Ask HN: How would you launch a privacy-first, Instagram-like social network?
Hey HN,
I'm planning to launch a privacy-first social network in 2025, inspired by platforms like Instagram. Success for this platform means reaching a sustainable level of recurring revenue, without relying on an ad network.
One challenge I'm anticipating is attracting celebrities and influencers who are already established on Instagram and TikTok. How could I persuade them to use this platform as well? For those with experience or insights, how would you approach building and promoting such a network to reach this revenue goal?
Thanks for any advice or ideas!
119 comments
[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 144 ms ] threadThat isn't being snarky, it is the question you need to answer. Why would people join it? What problem are you solving for them? Why are celebrities and influencers on those platforms to begin with?
When you can detail out those answers, those answers tell you what you need to do to launch. You have to match the table stakes of existing platforms, which means you need to know not only what those are, but why they are important to the userbase.
I suspect you'll find that your drive for privacy-first is going to be well-received in theory, but not a match for why people join such platforms. But you'll need to do the research to figure out such things.
he already told you, revenue goals.
The reason I’d build this platform is to help people connect without the distractions of sponsored content or random memes. I stopped using Facebook about seven years ago because I wanted a space where I could simply engage with the people in my network and their thoughts. AdBlock helped for a while, but eventually, my feed filled with random posts from pages I hadn’t followed. I understand that Facebook’s goal is to keep users engaged, but the constant noise led me to switch to Instagram. Unfortunately, Instagram went down a similar path, especially with the rise of Reels.
Now, I mainly use WhatsApp groups to stay connected.
Why are celebrities and influencers on those platforms to begin with?
I considered a model where users could pay to access celebrity posts. It sounds similar to OnlyFans, but I see it as a potential revenue stream or, alternatively, a way to support a fixed monthly fee in exchange for privacy.
Why would celebrities be on your platform if you lock the audience away from them?
Also, celebrities with public accounts are ultimately just doing advertising for themselves (and whoever pays them), so you haven't actually escaped the realm of ad-funded networks.
When you "own" a "social network" the fundamental asset you have is the audience, and only people with something to advertise are willing to pay for access to it.
The amount of people who really value their privacy and are willing to pay to avoid getting their data exploited is too low to matter in the context of a social network. I've tried different pricing, I've tried different extra features, I've tried going upmarket, but I never got a critical mass of people to make the whole endeavor sustainable.
On the content creator side, it's even worse. Creators will always prefer to work on platforms that offer them the widest reach. So even when you have privacy enthusiasts or creators who know all the issues from YouTube/Reddit/Instagram, they will still keep a channel there out of fear of not keeping up with "the algorithm".
If you really insist on going mad like me and believe that this is a worthy cause to work on, look at the existing social networks that are based on open source and open standards, like PixelFed [0] and Vernissage [1].
[0] https://pixelfed.org
[1] https://vernissage.photos
You can try to built something new but people who value privacy are not in the masses. Most people don’t care at all unless in immediate threat (like usurpation or stealing money).
There is already so many platforms that do just that and we don’t know about them because the problem also lies there. It’s hard to get known in the internet now with all the services that exists and distractions there is.
For example I haven’t been in the AppStore in years, only searching for something specific. Never ever for discovery of what is in there. Many, many people are like that as well which makes them hard to reach.
1) OC, aka: Original Content. Most sharing has trended towards reposts, memes, etc. That is the toxic cancer that has spread throughout most "social" networks. Somebody finds a funny meme, or ridiculous tornado picking up a car while someone dances a jig in front of it, and that drowns out "real" pictures of peoples kids or cats or whatever.
2) Useful for n==1. I believe it was an interview with the founder of del.ico.us (one of the OG bookmarking sites) who said "if you want users, you have to make something that's useful for _just that one user_, and if more users use it, then it gets better". It was shockingly insightful! He made delicious where I was motivated (for myself) to save bookmarks / links. If other people saved the same link, a counter went up (social proof?). I (and others) could explore shared tags (eg: `#tech`, `#javascript`, whatever), and that had an exponential utility based on number of users, BUT BOUNDED IN THE n==1 CASE!
3) Build an Internal Internet: I had a blog once upon a time (still do, and still nobody reads it ;-), and then twitter came along. Of course it grabbed my attention, of course I tweeted to be cool like the cool kids. Then I got upset with myself: "I like this micro-blogging thing, but it's taking away from my own blogging!" So I made `tweet.sh`, which did `echo "$1" > "~/blog/entries/tweets/$DATE-tweet.md"` and then styled it appropriately.
Putting it all together, build an INTERNAL instagram to help people back up, organize, showcase their photos (n==1). SOCIALIZE it via cooperating / federated instances (exponential utility). Allow tagging/repost/non-OC suppression (and SOCIALIZE that... eg: allow people to anti-socialize reposts).
For monetizing? Good luck. It's got to be better than iPhotos.
My advice is to run some other thing and just - as a gift to yourself and a somewhat silent gift to the world - don't monetize it via advertising or selling user data.
Don't make that one of the selling points of the platform: just do it because you think it'll create a better product that more closely aligns with what provides a good experience for users, and because you think it's more ethical. It's very likely not going to be a significant draw for the product in itself. You can mention it as a bullet point in marketing, but don't make it "the thing".
The reality is- real users won't pay for these services and the only entities that will pay.
Well, they're paying for ads with the knockoffs because (ironically) instagram et. al. won't run their ads because they're "bad for users."
I can't imagine that there wouldn't be enough people like me to support an inexpensive (compared to FB, etc) endeavor like this. If it still isn't enough, have local only ads that are not tracked and are served right from the site (and give users control over the type of ads they want to see). I wouldn't mind a couple unobtrusive ads for local restaurants, services, etc.
Maybe I am underestimating the cost here, but I also think that HN generally underestimates the social angst over the massive invasion of privacy by corporations. 90% of my non-tech friends and family have asked me how bad it is and how they can avoid it. Of course I just shrug and say you can't...
p.s. can you please link the HN discussion you referenced?
I hadn’t yet thought through specifics like “friend-post” or “public-post” modes, or whether non-users would be able to view public posts without an account.
I think you are saying you will use a chronological-feed instead of an algorithic-feed (where you sort, filter, promote to be most-relevant) to display posts.
Without it you may have a very large social media site on paper, but each user only interacts with a small subset which defeats the point of a social media platform. You've effectively created a group chat service that technically doesn't prevent others from joining in, it just doesn't let others find the conversation they are interested in
If I were attempting this, I'd design and aim the network for a niche audience of some sort and once that's established, begin expanding to wider audiences.
I’d suggest that the answer is not how to attract celebrities but in the first instance how to attract any users. My platform is novel and interesting and even then it’s not easy.
Why would anyone bother ? I think you didn't read the request completely.
Instead of supporting videos and memes and trying to compete with Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, Tumblr, Bluesky, Mastodon, Reddit and EVEN IMGUR
I'd focus on images and then my only competitor would be Pinterest, and I wouldn't have to deal with all the complexity that comes with supporting video.
I would rather like to see the solving the problem of not attracting any celebrities or influencers , or companies and just getting normal people for social connections, like Facebook was originally. This is the hard problem.
Money and fame usually destroys the platform in the end, as it aims for endless competition and rule breaking.
These are some of the reasons why it is a hard problem.
So the "no ads" model falls apart there.
I wonder if a non-targetted ad could be considered privacy-preserving. Then of course I thought but I'd want some targetting, e.g. by country, because for example having an ad for a spa in Helsinki would be quite irrelevant for users in Bangladesh... then how about by age-range, or gender, etc.
At least I'd welcome when the app transparently says e.g. "You're seeing this ad because it's targetting males over 40 with the geo-ip location of Europe".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pixelfed
As far as I'm aware, federation tends to be opposite to privacy because there can't be centralized control of access. e.g. none of the federated social media support private profiles but Instagram does, so Instagram is actually more private than most of these.
For example, in Bluesky, which users you blocked is public information.
To me, this sounds like a bigger "privacy" issue than "the ad company figured out you're a man who lives near the beach so you get ads about surfboards."
Privacy is about control of your data. Control requires centralization. How come people think decentralization is good for privacy? This is a very narrow definition of privacy that doesn't matter for most people.
> Control requires centralization.
How, exactly? What control do you have over data you handed to Facebook?
Keyword: TRUST.
Decentralization is often paired with trustlessness, and that's where things fall apart. The average person isn't a paranoid cybersecurity expert. They will trust on services evem if those services' whole mantra is "trust nobody, even us."
In essence, with Facebook, you are knowingly transferring control of your data to Facebook. With decentralized social media, you completely let go of any control and there is nobody to take over it.
Most people won't understand that nobody will have control of the data. They'll think they can just ask Mastodon staff to delete a post from an instance across the globe after they pressed the delete button and for some reason it didn't completely disappear from every instance.
I'm afraid all the privacy problems of decentralization didn't manifest yet because almost nobody is using it to begin with. If more people start to use it, it's going to be obvious we're only trading one privacy violation by another.
You just lost any right to complain over people misusing words.
> With decentralized social media, you completely let go of any control and there is nobody to take over it.
Quite the opposite. Decentralized social media allows you to be in control if you so desire.
> I'm afraid all the privacy problems of decentralization .
You were arguing that centralized systems are inherently more private. This is absolute and utter bullshit.
Is the "real privacy" story weak on federated social media? Yes, currently it is. But to have a "real private" communication platform, control MUST be given to the end user, which in effect means that the system MUST be decentralized.
I would make it community / area of interest centric (like Reddit).
Attract deep subject matter experts for the categories.
I actually own some domains that could be perfect for this site….
Email me (charles@turnsys.com) and I can go into more detail.
1) with people who aren't on icloud/iOS?
2) publishing-wise? Like are they getting 'feeds' in their imessage apps or...?
You can use Google Photos similarly and it's cross platform. Not sure about commments tho
Line and Facebook also have "private" social media feeds. By private I mean only people you approve can view. No idea how mined they are for data for ads
The feed is actually in the Apple Photo app. There is a section for "shared albums" and a link to "activity" that has a feed UI.
I've always thought if the shared album was tied directly to the group message that would be nirvana, but I don't believe that's a possibility.
I think you'll have a hard time convincing most users to pay for something they can get for "free" elsewhere.
Make a privacy-first Instagram-like social network and (here's the important part) charge for it.
https://glass.photo/ is a good example.
Regarding getting celebrities and influencers, you're going to have to pick from a group of people who are either highly tolerant of seeing their content next to, say, something really odious, or are already considered persona non grata. I'm certain you understand the reasons for this, so let me jump straight to my suggestions:
1. Work on a federated model a la bluesky that is censorship-proof but highly customizable so that people can form up around content they want to see and content they one (this is a very hard balance)
2. Be 'free speech friendly' and accept the fact that you may have to censor, but just be transparent about it. One of the biggest problems with censorship on the bigs is that its opaque, inconsistent, and nonsensical and hurts people who have no idea what they're doing or why it's 'inconsistent with Meta's values' or what the fuck ever.
You are opening a can of worms but its also a much-needed alternative so I wish you the best of luck.
And there is your problem statement. There is vast uncertainty about how to get there, even what ways there are to get there. You have to clarify all the uncertainty and there are no a priori answers. Just start going and see what happens. There is no recipe and if there was it would probably be for something you would not like.
[Edit: I am serious, not trying to be critical or facetious. As someone who has tried similar things, there is no recipe, so if you want to do x you just start with that fact and go.]
Your motivation is purely revenue. What would the user's motivation be to add yet another thing they have to keep up to date on? What can any users you do get use to convince their circle of humans to also join?
Without massive user counts or revenue share with celebs or influencers what incentive would they have to join?
How are you going to pay for bandwidth and storage of videos/images with no revenue? Like do you have a nest egg/run rate saved to fund this social network for a year or two?
*one minor catch is that you’ll have to start as a billionaire
>social media
you don't. you just killed your only decent revenue source, and will never out compete others. Social media live and die by their users.
What I don't see often, and I think it was a neat idea is a copy of Path. A social network for a very very small set of people to share their things. I think path was like 2 members.
I imagine that just a whatsapp/telegram conversation chat is more than enough for this case tho.