HACKER Q&A
📣 purple-leafy

Social media with a high barrier to entry?


For starters, this will sound elitist so bear with me.

Is there any “social” media site that has an incredibly high barrier of entry?

Like to join you have to pass some incredibly hard IQ test (not that I believe in those), or programming challenge, or logic challenge - and to keep your membership you must constantly prove yourself.

For context I have no online presence, besides HackerNews. I only just joined HackerNews.

I just want a “social” site where I can look at articles and subscribe to my hobbies (kind of like Reddit) but without the masses.

And talk and comment with “smart”-er people. I think hackernews is probably the best site for that, but even here some of the people’s comments make me scratch my head.

I want to be fully away from politics, gamification etc.

I even thought of building my own social media based on shared bookmarks that would connect you with peers who share similar bookmarks to you. Is that a thing?

End of rant

  👤 48864w6ui Accepted Answer ✓
You and your smarter friends could share bookmarks with each other and comment on them, via email.

This would have an incredibly high barrier to entry, because out of 8-9b people on the planet, which hundred are going to be (and remain) a smarter friend (or fof) of leafy?

👤 RedlineTriad
If I remember correctly Hack The Box (The CTF Platform) used to require solving a small challenge to even create an account. Though I wouldn't exactly classify it as social media.
👤 bradley13
Honestly, there's nothing wrong with being "elitist" in this sense. You're looking to get away from trolls and idiots. So are we all.

If you want something publuc, the best chance is the comment section of small, specialist blogs. I am on one such blog (nope, not sharing), where there is an established group of 20 or so participants, with low turnover. It's great, and when the occasional troll joins, the moderator shuts them down quickly.

👤 quinncom
MetaFilter is a quaint online community with about 5000 users commenting monthly that has a minor elitist barrier to entry: you have to pay $5 to join. That's been in place since about 2006, and along with a vigilant moderation team, has kept it one of the coziest social media that is mostly forgotten about (sign ups in 2022 were about 10% as many as in 2014).
👤 beardyw
"I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member." Grouch Marx

(though I remain convinced for some reason that it was S J Perelman)

👤 gtt
Urbit