51–60 of 68 posts
I like the idea at a social level/product level, but at this point I don't think I'd use any social network that wasn't open at a protocol level in some way. ATProto/etc would be a great tech backbone for this, and would then let users self host their content, it would let orgs run their own views, it would let archivers archive content for posterity, it would open the door to possible federation in ways that suited…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's pretty late tonight and thankfully HN has re-front paged this to my surprise so I'll just talk openly. The playbook that you lay out is basically the playbook every social network has come up with... and where are we now in 2026? Has that playbook produced anything good? The niche social networks don't work and will never grow beyond their niches. Everyone is trying to start the niche thing, but ultimately, phot…
> I guarantee you that in the next five years there's going to be a huge exodus out of the incumbent networks Are you willing to change your mind on this? What evidence do you have this will happen? It does seem that social networks can have some generational stickiness. Wrestling my family away from Facebook feels like a lost cause. But younger relatives are more active on Instagram and some other options. But I don…
To be more precise about what I mean by exodus, I don't think that instagram is going away but I do think its utility as the de facto social network to keep in touch with friends is at risk. I know a lot of people who are quitting and I know a lot of people who don't really care for it but are on it because everyone else is on it. I'll probably have an IG still in 5 years but I see a world where I don't use it much.
The software is really well-made. I wonder why you change the links from the internal ones to this format https://piecesof.me/p/5b2w8x6sn2mwkdhppfusvqsf8z5h1t ? The writing is quite nice. I don't understand the "Docs". And I'd suggest to make it very easy to write my first post. The big editor is a bit scary. also here: https://piecesof.me/videos - where do I get prompted to upload my own video? Anyway, good luck! Le…
Ah I forgot to remove the videos section. Ultimately you can just create a Gallery post with a single (short) video but we can't allow YouTube style videos yet because it's the one cost that can throw a huge wrench in our finances. I'll remove the Videos section now but all the code is there to get it working.
Docs are important because it allows a page to be customized. If you write an entry today like an About Me, it's tagged July 3, 2026 and slides down your feed. You can create an About Me as a doc and in settings -> theme you can set the doc as your landing page. The official @PIECES page (https://piecesof.me/@PIECES) landing page itself is a doc.
The more I see of social media, the more I'm convinced that it's not really a fulfilling way to share and socialize on the internet. I've come to believe that anything that can platform every voice on the planet forces noise to drown out signal. Since you've actually started a social media site, I wonder if you have any insight on that? You say you believe in this project; what is it that you think is valuable about…
Facebook overall is a pox on humanity. Private Facebook groups, however, can be genuinely useful. I spend a lot of time in one topic-specific Facebook group (and as little time on wider Facebook as I can manage)
- i see a 100 social networks advertised daily on reddit, HN etc - the biggest challenge you are facing is overcoming the double network effect - in order for any of em to take off, you need to get me and my friends and their friends and so on - one way to do this is to start a social network only for a small niche. could be anything. startups only! designers only etc and scale it up one category at a time to let the…
Any particular ones that actually had a nice design or seemed well made?
A “social contract” that one party changes at will and then just announces the changes is not a contract (or social) in any meaningful sense. It’s just terms and conditions with a different name. If you want people to see it as a different thing, it needs to be a different thing.
> You have no civil rights in Myspace. You can't go anywhere in Myspace, you can't organize in Myspace, you can't make money in Myspace.
> You can have a hut in Myspace. And you live in the hut until they pull the plug. That's a favela. It's made of instructables. A favela is an emergent structure, it's made out of corrugated tin and breeze blocks.
> You can't insure it, you can't get title to it, you can't raise kids in it. There's no inspection of the water, the heating, the electricity. It's a slum!
> You built it yourself, with play-labor, but politically it's a slum.
— Bruce Sterling
The only social network that hasn't enshittified is most likely Mastodon.
Why isn't this social network open source?
> PIECES is a product created by a for-profit company, and we are not anti-advertising.
Advertising IS a form of enshittification.
It is the same model of almost every social network.
The more I see of social media, the more I'm convinced that it's not really a fulfilling way to share and socialize on the internet. I've come to believe that anything that can platform every voice on the planet forces noise to drown out signal. Since you've actually started a social media site, I wonder if you have any insight on that? You say you believe in this project; what is it that you think is valuable about…
Hey, sorry for getting back to you late. Was watching a bunch of World Cup games. I'll say this: when you log into one of the incumbent social networks like IG/X/SnapChat/Facebook and you see a post that you don't care at all to see, why are you seeing that? It's because they want you to see it. They think that this post with this content and these reactions has the highest chance of making you engage with it and see…
Just a tip that helped me here: I'd recommend going through a pretty significant Unsubscribe purge with those channels. I think its something that I ended up doing due to the pandemic, but I realized I was following too many "daily update" channels that just flooded my attention while the clickbait. I started by removing some of the more egregious channels and then when I'd pop into some of the more well known channels with longer "weekly updates", I realized they also would also do the same thing.
I'm still aware of news, but I'm no longer glued to the hour by hour coverage and remember to actually do and watch the things I see. I'm going to be sleeving some Magic cards later today.
Oh yeah. I'm wild baby.