HN Explorer

Ask HN: Should there be a not-for-profit social network?

4 points by TrevorJ ↗ HN
A platform where users can control their own data completely and will never be subject to data mining or targeted advertisement.

Facebook and the like will always be around and they have their place, but many people don't want to be at the mercy of a for-profit organization when it comes to what happens to their personal info. The specter of targeted ads and data mining just don't appeal to a lot of people.

If the model was more open-source and not-for-profit, then you don't have to try to balance user privacy vs. company profit.

6 comments

[ 2.5 ms ] story [ 27.4 ms ] thread
pclark
for what benefit?

why isn't there simply a decentralized for profit social network, where your data is stored on your personal web hosting

TrevorJ
I agree with the comment re: defraying costs, but Open source software has been able to find a way to survive and THRIVE with a not-for-profit model, so there must be a way to do it.

Decentralized and for-profit is an interesting idea, but my main concern is that a for-profit model gives the organization a reason to mine the data and monetize it, which could be done even if the hosting isn't centralized.

The reason I like the not-for-profit model is because it tends to (partially) preclude some of the shady privacy intrusion that the for-profit model could push a business towards.

brand
Open source does not thrive on the fuel of non-profit alone. Red Hat and Sun are for-profit, but they're major contributors to open-source projects.

Open source is successful with not-for-profit models because people like hacking on open source. I don't think that's necessarily impossible for a social network, because people like to waste a lot of their lives on social networks, but are open-source hackers going to be interested in working on a project they aren't interested in using? I'm assuming that the primary appeal of social networks has long moved past the techie demographic.

Allocator2008
Who would pay the hosting costs in such a scenario? Costs have to be offset some way or other. Unless users want to do "donations" or something like that, as what wikipedia recently did.
TrevorJ
Agreed, you do need money from someplace. Open-source projects manage to make it work so I think there must be a way.

Or let users decide how they want their data to be used. Whats say you have the option to opt-in for anonymous data mining but you get a share of the profit? The main point being that each user has absolute control of the personal data.

tokenadult
Foundations might fund online networks that help people contribute more to society. One example is Cogito.org,

http://www.cogito.org/default.aspx

which has full membership for young people who pass a screening process, but good resources for lurkers too.