[can3p]

Nice! Personally I think that the more niche social networks we have the better it is. The big problem with the mainstream networks is that they've evolved from a media to communicate and keep in touch with real people into a platform for influencers and businesses.

The common complaint I hear about instagram for example is that every second connection of yours would try to sell/teach something and that's just garbage if all you need is to keep in touch with your friends.

The main problems to tackle imo are:

- information propagation speed. This is good in case you want to get a quick update but it also a double edged sword, since this allows information attacks, trolls etc

- Scale. Anything of big scale becomes a problem by itself since it becomes economically viable to target the platform with bots, scam etc.

- Incentives. I think we should get to the point where social networks are being run by non profits

I've posted the link a couple of time, I'm working on my personal take on this problem[0]. My approach is the following:

- Slow down information propagation. Every post is visible to the direct connections, to their connections if you allow it, but no further

- No way to get a connection request from a stranger. Either you specifically allow it, or it's introduced by your direct connections

- No federation, since my idea was to have small communities

- Fully open in the sense of data formats, import/export etc. Migrating between instances is as easy exporting posts in bulk, creating an account on another instance and doing the import. You could do the bulk updates the same way

Also, it's all go + htmx just in case anyone else is also tired of modern frontend mess. I have a couple of videos on the feautures[1], if you like. The design is not great, since I wanted to focus on the idea itself

[0]: https://github.com/can3p/pcom

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLa5K-kCUS-FozB6Cw7rJL...

[mawise]

I've got to chime in here, because of how much this overlaps with the project I've been working on called Haven[1].

A lot of these problems go away with a decentralized/open-source private model. If your posts aren't public then there is no spam. If everyone runs their own node of open-source (or better yet: open-protocol, ie RSS) software, then there is no centralized entity able to have incentives of profiting off the platform.

Information propagation speed is a good call-out as dangerous. Even with all the spam/shilling/trills removed, it still leads to the girl who's having a great time on her snowboarding trip until she posts pictures on Instagram and drops into a foul mood because not enough people immediately liked her posts.

I'd love to connect and share thoughts, feel free to reach out[2]/

[1]: https://github.com/havenweb/haven

[2]: https://havenweb.org/contact.html

[nunobrito]

Good post. Have you already took a look into NOSTR?

It permits both private/niche communities and public (global) texts.

[can3p]

Just checked it, thanks for pointing to it. I think it's more of a decentralized encrypted messaging platform, and my idea was to have a way constrain the visibility of the conversations to naturally connected groups of people while giving a way to slowly expand the connections rather then fighting censorship

More or less like in real life, where you chat a lot with your friends, but necessarily with some of their friends you don't know that well. In this case you would ask your friends for the introduction and that what I've tried to model.

One other feature I've been thinking about was to make the moderation automatic in a sense of making signups possible only via invitation and putting some weight on it. Basically if you invite somebody who's misbehaving on the platform and they get flagged, you get penalized as well unless you do it first. My theory is that it should make users care about their digital surroundings.

[nunobrito]

By default all texts are open. There is encrypted messaging, albeit only used for private messages inside a group or to another person.

What you mention could be achieved with the a nostr relay. Just permit inside who you want, but anyone can keep participating on internet at large with exactly the same account.

But if you want to moderate everything inside, then likely mastodon or a traditional web forum might be more suited.