[xwowsersx]

> Remember when social media was fun, introduced you to big ideas and cool people, and actually made you smarter? Remember when it didn't waste your time and make you angry or sad? When you could disagree with someone without being threatened or insulted? We want to bring that back with Post.

> We believe that all humans are created equal, endowed with unalienable rights that include life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, regardless of their gender identity, religion, ethnicity, race, sexual orientation, or beliefs.

> If you do not agree with this principle, Post is not for you. We believe in freedom of speech and will oppose any government's attempt to censor speech on our platform. However, we have rules, which we plan to rigorously enforce via content moderation, with the help of our community.

These all seem like lofty goals, as they themselves characterize it, but how exactly is any of this going to be accomplished? This is just a list of want-to-haves. Having these goals doesn't make you unique. What tech, tools, and processes you have to make them a reality is what makes you unique. What exactly are those here?

[paxys]

I remember a time when social media was like they describe. It was when I was in college and we used it to share photos of each other drunk at parties. It turned into a disaster the moment people decided it was also a good place to discuss news and politics.

If you want to recreate "fun social media", focus on the things that made it fun in the first place and remove everything else. And you'll be too late, because plenty of apps (TikTok the most notable one, and others like BeReal, Gas, Snapchat) are doing that very well today.

If the goal is to create a "fun" political discussion forum, well then best of luck with that. They are going to need a lot more than just goals and prayers.

[INTPenis]

>It turned into a disaster the moment people decided it was also a good place to discuss news and politics.

Nail on head right here.

I was never big on social media, got into StatusNet (later ActivityPub) back in 2017 because it seemed cool technically.

So for years it was a very nice place where people mostly discussed very niche topics like computers and art.

Then Elon decided to stir the pot by trying to buy twitter and two huge waves of twitter users came over in 2022.

Now it's toxic, and I honestly believe it's because of the political and news discussions. Well they go hand in hand because people link to the news about what's going on in politics, and this is the catalyst.

[JakeAl]

I disagree. People use social media for different purposes. One is to post about yourself, my least favorite, another is to post links to information and knowledge of interest to those with similar interests. People posting about themselves do nothing to up the IQ and awareness of the population and lead to mental health issues as well as feed narcissism. News and information can lead to learning and debate and all those great things that came out of classroom discussions in college. It only goes bad where there's a culture clash or people are unsophisticated, ideologues, or lack critical thinking skills. For rational and curious minded people, it's great though.

[safety1st]

You aren't responding to your parent's actual point, you've reworded it slightly and proceeded to disagree with the strawman version you created.

Their point was that news and politics were introduced to forums which were not about those things, and proceeded to turn those forums into shitfests, which is completely accurate.

For some reason you avoided the word politics in your reply and carefully recast the subject as "news and information and learning and debate." But politics is really what the argument hinges on. People didn't sign up for Facebook to fight over divisive political issues, but Facebook promoted those conversations for the sake of short-term profit.

It's completely 100% fine for us to say fuck that, get your politics out of here and it should have happened a long time ago. One reason HN is good is because it holds its nose when it comes to politics - sometimes it gets through, yes, but the worst stuff is usually downranked one way or another (flagging, algorithmic sorting, manual modding, etc. etc.).

There are plenty of places on the Internet for debating politics. We don't need to search out forums that aren't about politics, and then convert them into political debates.

[j45]

It wasn’t lofty. It was real and existed that way. For some time too.

Maybe the scientific approach to manufacturing and maintaining adoption and the ways to do it was part of the issue.

Experiencing this early way expanded your mind and viewpoints, instead of feeding your more on the track you are to keep you scrolling. It wasn’t as much as everything was new, only that there were so many different things being experienced by others.

Unfortunately, things went towards depth instead of breadth and folks doubled down instead of discovering and being often to viewpoints and things they didn’t know anything about.

Still, maybe there’s a path forward to have a better self discovery service that’s focused on growing throw exposing to new ideas instead of doubling down on what you are today and cementing that in place.

The primacy effect is powerful for good things as much as not.

[Nimitz14]

It existed that way when you yourself were younger and knew less and there were was a high prob that whoever you were talking to could teach you something.

teenagers still experience it the same way.

[j45]

Absolutely! :)

Lots is rooted in Edward Bernays.

Can go back further than we like.

The first time we experience something it’s enriching to ask are we the fist to ever think about this or experience it? Do it and you can connect to many more perspectives to enjoy your experience even more.

Shout out to msn culture, irc culture and bbs culture for laying the groundwork of currents and waves to come.

Anything earlier?

[watwut]

Arguably, a lot of early radicalization happen because folks are open to accepting viewpoints and things they know nothing about, more and more toward extreme.

[dgb23]

Could be the other way around too.

The more people understand the more are they pushed away from apathetic mainstream beliefs, that lull you into the comfort of the herd and distract you from fundamental issues.

Maybe it’s also two sides of the same coin?

But personally I have to actively disengage with politics in order to keep my sanity and focus on the day to day and my personal challenges. The less I educate myself actively, the more comfort I feel in how things are going.

[watwut]

I did not really meant that. I meant that fascism adjacent content shows up in your recommendations somewhere around your gaming videos or whatever. You are open to it, click on it. You know nothing about discussed history so you just swallow it and move from there.

In the initial situation, you did not cared, one way or the other. But now, all you know is what this says and you believe it, because your mind was open.

[j45]

Reading about the primacy effect might interest you:

[annoyedthrowawy]

> We believe in freedom of speech

That just isn't possible. If you try and "oppose any government's attempt to censor speech on our platform" you'll just be arrested on terrorism charges and face 25 years in jail unless you take your site down or give backdoor access.[0]

I fucking HATE these people with zero experience coming along and saying "oh we're free speech", you can bet your ass they'll cave on the first DMCA/GDPR/takedown/door kicked in notice they get.

Note. I'm not in anyway condoning "hate speech" or any other abuses of free speech, but I'm just annoyed that these kind of people shit out these meaningless words without any understanding of what "true" free speech entails. And there's a lot more bad than good in actually supporting it.

[0] personal experience

[mr_mitm]

> [0] personal experience

Uhh, can you elaborate?