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

slowsocial.us

211–220 of 391 posts

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

#211

Never ever I would sign up into a social network that doesn't publish any real-world contacts. Who are you, guys? Americans? Russians? Chinese? Why should I trust you with my online life, if I don't even know, where you live, what are your names and how your faces looks like? And, in Germany, publishing of the real-world information is mandatory.

>And, in Germany, publishing of the real-world information is mandatory.

thankfully, nobody outside Germany has to give a fuck about German laws

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

#212

"4. WHEN AND WITH WHOM DO WE SHARE YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION? Affiliates. We may share your information with our affiliates, in which case we will require those affiliates to honor this privacy notice. Affiliates include our parent company and any subsidiaries, joint venture partners, or other companies that we control or that are under common control with us." I would much prefer that this simply read: We do not sha…

I don't plan on sharing personal information with any sort of entity, certainly not for profit. But, the personal information is stored on machines and manipulated by other companies, namely Supabase and SendGrid since its necessary for the site to function.

It's admirable that you're aware of the risk you're placing on your users, and willing to assuage them. If you're audience is HN, you might want to simply list the 3rd party runtime components you're using (and to go one better, review their privacy notices, recursively -- I can imagine a malefactor doing a backroom deal with a component provider to get kickbacks on data being shared down the line.) I would also include any front end components in this notice, like Cloudflare or GA.

Last but not least, it would be nice to know who's behind this, because none of these assurances mean anything if you're really a malefactor. I would recommend putting a real name or two in your "About" page.

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

#213

Honestly if this was geared towards teams inside a company I would probably lobby for it at my job. Have you considered an “enterprise option”? :)

Something I hadn't considered. I'm not sure I'd go in that direction but I'm curious what this would look like. Are you thinking of something like a weekly status update on projects/etc?

Ya exactly. Basically to replace daily status updates in slack or scrum or tickets or where ever.

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

#215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

People crave engagement as much as they crave unhealthy food. Having a person stand behind you at all times with an infinite amount of the exact kind of burger you like isn't gonna help make you get thinner lol. And that's like the whole point of personalization algorithms.

> isn't gonna help make you get thinner lol.

sure as hell isn't but do you actually think the reason 65% of the American population is overweight is burger ads, rather than the simple fact that people unless very explicitly told not to will stuff their faces with cheap and delicious fast food? Do you think that requires coercion? Like in a world where McDonalds doesn't run ads, they all start working out and eat salads?

The algorithm itself only exists to satisfy a never-ending demand by people, it's nothing else than an internet conveyor belt.

When you walk into Twitter HQ and turn the algorithms off you think the people will greet you in the streets as liberators with flowers and open arms? You'll have a riot because Instagram and TikTok don't work any more

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

#217

Hey everyone, OP here. I, like many others tend to waffle between loving and hating social media, so this is my take on what I think a better solution looks like. This is something I've been working on for the past couple of months and a concept that I think will be though provoking, if nothing else, to the HN community. If you want to read more on my thoughts and the story behind this, you can check out my blog post…

The rate limitation sounds good for a general audience of one's connections, but there are a lot of times when life calls for more frequent updates, particularly in times of emergency and medical crisis where the changes to one's life circumstances change by the day, if not by the hour. Posting, "Andy is in the hospital", then needing to wait a week to post, "Andy died 1 hour after being admitted to the hospital". On…

I think there's a case to be made that whatever you write after a week of reflection will be of more value or at least higher quality than what you'd be able to send off immediately when someone dies. Certainly there's a need for a space that puts quality over immediacy. There are already a dozen channels by which you can update people with short bursts of information, but by their nature those channels are not well suited to more thoughtful posting.

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

#218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd argue it's different because it has better privacy controls. Instead of all your content being public, it's all private and you can share it to a non Slow Social member via email. Additionally, it's a more focused, concentrated experience. Otherwise, feel free to make blog posts. I think blogs are great.

Email has privacy controls and is decentralized. Just send HTML emails to the friends you want to get it.

Email is push, this is pull. For stuff below the threshold of breaking news ("grandma has passed"), it would feel awfully presumptuous to email people.

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

#219

It sounds like a great idea. I did notice a carveout in the privacy policy for "if we get acquired, they can do whatever they want with any information" which seems... undermining, given how getting acquired by one of the worst data brokers is generally assumed for any successful social media startup.

I will not sign up for a service with a clause like this.
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