Ask HN: How do I build a new social network?
I am interested in building a new social network but I want it to be limited to North America only. I dont like what platforms like Reddit has become nowadays (too much moderation and there is too many power mods fighting for control) and rampant bot abuse to grow communities. As someone that has been on the internet for a while I also dont like how political platforms like reddit has become so I want to make sure all political content is restricted or super duper limited. The internet that I grew up with wasnt this political or bombareded with political news and such, I feel like this is really bad for peoples mental health and would like to help them. What are your guys thoughts, what would make a new social network be successful? I have been modding on Reddit for a while and one of the good things the platform has done is that it hasnt turned into Twitter or platforms like Bluesky which everyone is still uncertain about. But reddit also sucks, they had the whole API fiasco and people blacked out there subs. There are still some small subs to this day that are abandoned from that period of time.
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[ 0.19 ms ] story [ 19.3 ms ] threadI picked the first search result...
https://www.jploft.com/blog/best-social-media-apps
> too much moderation
> rampant bot abuse
You can't solve the bot problem without thorough, labor-intensive moderation. These two of your goals are at odds with each other.
I will also say that almost 100% of the value of reddit is the moderation. After Musk eviscerated Twitter's moderation, it became more of a cesspit and people have been leaving for better-moderated networks.
> I want to make sure all political content is restricted or super duper limited
How are you going to do this without moderation?
What's your definition is political? Is discussing climate change political? What about health care?
If filtering certain topics or moderating a social network were a simple problem, bigger companies (like Meta) would've solved it without armies of human moderators.
Which also begs the question: how would you keep CSAM off your network?
I want to see a social network that solves the bot problem by requiring a fee to post.
I think this is doable without losing massive numbers of users. You could do it by requiring a small fee to post publicly, but you could post for free to your followers.
BlueSky kind of flirts with this model because you have to pay to get your own domain if you don't want to use theirs.
Why would people pay to post? Why do people post in the first place?
Meta does offer LLama, don't know their reasons, for free, and i only mention them as a largest platform. This not-yet-existent product should be whatever FAANG and governments effort which will save everybody a ton of money.
Edit: some other reasons i mention Meta
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43293004
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32521609
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35726102
I am annoyed by emotionally negative political content on Mastodon and had to make a number of rules (no "fascist", "republican", "Trump", ...) to make it tolerable.
I found Bluesky's algorithmic feed eliminated about 75% of emotionally negative content and thought it was a good feed without any rules (though I was being careful who I follow.) Then the inauguration happened and there was a huge exodus of people from X and the feed either got overwhelmed with them or they were deliberately giving activists and journalists a lot of visibility so they build up followers quickly.
I've been wanting to make a "negative people" filter to make it easier to choose people to follow, the idea is to make a ModernBERT + LSTM classifier which I think will outperform my miniLM + pooling + SVM classifier. I need something that can look at images and detect "text in images" such as screenshots and image memes to block those too.
So from my viewpoint people can post what they want, but I won't read it. Probably Threads is using some technology like this to suppress politics and negativity in general.
To tell if something is true you need to make a god. Politics and negativity aren't quite the same thing, but they are fellow travelers.
I have found several use cases all trying to go on at the same time.
1. People with important group communications needing a large audience; i.e. scientists sharing research, organizations needing to contact people, special interest groups like Ham Radio (cuz they can't broadcast on their gear), photographers, musicians and so on.
2. Hot news feeds. These were added not to share news, but to lock people in with echo chamber news.
3. People simply wanting to communicate privately with friends and family and so on.
4. Local information of interest and need. Some is quite urgent, as in evacuation alerts; Some is important, like road closures and events, and some is caustic bullshit as in community gossip and flame wars. And LOCAL advertising can actually be useful and not just the "sports talk radio" carpet-bombing of tax attorneys, divorce lawyers, dick stiffeners, and house flippers.
5. Politics. I find that this is best in affinity groups that are heavily moderated. Trolls and bots gonna troll.
6. Probably more.
The more you address, the more diluted the product.
And the money model?
There’s nothing wrong building something just for yourself.
But “you can’t build an airplane out of bricks.”
Good luck.
maybe we had different internet (I grew up in the USA), but I remember a lot of shock porn/sites. I remember 4chan posting truly horrific content. I remember "prank" videos. I remember revenge porn. I'm kinda glad the internet has cleaned up a lot.
I grew up on IRC back when 9/11 happened. We'd talk about how radicalized the mujahideen were. And it was puberty, we went from Nickelodeon to C&C Generals. That was the politics, plenty of caricatures, but the caricatures were a safety barrier.
These days it's completely common for one party to be radicalized against another party. Words like genocide and dictator are thrown about regularly. People cheer when a CEO is murdered. This is akin to people cheering for the suicide bombers back then. I mean, the Internet I'm in is already cheering for Hamas, even on the videos of Hamas blowing up ambulances.
The old internet was a spectator violence internet, but the new internet is about violent participation. If it keeps up, we'll likely see more things like the Capitol Attack, all these things that make for great television.
I obviously don't know your reasoning but IMO you're already going political
All the political news you don’t like is a symptom of the toxic society we’ve built. Maybe we should be making new social networks that bring people together fix the root problem, not ignore it because it’s harshing the vibe.
You need to carefully consider what you truly want and the realities surrounding those desires. How large do you envision this social network becoming? Do you aspire to be the next Reddit, Hacker News, or Lobsters?
Large social networks need to grow to survive, and growth requires funding.
Are you pursuing a commercial venture or a non-profit one?
If it's commercial, you will likely need to seek external investors. They will expect a return on their investment and will exert influence -- often in the form of ad revenue or otherwise increasing costs to your end users. It almost always ends this way, unless you stay a small bootstrapper.
If it's non-profit, you will still need to secure funding through various fundraisers and donations.
It would help to brainstorm (to yourself, at least) what you want to accomplish in lucid detail. This post is not it.
Politics is essentially about finding the best way to improve society by fixing issues or proposing new ideas. Isn't it? If so, perhaps it's specific conduct you want restricted, not politics. After all, bad conduct can happen when talking about any topic.