Ask HN: Should I make a Facebook alternative?

[ben85ts]

"Prime directives"

- Accessibility - Privacy - No ads

I know websites can exist that provide something of value without compromising what I would consider decent business/ operating ethics. Wikipedia, craigslist, etc. are massive, useful, and don't make money by exploiting their users. I quit facebook a couple years ago for multiple reasons but I have yet to see a true blue replacement. Is it too big of an ask? What does a Facebook alternative look like to you?

[erikbrodch]

I'll start by saying social is extremely exciting to do. I also agree there is a need for a FB alternative. But before you start, I'd highly recommend (can't stress it enough) reading this: https://www.eugenewei.com/blog/2019/2/19/status-as-a-service. It's the best read I found on social. I wish we had read it before trying to compete TikTok :)

[ben85ts]

Wow, thank you I will check this out.

[erikbrodch]

Happy to help (and discuss the article).

[gvb]

There are facebook alternatives, none of which have become popular:

https://alternativeto.net/software/facebook/?license=opensou...

What are the alternatives lacking that you can supply which will make your facebook alternative popular?

Can you enhance one of the alternatives (and make it popular) rather than starting from scratch?

[ben85ts]

Awesome list! I hadn't heard of some of these. At a cursory glance it appears more of the same. I don't think I need a crypo currency when I post a picture of my dog to share with friends. I'll do more research on current alternatives but from what I've seen they don't seem to offer the basic functionality of Facebook. Maybe I'm over simplifying the concept but wasn't the idea of Facebook just a website to share stuff with friends and family?

Enhancing an existing alternative is interesting. Do you think it would be a matter of contributing to some of the current open source alternatives?

[josepro12a]

Thank you very much for sharing!

[muzani]

There's a few going on. None are Facebook, they're unique in their own way.

WT.social seems to take a lot from its wiki roots, such as editing other people's posts. They make money just from donations.

Cocoon goes more personal. It's not about having a thousand friends. They're more a subscription model and can't exploit users.

I'm working at one too. It's something community based. You don't post to your own wall. You post to communities - a residential area, geographic location. We've had gaming groups and schools onboard; it's easier and cheaper to reach out than with Facebook and less intrusive than WhatsApp. It started off fairly serious but we're seeing more Instagram style selfies and Tik Tok videos. We monetize by selling community based services like condominium management.

This is just off the top of my head in 2019. There's probably some stealth mode ones going up in the near future. I wouldn't ve surprised if we see 50 more alternatives by 2025.

I think the important thing is not to make something ad based (which incentivizes addictiveness and privacy violations) and not to focus too much on network effects (which incentivizes monopolistic behaviour).

[ben85ts]

Really great info, thanks for sharing. WT.social's model is almost exactly what I was thinking. Like you said, it's a different feature set from Facebook but it's great so see that the idea works for social networks.

[SirLotsaLocks]

I'd love to see something like this, but in my opinion, there is a reason why none have turned up. It costs a lot of money to run a social network, and people aren't willing to pay to use a social network. That means you're going to have to either rely on advertisements or donations. it's hard to run on donations unless you are large because people mostly don't donate, and many that do only donate a bit. and ads are out so unless you have a reliable plan you are going to be bleeding money and eventually die, or get bought.

[bjourne]

It must be decentralized. Any social network in which I have to put faith in a single party is not good. Look into ZeroNet: https://zeronet.io/ Either that technology or something similar could be used to create a distributed social network.

[ben85ts]

I think the concept of decentralization is certainly appealing especially when it comes to trusting 1 or more other parties with personal information. I think encrypting data with only the parties you want to have access is extremely powerful. I might be wrong but as I understand it there is always an amount of trust whether it be in a blockchain or a single party. I understand that if the one party is compromised or decides to change their policies and sell your data etc. that it is a larger risk in that regard. On the other hand adopting a decentralized network takes a good amount of understanding and participation that might be lost on the average user. My hope is that, with a solid foundation, it would be possible to establish the initial policies to maintain and grow a network that was never owned by anyone e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Ownership_of_content

[saluki]

"Here are some odds, if you’re building just a simple company to charge a few people, what are the odds of that being a success? 1:5, 1:10 I don’t know. But the odds of you building the next Facebook or MySpace are probably not 1:10, if it was I wouldn’t be giving this speech, I’d be trying to make the next Facebook." - @DHH StartupSchoolTalk 2008

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CDXJ6bMkMY

This is still one of my favorite talks.

[muzani]

Yeah, this sounds like something people would say in 2008, but not 2018. Facebook has lost a lot of favor since then.

[saluki]

y, but it's still a dream for lots of devs, I'm not a fan of Fbook but I love the story of how it was created (especially the movie version, even if it's not all true) and how much wealth it generated for the founders and employees.

[ben85ts]

Thank you for sharing the video is great!

[whb07]

How can you have a social network that is privacy first? Isn’t that an oxymoron?

[ben85ts]

Haha yeah I see what you mean. I was thinking more along the lines of never selling analytic data to third parties (something Facebook has capitalized on quite a bit). I think a lot of people see this as an invasion of privacy.

[muzani]

There is Cocoon, which weirdly does it by being very open, and so discourages use with acquaintances.

[ben85ts]

Decided to put this up after the awesome discussion here https://userheist.com

[danielbraun]

Good luck making money then