Earlier quoted context omitted.
Great idea. To add: I think the site would also need a rock star moderator who diligently checks every comment and keeps the site clean. Also maybe it would be great to have a voting system where one could downvote as well! But only after a certain number of upvotes I think.
Let's also have zero notification whatsoever that someone answered to your comment so you have to keep engaged in constantly looking thru it manually
Ask HN: How might HN build a social network together?
161–170 of 399 posts
Re: Ask HN: How might HN build a social network together?
#162Fleeting idea that could be combined with that: a web-of-trust social network where you can only "friend" people in real life, by tapping phones. 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…
I would hate this because I’m physically nowhere near any HNers I’d trust, and vanishingly few HNers at all.
You wouldn't be first-tier friends with people you only know from the internet. You'd be first-tier friends with neighbors and cousins and the other parents at your kids' school. Then when I prove (keybase style) that I, HN user ineptech, am also "ineptech" on this social network, you would know that I really am a 48-year-old guy in Portland and not some other person because I have also friended all my irl friends, and our friends-of-friends-of-friends eventually overlap.
Maybe "friend" is the wrong term. Maybe "vouch". You could still message me, but you wouldn't vouch for me, because you don't know from HN whether I am who I say I am.
Re: Ask HN: How might HN build a social network together?
#163I think what would really be great is a social media site that doesn't offer direct image or video hosting. A bit like how reddit used to be. You just have link aggregation, voting, and comments. That's it. Maybe in a nice, clean, minimal UI as well. This would lend itself to tech folk I think. If only it existed.
But how can i friend you? This is not social
Even just "follow" functionality would be great.
Re: Ask HN: How might HN build a social network together?
#164Every year at Christmas, I get a card from a family member with a short, personal hand-written note and a 1-page, generic printed update on how their year has been, usually with some pictures.
This is what I want from a social network.
I want to be able to keep up some regular connection with people I don't see on a regular basis. I want us to remember each other, know about major life events, and have a convenient way to reconnect more personally when that makes sense.
For people I see (or want to talk to) regularly, I'll just send messages or group messages.
For more of the topic-centered type of internet community I may want in my life... well HN already does that perfectly.
Re: Ask HN: How might HN build a social network together?
#165I love the idea. In terms of numbers and caps, I think going with Dunbar's number of 150 might work best. 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 mor…
I went through the hypercore page and I still don’t get it. Can you explain
It appears to be nothing more than a distributed, append-only log file.
Edit: basically a blockchain implemented in Javascript
Re: Ask HN: How might HN build a social network together?
#166Personally, I think something like mastodon is better for this purpose. You can post your HN related stuff hashtagged #hackernews and others might follow. That being said - IMHO if you want a social network or community, don’t call it a “communal product”. Products are for making money and whatnot.
Disclaimer: I'm taking care of finance at Mastodon
Appreciate Mastodon comes to mind here.
I disagree with the second part regarding product not being the right term. Take Mastodon as an example: Mastodon is a non-profit LLC and an FOSS software but its community as well as the LLC clearly _produce_ something users are using.
Re: Ask HN: How might HN build a social network together?
#167Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would hate this because I’m physically nowhere near any HNers I’d trust, and vanishingly few HNers at all.
You wouldn't be first-tier friends with people you only know from the internet. You'd be first-tier friends with neighbors and cousins and the other parents at your kids' school. Then when I prove (keybase style) that I, HN user ineptech, am also "ineptech" on this social network, you would know that I really am a 48-year-old guy in Portland and not some other person because I have also friended all my irl friends, a…
But why ? Why would you expose your entire real life social circle to the internet?
Re: Ask HN: How might HN build a social network together?
#168Re: Ask HN: How might HN build a social network together?
#169[deleted]
Re: Ask HN: How might HN build a social network together?
#170I think the answer is personal newsletters. Email is (sufficiently) distributed, and (about) everybody uses it.
I've replaced most of my social email with a monthly update. On the first day of every month, I publish a post on my website titled “What I’m up to this month.” In it, I have three simple sections:
- Highlights from last month
- Things to share
- What I’m up to this month
It sends to my mailing list. I find it works great - I can stay in touch with people, and people bring it up in conversations. It lacks the dopamine hits of "likes", but I think that it's ok to have a calmer, stupider system for staying in touch.