Good timing... I'm building an alternative to Twitter and nearing our launch date. It's focused on devs and HN readers, even having an integration with HN.
That seems ill advised. The critique of modern twitter is overblown, as can be seen when going to Threads which is even more outrage fueled than even twitter.
Commercial social network will always have this problem. It's impossible to avoid. User's interests are always pitted against advertiser and commercial interests.
The closest strategy we have to something that is long-term viable is:
- non-commercial, so developers focus on building a product for users, rather than advertisers
- decentralised, to provide an escape mechanism for product direction/moderation/etc going poorly
But even then, the only winning move is not to play
Mine requires karma on other networks, like HN, before users can post. It reduces spam and fake accounts. However, u can still post anonymously then choose to reveal your username later anytime. Posts support Markdown. It also integrates with the tools I use, for example if you post a link to a blog and that blog happens to have been on HN too then it shows the HN icon with the HN post points and a link to the HN comments, automatically. If you post a link to a repo, it tags the post with the main language of that repo automatically so the post can be filtered easier. The feed is like Tweetdeck so users have control over what they see instead of an algorithm. Posts have structured data associated, like program language, so they can be searched/filtered easier. That way you decide what to see on your feed using metadata about the posts instead of an algorithm deciding for you. Infinite scroll isn't the goal, it becomes more useful like HN or Reddit.
There's much more, that's just a few features making it a social platform I enjoy using instead of a time waste like the infinite scroll algorithm based ones.
It's not about displaying these things, it's about parsing this data from the posts and making all posts filterable by this metadata. Display vs Discovery.
I want to reduce the noise in social network posts.