HACKER Q&A
📣 czhu12

What is a “good” social network?


In light of today’s events I’m curious to hear people’s thoughts:

The consensus seems to be that Facebook, and social media in general is bad for various reasons [1][2]

What could be changed to make it “good”?

I know there are some that are of the opinion that social media is bad no matter what changes, or old school irc channels are all we ever needed, but please play along!

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24627363

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25928310

  👤 Jugurtha Accepted Answer ✓
I am still in awe of how LinkedIn may be the weirdest and cringiest of all the social networks.

I recently discovered a subreddit where people upload pictures of figurines covered with semen (cummingonfigurines). I somehow find that more honest and less cringy than the posts on LinkedIn.

I'm trying to figure out exactly why I find the network and posts so uncouth.

👤 czhu12
I’ll start with some personal thoughts ranked from mild to extreme changes:

1. remove re-post button (hopefully gets rid of “virality” and “influencers”)

2. cap comments / hour to 10 (gets rid of arguments, flame wars)

3. remove like button entirely

4. posts can only been seen by friends, and no more

5. Groups only allow anonymous posts?

6. An ML model that absolutely filters out everything remotely political, hateful, etc

7. Friends are auto un-friended after 5 years

👤 eigengrau5150
The only good social network is the WWW, RSS/Atom, and email. Always own your platform.