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The European Social Stack

european.social

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Re: The European Social Stack

#101

Post by dutchCourage »

jstummbillig wrote: post #19

Here is an idea for a EU product: Build something that is great, and make it so good, that everyone, including US citizens, will want to use it. Your ethics can still be great, but don't make me feel like your product won't be. If you have to market "Europe" or privacy it probably won't be.

I don't think making a good product is enough. X is still prevalent despite Musk's actions both as a public person and as X's owner. The alternatives, be it Bluesky or Threads, are fine to use, yet people aren't moving.

There's no way we'll be able to compete against Google or Meta in any meaningful way if we can't even get people out of X. Even more so because I'd argue that a good product is a little more boring than the ones that are currently at the top.

Re: The European Social Stack

#102

Post by joe_mamba »

wbl wrote: post #45
joe_mamba wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Humanity managed dating fine before these things were created Except back then we had stuff like religion, church, village, common communities etc to bind people. >even managed it in cities where we live in isolating apartments and only know our neighbours by the music leaking through the walls. Statistics show urbanites to be lonelier than ever, so that take disagrees with you. >Pubs, clubs, general social events w…

Social media and dating apps together have created this isolation. People can demand a completely comfortable illusion of life and enforce this sterility.

>Social media and dating apps together have created this isolation.

Work with me here. If you ban all social media and dating apps tomorrow, will you suddenly cured loneliness? I 100% doubt it. This reductionist logic is more like Stalin having all sparrows killed to save the crops.

Re: The European Social Stack

#103

Post by joe_mamba »

ben_w wrote: post #29
joe_mamba wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Humanity managed dating fine before these things were created Except back then we had stuff like religion, church, village, common communities etc to bind people. >even managed it in cities where we live in isolating apartments and only know our neighbours by the music leaking through the walls. Statistics show urbanites to be lonelier than ever, so that take disagrees with you. >Pubs, clubs, general social events w…

> Except back then we had stuff like religion, church, village, common communities etc to bind people. And in cities, more pubs, clubs, general social events where you can find people whose actual interests you share. Most of us didn't go from Renaissance village churches to dating apps in one lifetime, let alone one day. > Statistics show urbanites to be lonelier than ever, so that take disagrees with you. Most surv…

>And in cities, more pubs, clubs, general social events where you can find people whose actual interests you share.

In theory yes, in practice, not so much. Just because you're surrounded by people doesn't mean people don't stay atomized. It doesn't mean everyone is open to you or likes the same things. If your interests are rather niche and don't live in a large metro area with million of people then you might be shit out of luck if you hope to meet your partner via your niche interests, so dating apps it is. For me, none of my partners shared the same interests, so if I relied on my hobbies for dating I would have stayed single forever.

>So the focus should be on that, then. As in, not a dating app.

Unfortunately, datings apps are the only easy way to meet someone is some cities at certain age groups. There's people who just don't like, or don't have the money or the patients, to go out to events, hoping to meet someone, as that's a waste of time and money if your goal is just romantic dating and not speeding two hours to listen to a band you don't like and paying 7 Euros for a mediocre beer. They just want a sure date in the near future to settle down and have a family in the near future.

If you're single in your thirties, and you move to a new city for work, you don't have the time to first build a social network from scratch before you can meet a partner as that takes years or even decades. If you're optimizing for starting a family ASAP due to your biological clock, then you need to optimize for dating people in your age group who also want a family ASAP, not waste your time going to art galleries, pubs and clubs hoping that maybe you'll meet your future partner there. For this demographic dating apps are the only way to optimize for dates, especially if you're a man working in male dominated fields with male dominated hobbies. Which is why the majority of dating apps users are Millennials. Students and people in their early twenties have a lot more options for IRL dating than apps.

>Women get all the low-effort displays, men get no responses and spiral into low-effort displays.

And you think the results of romantic interactions between opposite sexes in bars and pubs is THAT much different? If you as a man approach all the women in the club you find attractive, how do you think it's gonna work out for both of you? Unless you're Henry Cavill, it's gonna be similar to dating apps: women getting too much unwanted attention and men getting only rejections.

Re: The European Social Stack

#104

Post by wbl »

joe_mamba wrote: post #102
wbl wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Social media and dating apps together have created this isolation. People can demand a completely comfortable illusion of life and enforce this sterility.

>Social media and dating apps together have created this isolation. Work with me here. If you ban all social media and dating apps tomorrow, will you suddenly cured loneliness? I 100% doubt it. This reductionist logic is more like Stalin having all sparrows killed to save the crops.

The causes of problems are not necessarily their solutions

Re: The European Social Stack

#105

Post by simianwords »

wbl wrote: post #45
joe_mamba wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Humanity managed dating fine before these things were created Except back then we had stuff like religion, church, village, common communities etc to bind people. >even managed it in cities where we live in isolating apartments and only know our neighbours by the music leaking through the walls. Statistics show urbanites to be lonelier than ever, so that take disagrees with you. >Pubs, clubs, general social events w…

Social media and dating apps together have created this isolation. People can demand a completely comfortable illusion of life and enforce this sterility.

> Social media and dating apps together have created this isolation

This is not true, dating apps the result of our culture and not causing it.

Re: The European Social Stack

#106

Post by daneel_w »

sneak wrote: post #94
daneel_w wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they focus mainly on the fact that these are federated and mature solutions. I don't know anything about Matrix but as far as XMPP/Jabber and "push notifications" go, you don't need to reveal the message, nor the sender, in the alert. Right, it's not perfect, but in my book that goes a long way for privacy.

You can’t send the notification to an iOS app from a federated server. All notifications to apps on iOS must come via APNS and be delivered to APNS via mTLS with a client cert issued only to the developer/publisher of that one app. Each federated instance would need its own app.

Yes. Same for FCM/Android. It's not ideal, and it's not XMPP's shortcoming, but it's livable since we don't need to reveal the who or the what. And thankfully it's up to the individual user to balance their desire for automated notifications on mobile devices against their need to keep Google and Apple out of band.

Re: The European Social Stack

#107

Post by joe_mamba »

wbl wrote: post #104
joe_mamba wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Social media and dating apps together have created this isolation. Work with me here. If you ban all social media and dating apps tomorrow, will you suddenly cured loneliness? I 100% doubt it. This reductionist logic is more like Stalin having all sparrows killed to save the crops.

The causes of problems are not necessarily their solutions

Both the cause and especially the solutions are way too complex to be summarized on HN comment in a few sentences but need an entire essay. Social media and dating apps are 10% tops of the issue. The issue has multiple layers developed over the decades.

Re: The European Social Stack

#108

Post by jstummbillig »

dutchCourage wrote: post #101
jstummbillig wrote: post #19

Here is an idea for a EU product: Build something that is great, and make it so good, that everyone, including US citizens, will want to use it. Your ethics can still be great, but don't make me feel like your product won't be. If you have to market "Europe" or privacy it probably won't be.

I don't think making a good product is enough. X is still prevalent despite Musk's actions both as a public person and as X's owner. The alternatives, be it Bluesky or Threads, are fine to use, yet people aren't moving. There's no way we'll be able to compete against Google or Meta in any meaningful way if we can't even get people out of X. Even more so because I'd argue that a good product is a little more boring th…

No, it's not enough. In your case it's not even anything: Being a second mover and copying the incumbent without the benefit of the existing user base does not make a good product to begin with.

Re: The European Social Stack

#109

Post by cadamsdotcom »

jstummbillig wrote: post #19

Here is an idea for a EU product: Build something that is great, and make it so good, that everyone, including US citizens, will want to use it. Your ethics can still be great, but don't make me feel like your product won't be. If you have to market "Europe" or privacy it probably won't be.

Ah but for some reason that was missing from the principles. It is the ONLY thing that matters.

Being European is a nice boost on the feelgood factor, if people even know. Anyone who ranks that above product quality is a minority - that’s why this has ~400 signatures not 4 million.

Re: The European Social Stack

#110

Post by iamnothere »

Radle wrote: post #68
wilg wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.statista.com/chart/30934/world-best-universities...

Yes, but us universities aren’t financially accessible to most people and access depends more on connections and families than merit. But your link also is only relevant to the university system. It doesn’t change the fact that the non university part of education is severely financially crippled in major areas of the country in order to hinder black people from getting proper education. Combined with a burnout intro…

> us universities aren’t financially accessible to most people

On the contrary, they are too accessible due to enormous tuition bills and federally guaranteed student loans (which cannot be discharged in bankruptcy). This toxic combination saddles many graduates with debt they will struggle to pay off for decades. Almost as if it was intended to create a modern form of debt slave.

> access depends more on connections and families than merit.

Only true for small elite private colleges these days. Even most of the big top schools have tried to move away from legacy admissions.

State schools also have problems with excessive tuition expenses, but the value is still there for high-demand undergraduate degrees (mostly just for connections and job access afterwards) and definitely for a Master’s. They also accept almost anyone regardless of educational background.

US trade schools are a fantastic value, and more people should take advantage of them. They are a great option, but too many people don’t realize that for many careers a trade school or community college is perfectly adequate and won’t hold you back or saddle you with a mountain of debt.

> Combined with a burnout introducing system of standardized tests

Our standardized testing has problems, but it’s really not that stressful or difficult compared to, say, much of SE Asia.

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