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How to run a small social network site for your friends

runyourown.social

201–210 of 218 posts

Re: How to run a small social network site for your friends

#202
post #14

I miss how every hobby had a forum running on phpBB, SimpleMachines, Invision, etc. HN is great, but it's very point in time. If I find an interesting topic posted over a day ago, it's never getting new replies. It's a snapshot of the thoughts on that topic for that single day, nothing more.

GDPR and the upcoming online safety bill and the EU's digital economy regulations makes it nearly impossible for almost anyone to run a forum. That is now only possible by big tech.

If you’re a private American with no EU-based assets, why should you care about GDPR? A US Congress that would enforce an EU fine is a Congress that no longer has legitimately to govern the US.

Re: How to run a small social network site for your friends

#203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would a non-European forum operator care about GDPR?

Exactly. If my US-based sites get a GPDR complaint, GeoIP blocks will go up and the entire EU can suck a lemon.

Or just say, “sure fine us another €40million. How do you plan to make us pay?”

Re: How to run a small social network site for your friends

#204
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why that would be the case. GDPR is mostly about personal data (that you don't really need for a forum). The online safety bill would at worst get your forum get blocked in the UK, but I haven't been able to find clear expectations for a forum outside of what I would call "regular moderation". I also didn't find much about the EU's digital economy regulations. Would you mind expanding on why it's n…

People can post a lot of personal information to an internet forum without asking the owner and even email addresses count as personal information. Labour and the Tories are trying to extend The online safety bill to put forum owner in prison if found to be causing harm (whatever that means) and you would have to pay for staff to monitor the forums 24/7 (no one is going to help out if they risk going to prison). All…

Even if that UK bill passes, why can’t Americans and third world residents simply ignore it? If the UK requires ISPs to block the domain, that’s one thing, but how can they realistically enforce prison time on a foreign forum owner? A country that honors such an extradition request is one that is in need to violent replacement with a legitimate government.

Re: How to run a small social network site for your friends

#205

I have what I think is a unique perspective on this. Private small self run social media already exists. It's personal Minecraft servers. When I was younger I ran a Minecraft server out of my toaster of a PC. Friends hopped on, made their own little houses, built stuff and talked. Friends would pass in and out and in order to get in you had to be invited! I'd say max there were 10-20 people on there somewhat consiste…

I agree that many gamers expect Metaverse world, but I didn't expect it would happen this fast.

Re: How to run a small social network site for your friends

#206
post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s fair. I don’t see why you need to knock a more efficient implementation though.

My experience of Pleroma is primarily looking at the timelines of people who have been reported by my users. A large percentage of those reports come from white supremacists with anime girl avatars who are using Pleroma. After several years I am increasingly inclined to get a report, look at the offending user, see that they're on a Pleroma, and just block the whole site then and there without any further investigati…

Are you aware that Mastodon and Pleroma are just servers?

Any offensive domain you come across could be running Mastodon, Pleroma, Misskey, etc. The behavior of individual servers doesn’t reflect on the open source technology they are using.

I guess it just so happens that offensive people prefer to use a more resource efficient technology. Not sure why that is, but I think it’s funny that people like yourself prefer crappy technology if it means that it aligns perfectly with your political beliefs. Just weird to think of servers in this way. As if NGINX could be political.

Re: How to run a small social network site for your friends

#207
post #14

I miss how every hobby had a forum running on phpBB, SimpleMachines, Invision, etc. HN is great, but it's very point in time. If I find an interesting topic posted over a day ago, it's never getting new replies. It's a snapshot of the thoughts on that topic for that single day, nothing more.

This is exactly what I want. I don't want something federated, I just want to host a small site on a particular topic and have some moderation control. I don't need it to connect to every other social network, I just want it to be a small island that like-minded people can congregate on to talk that also has more modern features than the old phpbb did.

Also true for me. I'm building something like that, where RSS feeds and RSS readers come together on a small personal website. Not necessarily a group chat or forum, more like a microblog/timeline/webring thing. A lot of individual websites, connected by the technology of modern and traditional internet.

Question: Would the absence of a forum (or some sort of group chat) be a deal breaker for you?

Re: How to run a small social network site for your friends

#208
post #6

I wish there were a way to broadcast "I am a in " and generate a decentralized forum (i.e. phpbb 15 years ago). Growing up, all online friends lived hundreds of miles away; as an adult, all my friends have wildly different interests. Nowadays Discord is The Answer but it's not nearly as intimate as a good message board. Maybe that's a function of growing up, but I can't help but feel disillusioned that $someone hasn'…

I'm not really there yet, but I'm working on having something close to this possible in the near future. It's not exactly in a forum format, I am partial more to old reddit's interface paradigm, but it will allow a person or a community to easily bootstrap a discussion platform that speaks ActivityPub (the same thing Mastodon does) and that can be plugged into the bigger Fediverse ecosystem. An example instance is at…

Quick feedback: I really like your color scheme there. Dark blueish grey as a background, and a regular blue that comes of as pretty bright as the text color, and therefor pops forward and sticks out. Nice variation on the dark mode theme.

Re: How to run a small social network site for your friends

#209
post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My experience of Pleroma is primarily looking at the timelines of people who have been reported by my users. A large percentage of those reports come from white supremacists with anime girl avatars who are using Pleroma. After several years I am increasingly inclined to get a report, look at the offending user, see that they're on a Pleroma, and just block the whole site then and there without any further investigati…

Are you aware that Mastodon and Pleroma are just servers? Any offensive domain you come across could be running Mastodon, Pleroma, Misskey, etc. The behavior of individual servers doesn’t reflect on the open source technology they are using. I guess it just so happens that offensive people prefer to use a more resource efficient technology. Not sure why that is, but I think it’s funny that people like yourself prefer…

Yes, I am aware of this. I run a Mastodon. I have been running one for several years. And I see a lot more reports from my users of people on Pleromas than on Mastodons or on any other Fediverse server.

The original question was "What makes Pleroma different from for example Mastodon? Why would one choose one over the other?", and "Masto admins are less likely to cut you slack in a dispute if you're on a Pleroma because they see a lot of jerks using Pleromas" is a difference, IMHO.

I can't say I "prefer" Mastodon. It's the server that was there when I decided to start running one. One of my friends switched over from Masto to Misskey and seems to be happy with it but it was a lot of hassle to do the change, more than I'm willing to bother with.

Re: How to run a small social network site for your friends

#210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly what I want. I don't want something federated, I just want to host a small site on a particular topic and have some moderation control. I don't need it to connect to every other social network, I just want it to be a small island that like-minded people can congregate on to talk that also has more modern features than the old phpbb did.

Also true for me. I'm building something like that, where RSS feeds and RSS readers come together on a small personal website. Not necessarily a group chat or forum, more like a microblog/timeline/webring thing. A lot of individual websites, connected by the technology of modern and traditional internet. Question: Would the absence of a forum (or some sort of group chat) be a deal breaker for you?

I like the idea of such a thing, if I'm understanding it. A place to write your thoughts and share them with others while being able to see their contributions? I miss the old geocities sites, even as bad as they looked, because you could create what you want and make it available to others and I miss the old webrings where you could discover new things random people created.

I am interested in a small forum ability as well, but it doesn't have to be in the same application.

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