Ask HN: How might HN build a social network together?

Cal Newport makes a point about how in the early days of Facebook, it was essentially mirroring your real world social network. In fact, I remember how fun and innocent Facebook was in its early days.

Perhaps the biggest shift in Facebook's evolution is towards algorithmic feed optimisation and expansion into more public areas that exceed dunbar's number.

Scuttlebutt (https://scuttlebutt.nz/) avoids this shift in its design by doing away with the "global singleton" network that Facebook, Instagram and other have.

Another interesting project that is bringing back self-sovreign identity is Bluesky's At protocol (https://atproto.com/) which also make the "algorithm" part of a feed open source.

Some building blocks that are worth considering: IPFS/IPLD (https://ipfs.tech/) and Hypercore (https://hypercore-protocol.org/).

Disclaimer: I work full time on IPFS

Back when social network platforms became A Thing they adopted OpenSocial - they had a news feed, notifications, etc - but each social network was completely isolated. I haven't taken a look at Ning since I worked on social networking apps about 12 years ago, so I have no clue how they've evolved since then.

When you do so, the app might say, "The person you just met claims to be Joe Schmoe, do you want to vouch for them?" If you approve them, they can message you and vice versa. A friend of Joe's can see you in his friend list, and try to message you, and you can accept it if you trust Joe, but they won't be a first-tier friend until you meet them. Your tweet-like posts can be seen by anyone, or your friends only, or people within N connections of you, as you prefer.

I think it could be implemented in a distributed way, with no central server, if some proportion of the users are willing to serve their traffic from a VPS rather than just their phone. If someone cheats (uses a fork of the app that lets them "friend" people they haven't met, create fake identities, lie about their friends graph, etc), it wouldn't affect you unless you trust them. Over enough time and with enough use, this might be good enough to figure out whether someone distant from you (e.g. someone you're about to make an Ebay purchase from) is using their real identity or not, as the "main" part of the overall friend graph that a real user with a lot of friends is connected to would be structurally distinguishable from the subnets created by cheaters.

(This is not a cherished idea I've been working on for years and am prepared to defend, just a random idea I thought I'd post in case it sparks an idea for someone, so be polite in ripping it to shreds pls)