am still curious :)

The "NULLs" and "UNDEFINEDs" went away after I set my user name.

Re: Show HN: Slow Social, a social network built for friends, not influencers

#50
post #13

> The goal of the company is to equally value the customer, environment, and profits. In other words, the model isn't to maximize profit like an investor backed startup, but rather to create a lean, useful piece of software that grows with its users and can sustain itself from every angle from day one. If the owners are separate from the users, it's not set up for sustainability. If someone other than the users bear…

Has any technical product ever organized as a co op and been successful? Such a weird criticism…

It’s not a weird criticism. May not be unrealistic to be a co-op, fine that’s difficult. But don’t lie and say there’s no profit incentive to be had when there clearly is if owners of the platform are separate from individual users
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