Ask HN: What are some promising “healthy social media” projects?

29 points by hntcz 4 years ago | 22 comments

I recently quit Instagram and Facebook but I do feel that I'm missing out on what's happening with my friends. I'd like to follow and potentially use some new (maybe dweb) alternatives.

I know Mastodon, Diaspora...

In my view a healthy social media alternative doesn't need to be distributed but it need to:

- limit the reach of posts, keeping the communication in your social circles and not trying to be a media company at the same time with millions of followers on some accounts

- have to algorithmic feed - chronological is just fine, thank you

- no ads if possible, or no micro-targeted ads.

Do you know any project like that?

nonameiguess 4 years ago |

I've just started calling my family on a regular basis. I never used to like phone calls, but I've gotten over it. For other people, if we haven't lived in the same city or seen each other for 25 years and we drift apart, oh well, we'll survive in the same way people have for ages as friends they used to know and love dropped out of their lives.

There are other ways. My wife's siblings have all kept a more or less permanent group text going for over a decade. One of my cousins sends out a paper newsletter to everyone once a year.

The small number of old-time friends in other parts of the country that I was ever truly close to I trust will still contact me if they're ever in the area, and I will contact them if I'm ever in their area, and there's always the 30 year reunion. I don't really need to know what they're up to on a daily basis. I just need to know if one of us ever really truly needs the other, we'll be there, and I do trust that even if I'm not given a live feed of their daily activities and opinions.

claudiulodro 4 years ago |

Have you tried calling, texting, or e-mailing them? That's been working great as a "social media replacement" for many people I know after they ditched the online social media companies.

jjice 4 years ago | |

To add to the parent comment, make a list of people you'd like to stay connected with and add an event to your calendar a few times a week (I do two). Those events are to reach out to one of those people on the list and catch up with them. You can't follow a thousand people like you can one Facebook, but the conversations will be richer and 1000 close connections with distant people probably doesn't provide deep connections anyway. This has been good for me.

Another one I heard in Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport is to hold "office hours" in which you're available for conversation with anyone. What's nice about these is that you can schedule them during downtime like a commute or a regular walk, so you're not losing any extra time.

Might come off as robotic, but scheduling regular conversations with those who are closest to you is really nice and makes sure you're always in communication.

missedthecue 4 years ago | |

Do you just send out a mass email blast updating all your friends that you took the family to disney world? How does that work?

claudiulodro 4 years ago | | |

No, your family does not want to subscribe to your personal newsletter. :)

Just text a pic of you at Disney World to your mom -- I bet she'll love it.

cvwright 4 years ago |

Well, since you asked... :-)

I've been working on something in this space for a little while. It's called Circles. Originally, I just wanted a safer and easier way to share baby photos with my extended family. Safer than posting pictures of my kid publicly on Facebook. Easier / more convenient than pinging the crap out of everyone's phone on Signal.

It's kind of like a bare-bones version of Facebook. Only you can have multiple social circles (like in G+), each with your own "wall" for posting stuff and timeline of posts from the friends that you're following there.

All posts are E2E encrypted, using the same crypto as in Element/Matrix, and the back end is just a standard Matrix server. The E2EE prevents the server from seeing what you post, or from injecting crap into your timeline. You can use your own Matrix server, or you can sign up to create an account on mine.

It's open source: https://github.com/KombuchaPrivacy/circles-ios

You're welcome to try out the beta if you want: https://testflight.apple.com/join/cwsJZed9

If all goes well, it should go live in the App Store later this month.

Unfortunately it's iOS only for now. I'm working as fast as I can to get started on an Android version.

If you try it out, please let me know what you think! Thanks!!!

djz2k 4 years ago | |

The problem w/ circles, lists and tags, is that they require the user themselves to create and maintain them. Unless your tech can read minds and prompt for new affinities discovered or changes in relationship automatically, its too much cognitive load.

You should read - http://blog.intercom.io/what-we-can-learn-from-google-plus/ Curious how you solve for that.

I don't think its natural for humans to say "today Bob went from acquaintance to friend" or "i'll make a circle for dirty jokes" proactively.

djz2k 4 years ago |

I recommend SELECT, as its built on digital wellness principles. - They make a distinction between high signal and noisy activity. For example: - Doesn't send you notifications or activity to your inbox UNLESS its was sent to you personally, or there's activity on a post you've interacted with. - Notifications are batched to max 1/hour or 2/day - If you've consumed all your high signal activity, and you're still in the app a minute later, it will prompt you to lock your phone. - No public popularity scores - Everything is private by default, so no privacy settings but instead - opt-in exposure settings - Based on your 3 criteria, - Reach of Posts is limited to specific selected individuals or a single group. - even in the group context, - No Feed. No infinite scroll. No algorithmic recommendations. - No Ads or other conflicts of interest.

It's early, but promising. It's community oriented & only works by invitation, so here's one if you're keen to try - https://scholer.select.id/jdlj

xyzzy21 4 years ago |

I've been on the Internet since it was still called "Arpanet".

There is NO GOOD SOCIAL MEDIA - its nature is primarily negative and bad for society. The reason is that it's inherently addictive by design and it operates faster than the biological time constants of rationality. It can never be made "safe". It will always have negative outcomes.

efferifick 4 years ago |

Not sure how much this fits:

* fraidycat: RSS reader where the user can choose refresh rate for different type of feeds. Also different categories (i.e., friends vs brands).

* futureland.tv: a social media website focused on journals to document progress on users' projects. (no-ads)

micropresident 4 years ago |

I have been working on a decentralized social media platform that uses a token w/o cash value as a reputation and moderation system. The goal is to avoid needing a centralized content moderator. I'd love to chat about it if it sounds interesting.

We're currently using a telegram group chat as groups are still in development, only direct messages work due to complexity around the encryption.

A link to our chat is here: https://t.me/stampchat

A description of how things work is here: https://www.stampchat.io/whitepaper.pdf

Natfan 4 years ago | |

I'd love to read your FAQ, but the collapse elements do not work on Chrome 92.0.4515.131.

https://www.stampchat.io/faq

8jef 4 years ago |

Not a social media per se, but a decentralized hosting platform that will distribute decentralized apps securely, where one will privately host its own data and metadata on a home node.

https://holochain.org/

Apps in development (hApps) includes Acorn (for teams), Elemental chat (first actually available and functional distributed hApp), Snap mail, Junto, and more coming.

kshowkat 4 years ago |

Not quite social media in the standard sense, but we've been working on https://wager.town -- a free-to-play "wagering game" that acts essentially as an open-ended prediction market. Limited to sports-fans so it's pretty niche, but our Discord feels nice and communal which was our goal.

softwaredoug 4 years ago |

I would love something that optimizes for curiosity, instead of engagement. I wonder sometimes what signals we could take from a social network to promote things that spark curiosity and don't play on anxiety, create flame wars, etc... And if such a thing is even monetizable or worth building.

Hacker news is the closest thing, but even here clickbait sometimes happens :)

seltzered_ 4 years ago |

https://Hylo.com is doing some interesting things with group coordination, and intended to be a non-profit I think.

Past year has also felt like the rise of using paid saas groups like circle.so and mightynetworks.

And for local groups seen friends migrate to signal.

fattybob 4 years ago |

There’s MeWe but to be honest, it’s kinda dead, some kinda cash grab service maybe, they make it a pain to leave too!! Mine is just sat there …. A bit like my Facebook and Instagram…

JCharante 4 years ago |

Unironically WeChat's moments are probably what you're looking for.

- They don't embed ads in moments.

- It's a chronological feed. And you only see posts from your friends (who you allow to view moments).

- You can set the expiration time of your moments (so no one can see anything older than 1 month, 2 weeks, 1 day (I think?), And keep them visible forever if you want.

- You can only view comments from your friends. Your friends will not see your comment if they aren't friends with the poster whose moment you replied to. And your friend's friends won't see the comment unless they're friends with you. This keeps things personal and avoids flamewars between randoms.

Anyways, I personally like to use Strava to keep up with my active friends. You get to see them as they go on vacations and when they've gotten vaccinated based off an easy ride (and in the title). I use it to just peer into the lives of friends as they've moved to different countries and continents.

djz2k 4 years ago | |

wrt WeChat, no longer entirely true. - Moments does embed ads, but far less than western social networks - It's no longer pure chronological, you only see posts from people who allow you to view their moments. - You can't set expiration time for individual moments posts, you set expiration time on your moments feed. It goes as low as 3 days (not 1). - The comments visibility can be odd as you often only see one side of a conversation.

They have a ton of powerful privacy features, but the issue w/ them and most, is that they're all off (i.e. public) by default.

blkstormy 4 years ago |

breakdiving.io

Very tight knit community built around supporting each other and achieving life goals.

blrboy 4 years ago |

Halloapp.com is exactly this.

FridayoLeary 4 years ago |

Whatsapp?