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Ask HN: What is a “good” social network?

9 points by czhu12 ↗ HN
In light of today’s events I’m curious to hear people’s thoughts:

The consensus seems to be that Facebook, and social media in general is bad for various reasons [1][2]

What could be changed to make it “good”?

I know there are some that are of the opinion that social media is bad no matter what changes, or old school irc channels are all we ever needed, but please play along!

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24627363

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25928310

6 comments

[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 28.3 ms ] thread
czhu12
I’ll start with some personal thoughts ranked from mild to extreme changes:

1. remove re-post button (hopefully gets rid of “virality” and “influencers”)

2. cap comments / hour to 10 (gets rid of arguments, flame wars)

3. remove like button entirely

4. posts can only been seen by friends, and no more

5. Groups only allow anonymous posts?

6. An ML model that absolutely filters out everything remotely political, hateful, etc

7. Friends are auto un-friended after 5 years

marisalopez
This seems good but I do think this type of social media wouldn't be as popular. The posts you would like to see would end up being created on a different platform. If there are capped comments and no likes, then I don't visually see which content is worth reading (i.e I look at the title and engagement before I find myself wanting to read the content). I think even well intentioned people would like to see likes on their posts and maybe would provide more content with something as simple as that. Maybe something like Instagram, it shows who liked it and more.

I guess if I were to make my own I would make a messaging app that you can also post statuses. You can reply but the replies are sent straight to the creator. You would also need to approve anyone who follows you.

But I think apps that behave like Facebook because there is lots of engagement but with there is a price

Jugurtha
I am still in awe of how LinkedIn may be the weirdest and cringiest of all the social networks.

I recently discovered a subreddit where people upload pictures of figurines covered with semen (cummingonfigurines). I somehow find that more honest and less cringy than the posts on LinkedIn.

I'm trying to figure out exactly why I find the network and posts so uncouth.

czhu12
Yeah Linkedin really took off this year in that respect. I always thought it was due to the demand for virality. People realized a big linkedin following was valuable and started acting differently.

If no one could ever see your posts.. maybe that goes away

Jugurtha
Maybe LinkedIn usage is proportional to how much one hates their job and feel powerless and perceive their organization as dysfunctional and themselves as not being at the right place, and that's why the stupid memes about boss vs. leader and that "inspirational hustle grind thought leadership billionaire buying sanctity bullshit" is popular.
eigengrau5150
The only good social network is the WWW, RSS/Atom, and email. Always own your platform.