[nstart]

Just in case any bright eyed hopeful person is reading this, please don't think "ah shucks" and go away. Some of the biggest things in the internet including the protocols the internet lives on were never envisioned as something that would change the life of billions of people. They were initially created to solve a problem for a small group and then grew into something much bigger over time. Please please don't back away from this problem just because some article says it's going to be challenging.

Solve it for yourself.

Post on your own blogs on your own servers.

Solve it for others.

Help others get set up with their own servers.

Create solutions for people

Make attempts at creating decentralized solutions. Even if a 1000 people use it, someday we might crack the code to getting people off the walled gardens.

Basically, if that article sounded like a demotivating blow to your hopes, please flip the bird at it, and keep working to solve this problem.

[unicornporn]

Decentralized social networks is often an alternative to profit driven social networks.

The social giants today optimize their offerings so that we spend as much time as possible using them[1] to maximize profits. That doesn't necessarily make us happier. Wouldn't a a social that frees time and doesn't create addiction and depression be something to strive for?

I think we should stop counting success in time spent and numbers of users.

[1] https://www.1843magazine.com/features/the-scientists-who-mak...

[scandox]

I'd like to add one remark to this: everything doesn't have to be huge. We don't have to deal always in millions and billions. Small groups. Even individuals. What they do is meaningful. What we do is not pointless just because it doesn't create some massive impact.

[nine_k]

A large service is a service where your friends, parents, coworkers, etc have a high probability to have already joined, thus making the service instantly more useful for communicating with them. Next thing is that you and they will pull in your other related people, again for ease of communication. This is the "network effect".

For a federated service, like email or phone, this is not a problem: the union of all service providers is the entire service, and more providers can connect. So connecting to any compliant provider is fine, and providers have an incentive to be good, or at least outcompete each other by some metric.

For a siloed and sealed-up service, like Facebook or Twitter, once you and (most of) your social graph is there, there's no way anyone can connect from the outside; to be connected with you, they need to dive into the same silo. The bigger the service grows, the harder it becomes for people outside not to consider joining, because of the pull of the part of their social graph who already joined.

I think that federated services will always exist, as long as unimpeded internet connectivity is allowed. I also think that 1-2 huge walled gardens will also exist, for the same reasons why phishing using dancing kittens videos will continue to exist: many humans are emotion-driven and don't value [insert a list here] when overwhelmed by a positive emotion from something new, cute, and free to use.

[CM30]

This. Not every community has to have a million users to be useful. Lots of people are also members of smaller ones dedicated to certain niches. Like say, a genre of music or a favourite sports team or a video game series or anything else.

Just look at Hacker News for example. It'll never be as big as Facebook, Twitter or Reddit, but it doesn't need to be. It's a good community for the people it's aimed at.

The idea you should only make stuff for as large an audience as possible or to get rich quick is perhaps one of the most depressing aspects of the internet (and world) today.

[amelius]

Except in a winner-takes-all market. (This is not about making money, but still needs a critical mass of users to become successful because of the network effect).

[pnutjam]

Social media is only winner take all because the platforms are closed. If enough people say no thanks, that will change. The social networks might not need any one person, but they need all of us and a significant but small percentage can make a difference.

[keganunderwood]

Why do we bother with signal if that's the case? Competition matters even when it seemingly doesn't because we raise the bar. Look how Viber and telegram stick out like sore thumbs (ignore the pos that is allo) because WhatsApp now has e2ee.

[phkahler]

I have given some thought to this problem and I think it's technically solvable. The main problem is that it would be non-profit so less incentive to build it. Anyone want to kick around ideas?

[ineptech]

The Urbit model (open source, funded by a one-time cost for each new identity) is an elegant solution which has the side effect of discouraging spam.

[hndamien]

Bitcoin started as a non-profit (obviously not technically but my point is, cryptocurrencies allow you to leverage and trade value created without external money)

[Method-X]

Yes but a cryptocurrency only makes sense for certain use cases. In this case, the token would have to serve some sort of useful function related to the social network.

[tambienben]

The AKASHA project may be relevant to you.

Https://akasha.world

[sharemywin]

or you could go after the money side of the equation.

1. let sponsors host your data in an open competitive marketplace.

or

an open marketplace for goods and services that focuses exclusively on driving value to customers through:

1. require low cost guarantee from vendors.

2. vendor can't buy rank at all.

3. better way to find products and service.

(sort of like ebay that focuses on customer value not transaction volume)

do what amazon did to "best buy". you do alot of your research everywhere else but you buy from here.

[phkahler]

What does any of that have to do with a social network? I've got other ideas for commercial ventures, this thread is about the idea of a decentralized social network. In other words, separating the social from the commercial.

[sharemywin]

the social networks are held up by inefficient marketplaces.

kind of like how amazon screws over best buy. the networks can't stay afloat if most everyone uses the social networks resource then goes to a fair efficient marketplace to buy goods/services because the prices are cheaper and easier more convenient for users. and the prices are cheaper because they don't pay an advertising tax which funds all the free useless videos.

[ytjohn]

I have my own server, I have had a blog since 2002. That blog has shifted around through multiple CMSes, from a homemade php script to movable type, to static generated to blogger.com to self-hosted wordpress. For quite a few years, my blogging has gone to almost non-existant (1-2 posts/year) due to me using the much easier facebook and g+ to post. However, I've been trying to get back into seriously blogging again.

I've also in the process of starting up a forum for local techies. Again, this will be self-hosted. I did some integration between wordpress and nodebb to be able to share my posts to a nodebb forum, and the comments are powered by nodebb.

Whenever I see a discussion on decentralized social, I get a bit excited, maybe try it out, then drift away. But now, I'm thinking about decentralized social a bit differently. I'd like to write a short status update (like a mastadon toot), post a picture, or write a 20 paragraph article all using the same interface. People should be able to reply right below it as comments, or share it. The forum I'm setting up could probably work that same way.. it's just a feed of things, and if it could be organized into topics (or perhaps even just #hashtags), that would be a good experience. So far, that's just all running on my server. If it was also federated, people on that federated network might see it and interact.

I don't know if there's anything active that can do that. mastadon looks like it's geared as a twitter clone (500 character limits) so I can do the short status and picture aspect of it, but not the longer posts. I like the idea of the local feed, which I believe could be displayed live on my site. I don't know if GNU Social or one of the others would fit in with this idea, but I'll be investigating this more now.

There is this ostatus plugin for wordpress. This makes it look like I can share posts to gnu social + mastadon, and integrate the comments with it, but not sure how that would work in practice.

https://wordpress.org/plugins/ostatus-for-wordpress/

To kind of sum that all up, I'd like to setup a federated blog (status updates, comments, articles) for myself, and a federated forum for a group. They could be the same instance, or two separate instances, or two entirely different applications.

[nwah1]

It's reverse psychology. The author of this piece is playing 3D chess with us. The surest way to inspire people to attempt something is to say that it can't be done.

(but I am legitimately interested in the systems-theoretic nature of this problem, and hearing the different views, and this view is a valid one.)

[TeMPOraL]

Related: Cunningham's Law, which states, "the best way to get the right answer on the internet is not to ask a question; it's to post the wrong answer".

[2sk21]

You are right - after reading this article, it just seemed to confirm my opinion the decentralized networks don't work but we ought not to give up.

[autokad]

i could barely read the article. the first pop up blocked the whole screen, and when I clicked the X I also accidentally clicked the ad behind it.

Then, when I was trying to read, the text kept popping up and down as ads moved in and out. I gave up at that point.

[bashinator]

Reader mode in Firefox is basically made for removing this kind of BS.