[asim]

Public networks are dead. We did it for two decades and now people need to go back to something more real and private. Social networks in the current form are just attention seeking. We've been trained to say things that will garner likes and retweets. I welcome text and chat, maybe even voice to text but not in the public form. Closed networks only now.

[berkes]

Facebook has such a network: WhatsApp. In the US apparently not that omnipresent, but it's everywhere in many countries. Facebook has the data, and knows exactly how such closed-networks are in demand, can (not) be monetized and what features are needed to make them grow.

In e.g. The Netherlands anything from your neighborhood-watch to parents-info, or anything related to school, via business-groups, your bachelors party, to the weekly scissors-collectors-club-coffee-meet . All of these organize, inform, discuss, on WhatsApp.

[asim]

Yes, I use WhatsApp, my family uses WhatsApp, my wife's family uses WhatsApp. I found it to be an incredibly effective tool and was a really big fan of Jan Koum and Brian Acton pre-sale to Facebook. And now, I wonder how to replace it. Signal did not become a replacement, if anything it's not that great because user friendliness trumps everything else. Networks are sticky and shifting a network is a damn near impossible task, but then people are using WhatsApp over Facebook Messenger or SMS, so I guess the question is, how do you create another shift? I'm personally developing more and more conviction around the idea of doing something that first tries to tackle this on a personal level before doing it for others e.g How do I get my family off WhatsApp. Well, I might need to run the equivalent as a private server or I might need a way to bridge the chat to pull them over. I might need some sort of really key collaborative feature also.

I definitely think there's a sort of missing tool for family, friends and community. One that's totally private. Maybe like an open source facebook groups. But hosting is a must because no one wants to run it, we just want to know its open source, vetted and we can guarantee it's private. Where Signal was for 1:1 text on Mobile, I think something else could be community first.

[rglullis]

> I'm personally developing more and more conviction around the idea of doing something that first tries to tackle this on a personal level before doing it for others e.g How do I get my family off WhatsApp.

You are on the right track, but I would say we don't need even need to get them "off" WhatsApp, we just need to get an intolerant minority [0] who refuses to compromise.

I deleted WhatsApp from my phone and told my close friends and family "For reasons X, Y and Z, I don't want to use Facebook products anymore. If you want to reach me, I am using Matrix. I can add you to my communick account [1] and I can help you set up your client. I know that this is an inconvenience but I think we should all revise our priorities and stop putting "convenience" above all else.

Some of them did. Some of them didn't, so they call me on the phone, or send me an email. A few of them even started to use Matrix as their primary method for communication. The important thing is that my refusal to use WhatsApp made the set "people who use only WhatsApp" set a bit smaller and the "people who could transition away from WhatsApp" set a lot larger.

[0]: https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dict...

[1]: https://communick.com

[asim]

Thanks for sharing that sentiment. I don't quite take the same view on it but understand the approach can be effective. I stopped using slack at some point and it meant I did not speak to the specific group of friends who only communicated through slack. It turned out to be a so-so thing. In some ways I don't know whether it had more negative or positive impact. By taking a stance on it, maybe it was only detrimental to myself or beneficial, whichever way you see it.

On the family front, there's a WhatsApp group and people have learned to use it for that activity, so I can't see that behaviour changing especially when 60+ year olds are in it too. It just became the defacto mode of communication somehow. Yet funnily 10 years ago, I was not a WhatsApp user. A friend of mine dragged me on there. It reminds me of 2006 when people kept asking "Are you on Facebook", like a bunch of drug addicts.

I personally want to move some of my private content and conversations off public servers and on to one I control. Off public networks and on one I know I've secured. That to me as an engineer now makes a lot of sense. But there's also a significant burden to that and I don't think anyone else can do it. Also I don't imagine anyone will setup VPN across my extended family. So there's some things to think through before trying anything.

[rglullis]

> so I can't see that behaviour changing especially when 60+ year olds are in it too

Both my parents are getting closer to their 70's, I got both of them to use Element. Yes, they are still on WhatsApp, yes they would prefer if I used it as well and my grumpy old man always complains about the many quirks from Element's UI on iOS. But at the end of they day we still talk frequently, they still get to see their grandkids, we still have a group to share photos and videos, etc.

The important point that I want to drive home: even if they are still using some other app, my refusal to join has made them aware and able to adopt an alternative.

> I personally want to move some of my private content and conversations off public servers and on to one I control.

As long as you are using

(a) your own domain to keep control of your identity

(b) something based on open standards so that you can port different providers

(c)end-to-end encryption

does it really matter if you are running the service?

[_fat_santa]

My girlfriend is Brazilian and she uses WhatsApp a...lot...

I would say the problem with this idea is that your family is often just one group chat. She has maybe 50 threads of different groups in WA, for her moving off WA would be near impossible not because all the groups she communicates with are on there. The other thing to keep in mind is, the "HN Crowd" knows the full implications of having conversations on WA, for just about everyone else they just see a really convenient app that works extremely well. After using it I concluded that it works better than the native iMessage app on your iPhone, which just speaks to how good the app is (in terms of being an app).

The argument to move people to another app is really uphill battle because it's purely ideological/data privacy/etc related. I could easily convince someone to move to Slack from Teams because Teams sucks as an app. But the issue with WhatsApp is that as an app, it's one of the most well build and best performing.

[asim]

This is the thing. WhatsApp works really well. And so did Facebook groups. I think once communities are established they stay where they are. So anything new is for new usecases. Trying to get people to migrate isn't the answer. It's about new solutions or habits solving specific purposes. For me it's a lot to do with the fact that each chat itself in whatsapp isn't threaded. You can create communities but that's not right for informal stuff and then I can create separate groups but then it gets confusing. So actually you need topic based chat. Ability to create new topics in the same groups. Basically slack or discord for family and friends.

[rglullis]

Sorry, but your whole argument is just a basic rehash of all the standard excuses that people give themselves to avoid having to make difficult choices and just sticking with the status quo.

There is nothing "impossible" about leaving Whatsapp. I'm also from Brazil, I also had the "family chat group". My cousins are still my cousins after I left the group. I can still talk with them through in person, on the phone, email, SMS. The fact that some of them don't want to join Matrix is not a deal breaker, just like my refusal to be on WhatsApp should not be a deal breaker for them.

[bob_theslob646]

>deleted WhatsApp from my phone and told my close friends and family "For reasons X, Y and Z, I don't want to use Facebook products anymore. If you want to reach me, I am using Matrix. I can add you to my communick account [1] and I can help you set up your client. I know that this is an inconvenience but I think we should all revise our priorities and stop putting "convenience" above all else

I'm assuming you're social life has suffered?

This is the problem via the lack of universal messaging standards... I am looking at you Apple..

I wonder what percentage of your friends and family dropped off?

I ran a similar experiment to you and found it really really difficult as almost 90+% didn't want to deal with the hassle of using a different application.

[rglullis]

Please read Taleb's article that I posted. What you are describing is exactly the idea of using the principle of "intolerant minority" to effect change in the majority behavior.

> 90+% didn't want to deal with the hassle of using a different application.

On the positive side, this means that 10% of your friends are willing to try a different application to keep connecting with you. This means that if we take Dunbar's number (150) as the average size of a social circle, every person that refuses to join WhatsApp leads to 15 other people getting acquainted to an alternative network. Any network that managed to capture 10% of WhatsApp userbase would be more than sustainable, and if you imagine that as soon as secondary effects kick-in, the friction will get lower and lower.

> I wonder what percentage of your friends and family dropped off?

Dropped off from casual conversation? A good part. They are still friends, though. I can pick up the phone and call them, or send them an email like people used to less than a generation ago...

If your friends/peers can not accept personal change or let it affect your relationship, then you are dealing with shitty friends to begin with.

[RileyJames]

I’ve had success moving my family over to signal.

It took persistence.

What I’ve found to work is taking it one family member at a time. And do it in person, get them to commit to using it. Then ask if you can set it up for them, show them how it works. Join them into the group chat, and then at least you’ve removed the friction to joining.

[lakomen]

Telegram seems like the logical choice. It has everything WhatsApp does and more.

[iakov]

Why is this downvoted? Telegram is IMO the best alternative to WhatsApp.

It has a much better UX than Signal, more desirable features, not to mention more users and channels. There is an on-demand E2E encryption for those who want it. Pavel Durov is not on a friendly terms with Russian govt now for those who care about it. You can pay for the service to support the company, get rid of ads and gain some meaningless features.

What's not to like?

[29083011397778]

> What's not to like?

> on-demand E2E encryption for those who want it.

E2E is only available as a one-to-one, not a group. It must also be switched on for every chat. Part of the allure of E2E is that an individual who needs it (say, a reporter) is indistinguishable from those that don’t (the general public), and those that are best blending into the crowd (like an anonymous source).

There are other failure modes here (who speaks to whom isn’t necessarily hidden, just the text), but it’s a better starting point than “on-demand e2e for those that want it”.

[mderazon]

I disagree on the UX. It is overly complicated, with all kinds of hidden gestures and unintuitive ways of doing things.

Just the other day i was trying to share another user with my wife and just couldn't figure it out. I think there were some hidden privacy settings for that user that i wasn't aware of.

[ComodoHacker]

Isn't it a good default for that user's privacy?

[rglullis]

It's still centralized. The server is not open source. The "on-demand E2E encryption" has never been properly audited by independent parties. We shouldn't need to worry or care about the political affiliations of the company offering a product to be able to use it.

[rightbyte]

I don't want 'public' groups where only the admin can post.

I want the com util app to be contacts only and groups invite only.

[roydivision]

I introduced my extended family to Signal after they initially wanted to use WhatsApp. It has worked perfectly for years, ages from 14 to 80.

[paganel]

> watch to parents-info,

Most of the (sane) parents that I know hate those WhatsApp groups with a passion, but they unfortunately have to be there "because there's where the future of our kids gets decided" or some such, meaning where everything related to the kids' school or kindergarten is now discussed.

I agree though about the cultural influence of WhatsApp outside of the US, as what you described about it matches my experience about its use here in Romania.

[The_Colonel]

True, but Facebook has another such network - Facebook.

People hate it with a passion, but its core model has always been having real friends on there. Followers etc. are just an add-on.

[soco]

On a much smaller scale, that's also what Meetup is offering. But definitely not largely used.

[ciex]

Public networks are a lot more hostile than we realize while we have moderation armies at work. That may not be a sustainable model. I think the way forward is building the right tools to help communities self-manage. It will be more like Discord and less like Twitter.

[dsir]

It seems like the biggest asset that creators are creating are the communities that form around them and their niche. The people who consume content within a niche tend to be very likeminded and often times quite willing to rally behind and support the bastions propelling the niches that they identify with. Even for smaller creators, I've seen time and time again that all you need is one or two highly dedicated and engaged fans to make being a creator an extremely lucrative endeavour.

I've been working on a platform to help content creators diversify their revenue streams and offer their communities that become a sort of privatized social network as one of their product offerings in addition to their content. The hope is to allow creators to better capture their community and monetize from their niche.

https://sociables.com/creators

[zaplin]

I am a content creator (newsletter) where I interview music producers. The main goal behind it is to create a community where we have a place online, and multiple places offline to chill, chat and do our thing.

I am on the lookout to find how the online thing looks like, and honestly, it always comes back to a facebook group. I hate facebook. But it is the option with the least friction, for now.

Every other option, adds friction. From single signups to downloading mobile apps.

I haven't checked sociables yet (gonna, as soon as I hit reply), but I'm letting you know of my thoughts because it's a problem addressed to everyone.

[dsir]

Appreciate the reply. Did you have a chance to check out the platform? We are always looking for ways we can better tailor the platform to serve the needs of people like you.

Cheers

[flagrant_taco]

The challenge with moderation is that, in most localities, the service provider is legally liable for content shared on the platform. They generally don't have to catch everything but must show what is, after the fact, deemed to be "best effort" moderation.

Self-hosting content is really the only solution for a social network that doesn't include moderation. Any centralized datastore will be subject to local laws around the globe.

[shadowbanned__]

Yep, the biggest problem with all public forums tends to be the moderators. This includes HN.

Step 1: create a walled garden by taking over parts of the internet.

Step 2: algorithmically shadowban everyone you don't like.

This leaves most people with no voice. The only acceptable things to say are what the moderators of like 3 popular forums agree with.

[threeseed]

From Facebook's Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2022 Results:

DAUs were 2.00 billion on average for December 2022, an increase of 4% year-over-year.

So I think public networks still seem far from dead.

[silisili]

You can't count DAU as an accurate measurement when you're subsidizing half the number with carrier deals.

For hundreds of millions in other countries, FB is the internet because it's cheaper than...the internet.

[Kye]

It's also often the only place to find local information even if you do have affordable internet. Especially in smaller counties and towns. Someone might show up in the count, but it doesn't mean a strong attachment.

[MichaelZuo]

Yes, the public internet is very close to nil outside the big countries, it's very noticeable nowadays doing verbatim searches on google for the last X time period, and setting the location to some random country.

[elcomet]

Facebook is a private network.

[jasode]

>Facebook is a private network.

You're getting sidetracked by the word "private" instead of looking at the contextual meaning of the conversation people are having:

When grandparent poster (asim) wrote: >"and now people need to go back to something more real and private."

asim meant "private"=="less-visible-more-intimate-group".

You're talking about "private"=="walled-garden".

The threeseed's reply of "So I think public networks still seem far from dead" is responding to asim's usage of "private" and not yours.

[elcomet]

Public / private and walled garden are not what you are saying.

I'm saying only your friends on Facebook will see your posts, so it is private, unlike twitter where the whole world will see them. And you can create groups if you want to have even more private discussions.

Twitter, LinkedIn are walled gardens, but public ones. Facebook is a private walled garden.

[johannes1234321]

Yes, but "friend" has quite a wide meaning on Facebook.

Compare it to a WhatsApp group: there one defines exactly the people who should see a given message. "Friends" becomes mixed between "true" friends, neighbors, colleagues, ... people you once we're closer with but passed ways to some degree, ... after a while it's semi-public at least unless you have a strict (un-)friending policy. For average users the visibility is also hard to understand.

[asim]

yes thanks for clarifying that. I really do mean, private as in, no one outside of your circles of real connections can see it and it's entirely invite only. Who do I invite into my home and personal conversations? Well not the people on facebook or twitter I'll tell you that much.

[mtlmtlmtlmtl]

Though if you own an Echo, Amazon is always invited.

[berkes]

Facebook has a private network; WhatsApp. WhatsApp is omnipresent in many geographies - but not so much in the US, hence it's often overlooked.

[johnchristopher]

For a pedantic definition of private.

[mtlmtlmtlmtl]

The precise definition being that it's private because you need to create an account so they can more accurately violate your privacy.

[johnchristopher]

8 years ago, in marketing workshops I ran (badly but that's another topic and the public was really out of touch, it was more an intro to social networks, anyway), I boldly claimed "Facebook is dead but don't worry Messenger is here" and then I'd explained the concepts of direct messaging, humane digital relationships, always-on concierge service, etc.

I still think people better move from social networks to messaging services with people they actually have connections with (real life or digital).

Edit: Hey, I was not that wrong: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/03/zuckerberg-facebook-...

> > Public social networks will continue to be very important in people's lives—for connecting with everyone you know, discovering new people, ideas and content, and giving people a voice more broadly. People find these valuable every day, and there are still a lot of useful services to build on top of them. But now, with all the ways people also want to interact privately, there's also an opportunity to build a simpler platform that's focused on privacy first.

> He acknowledges Facebook is an odd fit for this approach, saying, "frankly we don't currently have a strong reputation for building privacy protective services, and we've historically focused on tools for more open sharing," but:

> > I believe the future of communication will increasingly shift to private, encrypted services where people can be confident what they say to each other stays secure and their messages and content won't stick around forever. This is the future I hope we will help bring about.

[iambateman]

Don’t look now but you wrote this on a public network. :)

That said, I agree the current iteration of public social networks is pretty rough.

[asim]

The irony. HN is probably one of the few places left I feel like actually every so often leaving a comment. Why is that? The value of the network perhaps. Or that it does in some ways feel like a closed network. It's so niche, the self promotional nature is quite limited to posting about things you're working on. There's no retweet/advert like culture that results in infinite threads.

Anyway, if HN was a closed network that would be good too. I don't see why the comments need to be public, I don't see why any of it needs to be public. I mean in 2009 a friend recommended it to me, but equally if it was invite only he could have sent me an invite. But that's the way I discovered most great things, someone I personally know told me about it or shared an invite. And I think if there was to be a great new network that it should actually be invite only, totally private and even then I think "public" spaces within that private domain should be limited to fixed size groups. On any given day, if a room has more than 10 people in it, I probably know I'm not going to enjoy that conversation or setting. I think its the same of the internet. Crowds are not cool, they're anxiety inducing. So 20 people max in a group.

[justapassenger]

Aren’t hacker news comments public social network?

[codingdave]

No, there are no features on HN that help us network, and I rarely, if ever, even look at what user posted a story or comment, so at least for me it is not social.

Just because it is user-generated content does not make it a "social network"

[endisneigh]

That’s exactly what it means. You can favorite posts, comments, upvote and downvote. It’s not algorithmic but it’s still a social network.

[vaylian]

What is your definition of a social network? In my view a social network requires that you actually represent social connections on the platform. Afaik there is no way for me to establish such a social connection with you on HN.

[justapassenger]

Explicit social connections are dying trend on social network, as weird as it sounds.

TikTok, Twitter's "For you", Reels - all of them are considered to be social networks, and they depend on algorithmic feeds recommending content to you.

[vaylian]

Interesting point. Then I think we should acknowledge that former social networks are morphing into something that should no longer be called a social network?

[skinnymuch]

Don’t all these platforms have a way to DM people? Or does tiktok not have that?

[aloisdg]

reddit disagrees.

[deepserket]

Niche subreddits are usually good, unfortunately when a subreddit becomes famous lots of people start posting without learning the etiquette.

Moderating a big subreddit is not easy, you can go from having several chains of comments removed (eg. r/science) to getting flooded with bots (eg. reddit.com).

[paganel]

Reddit is becoming more and more dead as time progresses, I'd say its high-mark was the mid 2010s, until 2017-2018 or so.

Of course that its actual traffic might still increase for some time, but it has lost the (counter-)cultural ascendency that it used to have. That's what you get for hiring a former Atlantic Council member as your "policy director".

[tinyhouse]

Reddit is more like HM than a social network.

[johnchristopher]

No, it doesn't. On est bien avancés là hein ?

[winternett]

Public networks have value for entertainment, movies, TV, and music all should be sponsored by social media apps, especially independent music. These social apps also need to abandon the predatory and destructive (ad boosting) schemes they've created and instead tax big (and very profitable) media companies alone.

Undercover the truth has been that social media has always been simply a channel for commercials, and they should embrace that truth and make it les sof a ponzi scheme, and more of an easy way to scroll through specific areas of interest for individual people. If social media was honest and fair, the metrics on consumer sentiment would be game-changingly valuable to everyone in business, but as of right now, pure corruption, deceptive marketing, and endless new schemes are being invented by people trying to leverage social media against the unaware masses on it.

Closed networks can be just as easily corrupted, and they can be weaponized against users with no way of anyone knowing what occurred. Closed systems can hide valuable knowledge and truth from the public, they create a nightmare for law enforcement as well in solving crimes perpetrated on groups or individuals, they also encourage maintaining multiple individual accounts and paywalls around data that does not need to be private... Neither solution is perfect. Many of the massive public social media services have been operating as if they are closed networks lately as they try to squeeze money and data out of users over time (e.g. Twitter not allowing posts to be accessed without having an account).

I am really tired myself of all the tricks, gimmics, and schemes that social media creates jus tin order to operate successfully on it, and new tools are often the same old schemes, but in reality, there is now barely any other cost-effective way to promote yourself to the world... Google search can also be kind of considered the same as social media in a way because many have to pay for prominent placing and manipulate keywords, and even do things like registering an SSL cert and pay hosting to be ranked higher on results... TikTok has basically become a massive video search engine on the flip side of that.

The problem is these networks thrive on free and coerced labor form content creators and businesses, they offer little reward for hard work, and they facilitate wide-scale fraud, info theft, ID impersonation, and disinformation. Those things need to be addressed thoroughly moving forward, or it will all turn into a desolate strip mall with little value to anyone but the land owners.