I was just wondering if Daft Social was going to sustain itself through user monetization (sales, ads, donations, etc), it's totally cool if its based on some other mechanism. Just curious.
I'm sure they're not really overly concerned about security, but email addresses get logged everywhere on the Internet. Accounts would be pretty easy to hijack. Maybe that makes it more fun though.
Account security is a bigger concern for the network than it is for the user. If someone steals my HN account, I won't really care (it's around my 5th account anyway). But if the hacker uses my account's reputation to evade spam filters, that becomes an issue for HN.
Most reputation scores are ephemeral, to cover the case you mentioned. I have never heard of a website that gives old accounts free passes to do whatever they way. They may have fewer restrictions initially, but if abuse is detected, they will still ban the account.
Not exactly social media, but when Instapaper came out they only used usernames, no password. I think the idea was that no one would care enough to delete your read it later list, and it wasn’t big enough to draw much attention. I remember it being like this for quite a long time.
I don't think they take security any less seriously than most social networks. If you're worried the sending/receiving servers have access to the email address, then it seems you would have to be equally concerned account recovery via email considering most email is not encrypted.
The target email address basically includes a secret that allows you to post by sending an email to it. It's not the same thing as clicking on an email you receive to reset a password. I can't reset your password just by knowing the email address associated with your Facebook account. I'd have to intercept the password reset email.
I doubt this will go anywhere, but I still enjoyed reading it. The really clever part for me is the way it uses email to do most of the work. In particular:
> Q: What if I lose my secret Daft Social email address?
> A: If you already sent posts, you should find it in the sent emails folder.
In the past, Posterous was a blogging service that was powered by email, and I loved it. (You could blog using the email body and attached photos were also posted, so Daft Social without the "minimalist" part.)
Sadly, it was acquired by Twitter and then shut down.
I like that relying on the standard email protocols means you don't need an extra client to post. I wish more services could be powered by email - it is already so old, yet still underestiated as a protocol.
PS 1: Now someone just needs to give me back my BlackBerry...
PS 2: It's great they also support another standard, RSS. Two features that I would like to see are: (a) subscribe to these RSS feeds as email (for symmetry, so I can read all in my email client if I want to) and (b) two-way interoperability with Mastodon.
PS 3: I can see others have pointed out their liking of Posterious below already, so this feature should have a future in some form or another!
The Posterous founders started Posthaven after Posterous shut down, and Posthaven – by all appearances essentially a Posterous clone – is still going (and promises at least for now to stay that way): https://www.posthaven.com/features
I think it would be extra-clever to generate a contact card for the user after sign up. Then they can just import it into their address book.
...of course this relies on the user having vCard set up to open with the address book that they actually use. And it is surprising how broken most user's setups are.
I'm sure others allowed posting by email before. BrightKite was a fantastic social network that was location-based, and you could post via email. My friends and I still miss it... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brightkite
I came here to say that I think both Posterous and Tumblr used to have this same feature. Well, it was just one of the multiple ways of publishing content back then, as opposed to being the way for this minimalist one....
Looks like Tumblr removed it [1]
Links to some Posterous articles about the feature [2]
> A: Write or copy a link to a website or an image into the email subject line and send it to your secret Daft Social email address.
I'm not sure I fully agree with the "simplification and reduction" premise if the only way I can get an image onto Daft Social is if I host it elsewhere first.
So if I'm reading this right, I would snap a photo on my phone, host the image somewhere, then send the URL to that image in an email. That doesn't sound overly simple.
> Q: How can I delete my Daft Social account?
> A: Write or copy #deletedaftsocial into the email subject line > and send it to your secret Daft Social email address. Your
> account will be permanently deleted immediately. Please note:
> deleted accounts cannot be restored.
I hate social media and I am someone who this site is directed at. What I like about HN is the interaction but no "followers". Of course, people want their thoughts to not be disliked but it is not a childish, high school popularity contest that if you get popular enough, you get paid for being popular.
A network without nodes and edges isn't a network.
Myspace also didn't brand itself as "super internet forum" or something like that. If you really do something different to interest people who hate social media, it will need to have no resemblance to social media.
I love the technical aesthetic of this, but is there a "network" part of it at all? If not, I think I'd rather just self-host something similar and get the same experience without the risk of the service holding all my posts dying or trying to invasively monetize later.
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[ 2.3 ms ] story [ 153 ms ] threadhttps://daftsocial.com/meowtimemania/
Generally love to see services that integrate with email.
https://daftsocial.com/daftsocial/?id=201
Small social networks can get away with it b/c they aren't big enough targets for abusers.
I never see any.
So the overall security level is probably still higher than elsewhere with 2FA, etc.
Does Daft have a feed where you can see who else is posting?
> Q: What if I lose my secret Daft Social email address?
> A: If you already sent posts, you should find it in the sent emails folder.
Brilliant.
Sadly, it was acquired by Twitter and then shut down.
I like that relying on the standard email protocols means you don't need an extra client to post. I wish more services could be powered by email - it is already so old, yet still underestiated as a protocol.
PS 1: Now someone just needs to give me back my BlackBerry...
PS 2: It's great they also support another standard, RSS. Two features that I would like to see are: (a) subscribe to these RSS feeds as email (for symmetry, so I can read all in my email client if I want to) and (b) two-way interoperability with Mastodon.
PS 3: I can see others have pointed out their liking of Posterious below already, so this feature should have a future in some form or another!
One of those cofounders is probably familiar to YC nerds: https://blog.garrytan.com/about-me
...of course this relies on the user having vCard set up to open with the address book that they actually use. And it is surprising how broken most user's setups are.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posterous
Looks like Tumblr removed it [1]
Links to some Posterous articles about the feature [2]
[1] https://webapps.stackexchange.com/questions/16420/post-to-tu...
[2] https://www.guidingtech.com/1525/how-to-use-posterous-quickl...
What's old is new again.
Posterous was peak blogging and content sharing for me, btw.
> A: Write or copy a link to a website or an image into the email subject line and send it to your secret Daft Social email address.
I'm not sure I fully agree with the "simplification and reduction" premise if the only way I can get an image onto Daft Social is if I host it elsewhere first.
So if I'm reading this right, I would snap a photo on my phone, host the image somewhere, then send the URL to that image in an email. That doesn't sound overly simple.
Yep. That sounds robust. Ship it!
'Antisocial' means against others. "Antagonistic, hostile, or unfriendly toward others; menacing"
'Asocial' means reclusive or unwilling to be social, but isn't necessarily antagonistic
I hate social media and I am someone who this site is directed at. What I like about HN is the interaction but no "followers". Of course, people want their thoughts to not be disliked but it is not a childish, high school popularity contest that if you get popular enough, you get paid for being popular.
A network without nodes and edges isn't a network.
Myspace also didn't brand itself as "super internet forum" or something like that. If you really do something different to interest people who hate social media, it will need to have no resemblance to social media.
[0] https://telegra.ph/