[HN Gopher] 1M Users
___________________________________________________________________
1M Users
Author : theneedful
Score : 709 points
Date : 2024-09-02 03:13 UTC (19 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.spacehey.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.spacehey.com)
| dang wrote:
| Related:
|
| _Show HN: I rebuilt MySpace from 2007 (2 year update)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33792956 - Nov 2022 (9
| comments)
|
| _Spacehey: A Space for Friends_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28770637 - Oct 2021 (15
| comments)
|
| _Show HN: I Rebuilt MySpace from 2007_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25245740 - Nov 2020 (290
| comments)
| panyanyany wrote:
| Congrats! How do you promote ? Post links everywhere ?
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| they've got merch, you can be the promotion you want to see in
| the world! (jokes aside the hat is pretty classy)
|
| https://shop.spacehey.com/
| pech0rin wrote:
| Looks interesting. Definitely nailing the old myspace aesthetic.
| I'd be more curious about active users versus registered users.
| Social networks are usually defined by activity. Unfortunately
| registered users probably contains a lot of bots and spammers.
| Sparkyte wrote:
| When I saw this I was like ooh noes not myspace all over again.
| I feel this style may actually be a hinderance for adopting
| more users. People really want something more reactive like
| Discord. Discord is very much disliked, but the software is
| really good and that is why most people won't abandon it. It is
| like comparing Slack to Teams. It will be a long time before
| anything catches immediately up to Slack or Discord in
| usability. Although I have a short list of things that would be
| QoL improvements that would make both them soooooo much better.
| pavo-etc wrote:
| Go use facebook then. This project seems fun.
| SubiculumCode wrote:
| I think there is enough space for lots of styles.
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| > hinderance for adopting more users
|
| Promotes a smaller, more tightly knit community.
|
| One person's X is another's Y.
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| Discord always had a unique way of making me feel old
|
| I avoided it because when when a ding occurred there is no
| indication which channel had just donged, just left me
| confused as to what was happening
| courseofaction wrote:
| Likewise - a notification history feature would help, the
| confusion really cripples the real-time experience.
| RheingoldRiver wrote:
| it has a notification history feature (at least on PC),
| it's just impossible to find and deleted messages
| disappear from it. Upper-right corner is your "inbox"
| which is totally worthless, and tabbed behind that is
| your notification history. I use it to find totally
| buried @Mods pings that I missed by thousands of messages
| and that's about it, it's not good.
|
| You can usually get most of your notifications with
| Ctrl+[T or K] and then going through the menu here, but
| for reasons I've yet to figure out sometimes DMs don't
| show up here even when they have unread messages. I think
| there is some incorrect logic that kicks in when you have
| a high number of unread channels and it can't show as
| many "previous channels" as it wants to.
|
| None of this is to defend Discord, I think their UI is
| bad and I've hated the way DMs function since day 1, and
| every single part of their app that relies on frecency
| (or doesn't but should) is abysmal (reaction
| autocomplete, the reaction pop-up menu, ctrl+T when you
| start typing something, the mention autocomplete behavior
| in any channel)
|
| But once you learn the poorly-documented navigation flow
| of ctrl+T and then using @, #, or * to filter
| users/channels/servers it gets easier to use. My current
| biggest complaint is lack of a "previous channel within
| this server" hotkey, "previous channel that you visited
| globally" exists but you can't restrict it within one
| server, and it makes navigating some of my servers an
| absolute nightmare.
| Mashimo wrote:
| It's there. Top right corner. "Inbox" then select
| mentions.
| saagarjha wrote:
| It might be that someone sent a message and then deleted
| it.
| damaya1982 wrote:
| I get on Discord here and there to discuss Linux,
| programming and so on. It is definitely much different than
| IRC. The demographic seems to be 14 year olds trying to
| customize their WM.
| sqeaky wrote:
| > Discord is very much disliked, but the software is really
| good and that is why most people won't abandon it
|
| I dislike every single one of discord's design decisions, I
| think the software is garbage, and it is riddled with
| security problems. Their customer service is a nightmare, a
| hacker got one of my friends accounts and even though he'd
| paid up for some kind of Discord extra service for more than
| 2 years in advance they wouldn't refund him or give him his
| account back. The API is bad too.
|
| I use it purely because of the network effect. The people I
| want to communicate with use it, and the instant that changes
| if Discord isn't better then I'm out.
| llm_trw wrote:
| >Their customer service is a nightmare
|
| Having customer service would be a step up.
|
| >>We banned your account for illegal activity.
|
| >But I just signed up and tried logging in?
|
| >>After review we have banned your IP forever for illegal
| activity.
| marcus_holmes wrote:
| What's the point of banning an IP address?
| draxil wrote:
| Some people (like me) have a fixed IP for their internet
| connection. Although this isn't super common any more.
| marcus_holmes wrote:
| Yeah, it's really only tech folk who have fixed IP
| addresses, and they're usually too busy futzing around
| with servers to post shite on social sites ;)
|
| Most IP connections are dynamic, and always were.
| Assuming that a person is synonymous with an IP
| connection makes no sense to me.
| Tijdreiziger wrote:
| For most dynamic IP connections, as long as your router
| doesn't go offline for days on end, you keep the same IP;
| so in practice your IP (almost) never changes.
| michaelt wrote:
| I love Tor - but the exit node IP addresses _do not_ have
| a good reputation, because they 're a source of a lot of
| misbehaviour.
|
| Sure, 'serious' attackers have botnets of home users' PCs
| and insecure IoT devices and whatnot. But because Tor
| exit nodes are easily used by even _unsophisticated_
| attackers, they quickly get flagged as sources of abuse.
| juped wrote:
| You got an actual useless automated message? The lucky
| 1%.
| Kiro wrote:
| While I disagree with the parent I personally think Discord
| is great. I've been on IRC for over 30 years and Discord is
| what I always imagined IRC 2.0 would be like.
| stevage wrote:
| Agreed. I like almost everything about discord. I just
| wish it did threaded replies in a more low key way.
| multjoy wrote:
| What, owned by a single company and monetised within an
| inch of it's life?
| emmet wrote:
| I would have loved to pay monthly for IRC Nitro(tm) back
| in the day to use... uh, forbidden ascii art?
| plufz wrote:
| I feel sort of ehh the same but also the opposite. I feel
| with both slack and discord that they are a little better
| than IRC. But that I so easily can see those features
| being implemented in IRC and I feel really sad history
| didn't go in that direction. What if IRC had became the
| standard in the same way email did. IRC was so great and
| I miss it. I know ppl still use it, but I don't even
| think I have a client anymore.
|
| Learning to program as a kid in the 90s and getting that
| 28.8k modem with direct chat access to adults at Apple
| and later Sun/Java was amazing.
| layer8 wrote:
| People who liked IRC will generally like Discord.
| However, there's a lot of people who prefer asynchronous
| forums.
| FranzFerdiNaN wrote:
| Ah yes, because real time chatting and a wall to post stuff
| on like early facebook surely are the exact same hting.
| creesch wrote:
| > People really want something more reactive like Discord.
|
| Citation needed :) This feels like you are parroting either
| your own preference or something you have heard other people
| state as fact.
| pjc50 wrote:
| > Discord is very much disliked, but the software is really
| good
|
| Discord as a text chat app is _appalling_. Whether on mobile,
| chromebook or desktop PC it 's slow and janky to transition
| between channels. It is a measurably worse user experience
| than using IRC on a computer from twenty years ago with
| 1,000x less raw MIPS.
|
| Maybe it has some advantages for voice chat, but to me it's a
| lowest common denominator we use because of the people and
| despite the software.
| Mashimo wrote:
| What makes it appalling?
|
| You can press ctrl + K to jump to any channel from
| anywhere. Feels snappy.
| pjc50 wrote:
| > Feels snappy.
|
| I wonder if this is just everyone else using it on
| massive gamer PCs and me using it on mobile/chromebook,
| but .. no. It it is not snappy. The process of fetching
| all the new messages and rendering them takes up to a
| second.
|
| I don't understand why people who insist on 60fps games
| are happy with a 1fps chat app, but I guess they don't
| have that experience.
| Mashimo wrote:
| Even on mobile switching channel feels snappy to me. The
| images can take a while if they are not cached yet.
| sigseg1v wrote:
| I'm using a $6000 gaming rig I put together and Discord
| is one of the worst performing apps I use, so I'm with
| you on this one.
| KingMob wrote:
| And yet the one thing I can't do is automatically jump to
| the top of a question. One of my Discord servers loves
| doing FAQs as separate conversations, and once they get
| too many replies, I have to scroll endlessly (PgUp, etc)
| to see the first few comments. It's maddening.
| RunSet wrote:
| Hexchat feels snappy. Discord feels like an Electron app.
| Voultapher wrote:
| Yes on very fast modern hardware, the textbox sometimes
| takes dozens of frames to display the character I typed,
| _and_ it is inconsistent. The tech sucks.
| password4321 wrote:
| Discord's back end is amazing and they've blogged about a
| lot of it over the years
| (https://hn.algolia.com?query=%22How%20Discord%22). Not as
| smooth sailing on the front end though, and unfortunately
| they threaten to ban accounts using alternative clients,
| though there have been several
| (https://hn.algolia.com?query=Discord%20client).
|
| Discord is good enough for most users and since it was one
| of the first to fully leverage WebRTC in-browser for voice
| chat (without requiring an account), the network effect is
| almost impossible to overcome at this point. This is
| incredibly unfortunate as closed chat ecosystems are an
| information black hole (except possibly when user generated
| content is licensed to the highest bidder for LLM training,
| what a gold mine!)
|
| PS. It's worth mentioning in any Discord discussion with
| the (though the usual "could get banned" caveat applies):
| it is possible to export from Discord using
| https://github.com/Tyrrrz/DiscordChatExporter
| vunderba wrote:
| Unfortunately, personal account automation like this is
| _also_ in the reasons for "could get banned". Sigh.
|
| I thought about building a scraper using something
| simplistic like Puppeteer to login to my account since
| the Discord browser experience is basically the same as
| the Discord app (which makes sense since its Electron).
| It would just issue a command to scroll arbitrarily up on
| a given channel/etc. until a certain earliest date was
| reached, and scrape all the data.
|
| But.... again I'm sure that they have all sorts of
| mechanisms to detect unusual user behavior, so this might
| be _JUST_ as vulnerable to detection as the
| aforementioned DiscordChatExporter.
|
| Even leviathan walled gardens like Google let you export
| your data in a reasonable fashion (Google Takeout) - this
| is probably my biggest issue. On the other hand even if I
| could find an equivalent user-friendly platform, I'd
| never be able to convince all my contacts to migrate off
| Discord.
| mrngm wrote:
| It's interesting to see how requesting your data[0] could
| take up to 30 days! I haven't yet clicked the button, but
| it would be interesting to see what's in the data dump.
|
| [0] https://support.discord.com/hc/en-
| us/articles/360004027692-R...
| vunderba wrote:
| The disparate experiences people have on the same piece of
| software is interesting. I'm on a Mac M1 (so definitely a
| higher end laptop) and have had zero issues with the
| Discord app. It sits comfortably on my second monitor and I
| use the Cmd-K shortcut to quickly snap to the correct
| channel/user when I want to chat. While I wouldn't call the
| app "blazingly fast", I don't really notice any _meaningful
| latency_.
|
| I mean it's not like it's a low-level ASIO driver for
| pete's sake.
|
| Memory usage is also reasonable. Continuous uptime is over
| 4 days now, and combined real mem shows it's using about
| ~400mb which honestly is about what I would have expected
| from an Electron app.
|
| I think some of it comes down to _user expectations_. When
| I 'm playing a game, we're primed to look/notice choppiness
| and dropped frames particularly since the graphics are
| constantly animated. When I'm using my DAW, I'm primed to
| hear latency between my interacting with a midi controller
| and the audio output. I don't have any such expectations
| when I'm using a glorified text messaging platform, so
| while there might indeed be some latency, it would have to
| be significant for me to notice.
|
| That being said, I'm not a fan of the Android app - the
| UI/UX experience is rather rough.
| lelanthran wrote:
| > People really want something more reactive like Discord.
| Discord is very much disliked, but the software is really
| good and that is why most people won't abandon it.
|
| This probably comes as a surprise to Discord users, but it
| really _is_ a niche social network.
|
| We're talking fractions of a percent of users compared to
| existing social networks.
|
| People _don 't_ really want something like Discord - the
| downsides by far outweigh any upside of "a closed-off private
| network of people", biggest one being lack of visibility and
| consistency.
| cdelsolar wrote:
| Hmm.. I love Discord?
| jchook wrote:
| MySpace ran so SpaceHey could walk
| idonov wrote:
| Please let this go viral, it's about time to make social media
| great again
| michaelteter wrote:
| And it's time to stop saying "make ___ great again".
| nurettin wrote:
| O Rly?
| hunter2_ wrote:
| There's a paradox almost worth discussing somewhere, but
| not here.
| Ylpertnodi wrote:
| Make "And it's time to stop saying "make ___ great again"
| great again?
| edm0nd wrote:
| make HN great again
| jaza wrote:
| We're gonna build a wall, and Slashdot is gonna pay for it!
| throwmeaway222 wrote:
| Doesn't everyone want everything to be great again?
| imhoguy wrote:
| We need MSGA hats!
| lawgimenez wrote:
| Anyone here tired of social media? I'm almost 40. Just curious
| of my age group.
| marcus_holmes wrote:
| More angry than tired. To clarify: angry _at_ Social Media
| rather than _on_ it.
|
| FB was great in about 2010, but is now ridiculous and
| basically unusable. My wife is addicted to IG, and spends
| multiple hours each day scrolling the feed. My social life
| revolves around WA groups. I tried moving people to Signal
| but got few takers.
|
| I'm enjoying Mastodon at the moment.
|
| I'm scared that if I install TikTok I'll get addicted. I've
| seen it happen to friends.
|
| I would like to return to email, circa 2000, that was fun.
| helboi4 wrote:
| I have been addicted to ig. Still can be if I let myself.
| Reddit can also get me hard. Whatsapp groups I actually
| love because there's nothing to scroll. Just people lmk
| about an event and I can interact with them like a human,
| and I can go to the event. I get to know about things and I
| don't have to interact with meaningless content alongside
| it. I love it. What exactly is wrong with Whatsapp groups
| other than that it's owned by Meta? I also have some
| Telegram groups.
| 4k93n2 wrote:
| zulip seems like a nice sweet spot between email and
| instant messaging apps, and maybe forums. ive havnt
| actually used it yet but its on my self hosting todo list
| nicholassmith wrote:
| Almost 40 as well, also tired of social media but I do miss
| social networks. This seems to hew more closely to the social
| network concept than being a media outlet which is lovely to
| see coming back.
| CalRobert wrote:
| No, I moved abroad and when sm was good it let me preserve my
| friend networks. Now it's a wasteland. I miss it.
| oxygen_crisis wrote:
| We may be choosier than most about social media, but here we
| are typing our thoughts into a web page expecting nothing in
| return except the possibility of hearing other peoples'
| thoughts.
|
| We all know people who are truly tired of social media, we're
| not going to hear from them here.
| helboi4 wrote:
| I'm 26 and I'm tired of social media. I was addicted to insta
| for a bit and I've teared myself away. Now when I go back, I
| can still feel the addictive quality but for the most part I
| look at people's posts and wonder how they aren't embarassed.
| Like why do I care to see this photo of you? Did you really
| just set your camera up in this complicated way to take a
| photo in your room? Isn't that sad? Do people actually get
| anything from these reels that are so vapid? The fact that
| one of my favourite songs is being used as background music
| to the most inane "comedy" makes me angry because it's
| ruining my experience of the art itself! All these things go
| through my head. I couldn't take myself seriously posting any
| more unless it was strictly for business.
| manuelmoreale wrote:
| Definitely am. I'm 35. Thankfully I found a great place to be
| in the blogging world. I write posts, I read posts from
| others, we connect via email. It's great.
| alex1138 wrote:
| I don't know how to interpret statements like this. In my
| mind there has to be a clear separation between problems
| individual platforms have (ie an algorithmic feed where you
| may or may not see what your friends actually post despite
| explicitly following them) and... the rest of the discussion.
| "Social media" (a very broad term) as a medium people
| dislike, well, that's individual. It means no matter how a
| platform does some people will always be against it. I don't
| understand that. I think the more important discussions to
| have are how we can improve specific sites
| tock wrote:
| This looks so cool! And I love the feel of basic server rendered
| pages!
| troupo wrote:
| It's also so much more responsive and predictable than most of
| today's crap
| enumer8 wrote:
| I've been on Spacehey since 2021 and it's remarkable how fun and
| cozy the place has stayed over the years.
| meowtimemania wrote:
| How often do you login? What makes it sticky for you?
| enumer8 wrote:
| I stay logged in almost all the time. I wanted some place
| where I felt like I could blog freely, and one that _felt_
| like a blog instead of some ad-ridden mess. It was partially
| the customisation aspect that drew me in at the beginning,
| having that much control over my profile (even if it was just
| basic HTML and CSS with some JS) reminded me of what I loved
| about being online. I have a personal website and don't
| really pay much heed to the 'social' aspect of SpaceHey but
| having a little corner where I can just go and blog/post
| bulletins about things I'm thinking about, especially because
| it has a straightforward interface, feels really nice. The
| lack of ads and algorithms and general 'social media'
| paradigms of the modern age do a lot to make sure I keep
| going back.
| trwhite wrote:
| What's your username (if you don't mind me asking)?
| shortrounddev2 wrote:
| I wanted to get more involved in the community on that site
| but it seems there's a LOT of teenagers on it
| thelastparadise wrote:
| Hey man, I'm getting started on the platform. Mind sharing
| your username?
| aurareturn wrote:
| Edit
| llm_trw wrote:
| Subs get bad with more people, to really ruin them you need
| power mods.
| jeffrallen wrote:
| The kids are alright.
| skeptrune wrote:
| Agreed :joy
| talonx wrote:
| No MFA?
| mrweasel wrote:
| I get why they wouldn't offer it. Support nightmare and very
| few people would use it anyway.
|
| Almost everything should have MFA, but it's not a solved
| problem. The overhead is to high and if you force it upon users
| you'll lose many of them.
| talonx wrote:
| Valid point about support but if you enforce it everyone will
| have to use it unconditionally.
|
| Not having MFA opens it up to potential data breaches causing
| havoc.
| mrweasel wrote:
| Absolutely, but not even Facebook enforced MFA... Though
| they do offer it. I just can't imagine the absolute
| nightmare it must be to get Facebook, Google or Microsoft
| to reset your MFA if you lose it. You might as well create
| a new account.
|
| We did a MFA reset for a remote coworker a few weeks ago,
| the about of validation and procedures we had to go through
| was insane, but also the only way to ensure that this is a
| correct reset.
|
| MFA is really really important, but there's no good
| solutions for it yet.
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| It's funny, normally I would say "MFA? for this??" But actually
| I used to curate a MySpace for punk shows/bands in the city I
| lived in. I found every local band's page and added them as
| friends. Reposted flyers for upcoming shows. Posted pictures
| from shows. Had a blog. And one day a girl I broke up with
| found my password (or reset it, not sure), logged in, and
| deleted everything. Years of work down the tubes. So even for a
| MySpace clone, I'd say MFA is pretty handy, in those few cases
| that you need it.
| briandear wrote:
| That combined with less psychotic girlfriends in your case.
| shreddit wrote:
| You can actually enable 2FA in your account settings
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| Home page has a lot of red flags
|
| (Does every comment need a "report comment" hyperlink? I like how
| HN does it, timestamps are permalinks, permalinked page has
| additional options to flag and favorite.)
|
| (edit: timestamps are permalinks, at least)
|
| (Edit edit omg people customize their profile markup like it's
| 2006 again)
| andrewstuart wrote:
| Presumably that is 1M people in the database, I'm curious to know
| how many active users who sign in once a day, once a week.
|
| In essence, how big is the community versus how many people have
| stepped in the front door once.
| marapuru wrote:
| I did a quick check on the Online Users [0] via the Browse
| functionality and found there is a filter for online users.
| Currently it's 9:19 AM in the Netherlands. And there is about 7
| pages filled with Online users. 45 users per page. About 7
| pages filled with users [1].
|
| So that's around 315 Online users in Europe during the day. My
| guess is that during US daytime numbers will be higher. Maybe
| someone in the US can do a check in a few hours? :)
|
| [0] https://spacehey.com/browse?view=online [1]
| https://spacehey.com/browse?page=7&view=online
| andrewstuart wrote:
| That's pretty active, assuming the system somehow pulls them
| all together in some way.
| marapuru wrote:
| Currently (12:05AM Dutch time, 6:05 PM New York, US) there
| are 14 pages of online users. So that's about 700-ish
| 'online users'.
| fhdsgbbcaA wrote:
| How much of the 1M is the bots they found? Hopefully none, but
| that's a big number of humans.
| xyst wrote:
| appreciate the nostalgia.
| pndy wrote:
| It's a total blast from the past - even profiles look exactly the
| same
| jongjong wrote:
| Great, but will the powers-that-be allow it to grow beyond that?
| massimosgrelli wrote:
| It's incredible how this type of revival from the past gained
| such meaningful traction, but, in a way, I fully understand it.
| The online world has become so confusing that many desire a
| simple one. The same feeling drove me to adopt Threads over
| Twitter/X--even if I still use them both.
| apples_oranges wrote:
| The confusion, especially on X, is caused by focusing on what
| advertisers want vs what users want
| blitzar wrote:
| The confusion, especially on X, is caused by focusing on what
| the loudest dumbest users want vs all else.
| lelanthran wrote:
| > The confusion, especially on X, is caused by focusing on
| what the loudest dumbest users want vs all else.
|
| I'm not on X, so I don't know, but IME on _every other
| place on the internet since forever_ is that the loudest,
| dumbest users ARE the advertisers.
|
| An environment that monetarily rewards users pushing their
| message into other peoples faces performs an environmental
| selection to make the advertisers the loudest and dumbest
| users.
| blitzar wrote:
| Shilling scams, cosplaying as an influencer or being a
| bot does not make users an advertiser.
| hk__2 wrote:
| > The confusion, especially on X, is caused by focusing on
| what advertisers want vs what users want
|
| Is it? Last time I heard about it advertisers were going away
| because Musk is focusing on what loudest users want (being
| able to speak loudly) and not what advertisers want
| (moderation)
| alt227 wrote:
| I feel like this is a relatively new situation, whereas the
| parent post describes very well the development of the
| service over the last decade.
| pjc50 wrote:
| No, Twitter was never especially advertiser focused, although
| it did do a bit of "brand" stuff. The destruction of Twitter
| was because as a a "free speech platform" it naturally picked
| up the most aggressive, nastiest, confrontational politics.
| It then algorithmically shoved this in front of the people
| most likely to make retaliatory posts. It is dying because it
| now focuses on what the _owner_ wants, which is a set of
| increasingly fringe right wing lunatics and some guy called
| "catturd2".
|
| Hence getting banned in Brazil. I guarantee that is not an
| outcome any advertiser wanted.
| ineedaj0b wrote:
| I still use X and it's still very good. It's tough rn (as
| it always was) 6 months before the big US election but
| it'll go back to normal. I've been on twitter since 2011
| and it's been the same pattern all these years.
|
| The secret, always is - follow new people in small
| increments and generously unfollow at the slightest
| annoyance. There are still lots of interesting people to
| find!
|
| You'll discover there's people on both sides of political
| issues who can make their points and not be annoying about
| it but these are maybe 1-3% of political people. You can
| also completely ignore politics by being judicious with
| your unfollows.
| globular-toast wrote:
| It's happened time and time again already. Firefox was the
| light version of Mozilla. Then that got bloated. Chrome was the
| light version of Firefox. Now that's bloated. Very few things
| resist bloat over time. This website is an example. People
| sometimes ask for new features, but the only change I can think
| of is pagination for long comment threads, which was driven by
| necessity.
|
| Can't wait for IRC to become popular again. I'll still be
| there, waiting.
| grishka wrote:
| The problem is that all mainstream social media has degenerated
| into entertainment. Staying up to date about the lives of
| people you know irl is seemingly no longer their intended
| purpose.
|
| But people's need to connect in this way -- just updates from
| those who they chose to follow, displayed chronologically, and
| no other content whatsoever -- has not gone anywhere. That's
| why I'm also working on my own project that implements this
| type of social network with ActivityPub support:
| https://github.com/grishka/Smithereen
|
| It's beta quality for now and I'm not promoting it much yet,
| but I hope to bring it to 1.0 by the end of this year.
| z3t4 wrote:
| You should add some screenshots or video to the Readme, I'm
| too lazy to build it just to experience it.
| grishka wrote:
| Yes I should. A proper website that explains what it is and
| contains docs about the client API (that also doesn't exist
| yet) is something I plan to have for 1.0.
|
| In the meantime, here it is live on my server:
| https://friends.grishka.me/
| hyperbrainer wrote:
| How does it make money?
| hk__2 wrote:
| > SpaceHey is a small, independent social network, funded by
| your donations.
|
| https://spacehey.com/support
| high_priest wrote:
| Scrolling through these profiles in the age of text generating
| AI, gives me this uncanny feeling, that what I am reading is just
| random gibberish spat out by a LLM.
|
| I feel like anything I'd post on this platform, would get lost in
| giant noise of generated feces.
|
| Maybe it's just, the unknown world of "artsy" people is what is
| really so off-putting. Maybe I am just getting old and don't
| understand this joy of childish expression anymore. But the
| other, most popular platforms, seem to have more appeal for
| followong reasons: - Facebook works around ads (pages) & groups
| about my (technical) interests, there isn't really a reason for
| AI spam. If any would appearx it is easy to make them disappear.
| You get some ads here & there, but content generating bots are
| often named bots & post content we've agreed to. - Discord gives
| you high walled gardens for every topic you are interested in.
| So, one really needs to get out of their way to get content they
| are not interested in right now. Plus, everything feels like a
| DM, even the public chats are all just quick chats. - X is
| literally a politics platform, so I am not expecting AI content
| from verified account of a diplomat, or media person.
| Fokamul wrote:
| >"FB and there isn't really a reason for AI spam."
|
| Heh good joke. Facebook is full of spam bots, phishing etc.
| Using following template, hack legitimate account, buy ADs for
| your phishing campaign with stolen CCs, phish people, rinse and
| repeat.
|
| And quantity of phishing/spam is so huge, Meta is basically
| unable to fight this.
| boingo wrote:
| You're right about it existing, but FB could definitely fight
| it, removing 90% or more. But sadly it generatesa LOT of
| extra revenue for them (stolen account with stolen CC =
| thousands spent on ads) so they have monetary incentive to
| turn a blind eye and let people get scammed.
| patcon wrote:
| I was very stressed last year and had what felt like a
| dissociative episode: Knowing what was becoming possible with
| LLMs, I one day just couldn't shake the feeling of unreality
| while reading any online spaces, including hacker news. I felt
| like maybe 70% of comments I was reading might not be real.
| Everything, including HN, just seemed so predictable or
| unsurprising
|
| It was an altered state that felt like the leading edge of...
| _something_
| Hendrikto wrote:
| > Everything [...] just seemed so predictable or unsurprising
|
| That are people for you. Most of the time, we are
| uninteresting, predictable, and unoriginal. Especially when
| you got used to some subset, like HN, where there is a bit if
| self reinforcement, through the voting system.
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derealization
| ZacnyLos wrote:
| As long as this site doesn't implement the ActivityPub protocol,
| I don't see any reason for me to move to this site. I don't have
| time to maintain another account, and I want to keep in touch
| with people from Mastodon and Threads.
| layer8 wrote:
| Being its own local place is a feature, IMO.
| rchaud wrote:
| This feels like a very 2010s comment, when it was assumed that
| one _has_ to be on every single social network app, copy
| /pasting the same 'content' into each of them, in order to be
| visible online. All that did was turn the net into a giant
| monoculture of hot takes and too-short posts. Only influencers
| and shovel-sellers need that.
| Heliodex wrote:
| It's been over a year and a half since I was last able to access
| their site at all without seeing just a "403 Forbidden" page.
| rust1npeace wrote:
| I like the UI. I think the old UI of web is pretty cool. I think
| making old UI websites with modern backends would be a great
| design choice.
| IsopropylMalbec wrote:
| That's what I have been trying to do with the B3ta site[0]. It
| is a UK humour site forum that was founded in the very early
| 2000s. I have been looking after it's backend for about five or
| so years, trying to modernise what I can and keep it stable and
| maintainable. I have learnt a lot of respect for people who
| create a site like Spacehey, it quickly spirals in to a job in
| itself.
|
| [0]: https://b3ta.com/
| qingcharles wrote:
| b3ta is awesome. It's had a crucial, but mostly unknown, role
| in Internet culture for two decades.
|
| Thank you for your service :)
| IsopropylMalbec wrote:
| Thanks, I only do it for the childish laughs! It crazy how
| it shaped so much yet only a very specific slice of people
| know it exists.
| holistio wrote:
| This feels like giving a cigarette to heroin addicts saying it
| won't f them up so badly.
| WoodenChair wrote:
| Whatever you think of the site itself, this is prime HN content.
| A kid in high school starts a site that scales to 1,000,000
| registered users while working on it during nights and weekends
| in college. If the founder is on here, what tech stack did you
| use and how long had you been programming before you built it?
| ciaran_lee wrote:
| (not the founder!) Looks like it's built on ColdFusion
| codethief wrote:
| Wait, that still exists / still gets used for new projects
| today? Wow, I'm feeling teleported back to the 2000s.
| 51Cards wrote:
| We have several legacy products still running on CF, all
| running rock solid, but also all ported to Lucee these
| days. I still like CF but I'm an old fogey that started
| with it in the late 90's Allaire days. I often wonder if it
| had been open source from its inception if it would have
| grown faster than PHP. It really was a 'swiss army knife'
| of web development. It's still around here and there but
| mostly in larger corps that don't blink at Adobe's crazy
| licensing fees. Most everyone else in the communities I
| talk to has jumped to Lucee.
| nop_slide wrote:
| Peep this, I stumbled on it randomly last week and also was
| surprised that it still seems to be around and kicking.
| It's basically a Rails for cold fusion lol.
|
| https://www.coldbox.org/
| password4321 wrote:
| "Well actually" a relevant discussion hit the front page
| yesterday:
|
| _Lucee: A light-weight dynamic CFML scripting language for
| the JVM_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41409434 -
| Aug 2024 (37 comments)
| duxup wrote:
| I'm working with it every day. It's pretty capable even
| today. Server side rendering is in!
| lelandfe wrote:
| And it's using Silk icons.
| mikeodds wrote:
| That's strong commitment to sticking with the original tech
| stack if it's not just reskinned the error pages
| mg wrote:
| He uses "vanilla PHP/HTML/MySQL":
|
| https://x.com/AnTheMaker/status/1530851239310802947
| grumple wrote:
| So the same stack as 20+ years ago... good job, kid.
| rchaud wrote:
| vDOM bros hate this one simple trick.
| EGreg wrote:
| The web stack "they" don't want you to know about
| wutangisforever wrote:
| Love this comment
| rambambram wrote:
| I call CSS, HTML, Apache, MySQL and PHP the CHAMP stack for a
| reason. ;)
| Apocryphon wrote:
| But does he run it on Linux?
| riedel wrote:
| Was launched on HN 3yrs ago:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25245740
| herpderperator wrote:
| It's pretty easy to check if a page is a PHP page: just add a
| .php suffix, it'll work most of the time depending on where the
| files are placed in the web directory (also technically
| depending on how the site implements URL rewrite rules):
|
| * https://spacehey.com/index.php
|
| * https://spacehey.com/browse.php
|
| * https://spacehey.com/reset.php
|
| Here you can see that /help/ is a directory on the filesystem,
| as it appends a slash at the end:
|
| * https://spacehey.com/help -> goes to
| https://spacehey.com/help/
|
| and can also be confirmed by trying index.php at that path:
|
| * https://spacehey.com/help/index.php
| brirec wrote:
| That's a fancy fingerprint you've got there
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| An important question is what percent of those accounts are
| bots?
| kaladin_1 wrote:
| I love that it is snappy. I didn't read the article but I spent
| time examining the browser network calls, not much css and js
| downloads. I truly love the feel of it.
|
| Not sure I care about another SM platform but I was very happy to
| see a snappy site on a Monday morning. A good reminder to put
| care in my work this week.
|
| During the weekend, I had to fight the urge not to implement a
| tiny client for interacting with my bank. A company making loads
| of profit but can't fix their online banking platform. Every page
| takes not less than a minute to open. No form of caching user
| details, API calls are made and take same response time not
| matter how many times you navigate to a screen.
| can3p wrote:
| Nice! Personally I think that the more niche social networks we
| have the better it is. The big problem with the mainstream
| networks is that they've evolved from a media to communicate and
| keep in touch with real people into a platform for influencers
| and businesses.
|
| The common complaint I hear about instagram for example is that
| every second connection of yours would try to sell/teach
| something and that's just garbage if all you need is to keep in
| touch with your friends.
|
| The main problems to tackle imo are:
|
| - information propagation speed. This is good in case you want to
| get a quick update but it also a double edged sword, since this
| allows information attacks, trolls etc
|
| - Scale. Anything of big scale becomes a problem by itself since
| it becomes economically viable to target the platform with bots,
| scam etc.
|
| - Incentives. I think we should get to the point where social
| networks are being run by non profits
|
| I've posted the link a couple of time, I'm working on my personal
| take on this problem[0]. My approach is the following:
|
| - Slow down information propagation. Every post is visible to the
| direct connections, to their connections if you allow it, but no
| further
|
| - No way to get a connection request from a stranger. Either you
| specifically allow it, or it's introduced by your direct
| connections
|
| - No federation, since my idea was to have small communities
|
| - Fully open in the sense of data formats, import/export etc.
| Migrating between instances is as easy exporting posts in bulk,
| creating an account on another instance and doing the import. You
| could do the bulk updates the same way
|
| Also, it's all go + htmx just in case anyone else is also tired
| of modern frontend mess. I have a couple of videos on the
| feautures[1], if you like. The design is not great, since I
| wanted to focus on the idea itself
|
| [0]: https://github.com/can3p/pcom
|
| [1]: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLa5K-kCUS-
| FozB6Cw7rJL...
| nunobrito wrote:
| Good post. Have you already took a look into NOSTR?
|
| It permits both private/niche communities and public (global)
| texts.
| can3p wrote:
| Just checked it, thanks for pointing to it. I think it's more
| of a decentralized encrypted messaging platform, and my idea
| was to have a way constrain the visibility of the
| conversations to naturally connected groups of people while
| giving a way to slowly expand the connections rather then
| fighting censorship
|
| More or less like in real life, where you chat a lot with
| your friends, but necessarily with some of their friends you
| don't know that well. In this case you would ask your friends
| for the introduction and that what I've tried to model.
|
| One other feature I've been thinking about was to make the
| moderation automatic in a sense of making signups possible
| only via invitation and putting some weight on it. Basically
| if you invite somebody who's misbehaving on the platform and
| they get flagged, you get penalized as well unless you do it
| first. My theory is that it should make users care about
| their digital surroundings.
| floppydiscen wrote:
| Just curious, without ads, what are the running costs and how are
| they paid for?
| networked wrote:
| First, let me say I admire the successful effort to revive a
| piece of the 2000s web and wish the project the best. Having said
| that, I am of the right age to have been on MySpace, and
| exploring Spacehey gave me a better understanding of why I wasn't
| on MySpace.
|
| The focus of the site is on you and who you are. It's about
| presenting your many overlapping identities with style. Your
| interests and creative output are secondary. Interests serve as
| more of a way to categorize yourself along standard dimensions
| (favorite movies, books, etc.). I don't think I want this! It's
| okay if you do, but it really isn't for me. It seems so optimized
| for _legibility_ , in the late James C. Scott sense. I feel like
| all the CSS in the world won't help if this is how you must
| present yourself. Let me hide in my shell [1] and put forth my
| work. You'll get a better idea of who I am when I write something
| or if we talk.
|
| GeoCities, LiveJournal, DeviantArt, and Tumblr all seemed less
| like this, though I also wasn't active on any of them in their
| heyday. People may think Tumblr is about the user's identity, but
| identity isn't at the core of the site design. The site design is
| about tagged posts. Where you might want to push for legibility
| is on a dating site. I am sure MySpace served as one for quite a
| few people. :-)
|
| [1] I have realized this is a pun because I like pubnixes.
| inhumantsar wrote:
| I suspect the world would be a bit better, or at least a bit
| less toxic, social media kept that primary focus on open
| expressions of identity rather than only the highlights from a
| person's work or art or daily life.
| DiscourseFan wrote:
| my work and art are more important than me
| seanthemon wrote:
| Your work and art are an expression of you. How can you
| express something effectively that you deem unimportant?
| aethertron wrote:
| Not to downplay my personal importance (=make an
| ostentatious display of humility, lol) I can work on art
| and projects to express the importance of other things in
| the world that aren't myself.
| throwaway48540 wrote:
| But it's still _your expression_ , or put another way an
| _expression of you_.
|
| Imagine art critics studying your art - they would be
| asking what was your history, context, what happened to
| you and what was going through your head that made you do
| this. It's always about you, even - maybe especially,
| considering that defeating one's ego is still noteworthy
| - if you don't want it to be about you.
|
| Making art that's not about the artist is reserved to
| LLM... At least for now.
| simplify wrote:
| First, humility is an under-appreciated virtue in today's
| world.
|
| Second, the idea of "your work and art are an expression
| of you" is dangerously self-centered, in that it can
| limit your growth by pushing you conform to acceptance
| over aspiration.
| DiscourseFan wrote:
| They are and at the same time they overcome me, they are
| more than just "me." And that is why the possibility for
| greatness lies in the artwork, and not the person.
| LastTrain wrote:
| Agree - content oriented social media is just advertising.
| dansalvato wrote:
| I wasn't really on MySpace either, but I think it's exactly
| where your complaint lies that drew such a huge demographic.
| When I think MySpace, I think teenagers who are still
| discovering their identity--not seasoned creators with a
| catalog of work to show off.
|
| The masses were given a means to make a page that encapsulated
| their identity and connect it with others, during a time where
| it was suddenly made possible for everyone to express
| themselves, but still difficult to produce meaningful online
| content. I think Tumblr eventually ended up capturing a lot of
| that, but I also feel that there is a sense of pressure around
| having a space where the purpose is to publish content (even if
| just reblogging). It was really meaningful to a lot of people
| that they could have a simple space to express themselves
| through custom mouse cursors, cringey quotes, and autoplaying
| emo music.
|
| Nowadays, this expression of identity for younger audiences
| seems to be driven by being a part of online communities with
| common interests, expressing oneself through content (now that
| it's so easy to make and share). But I think MySpace was there
| for people at the right time.
| JCharante wrote:
| This is my first time hearing of this site but wow I love the
| design! It's so intuitive.
| ryukoposting wrote:
| This site is more usable on my phone than 90+% of "mobile sites."
| It loads instantly, even on a crummy cell connection.
|
| There's no ad divs that load 5 seconds after everything else and
| screw with the layout while you're reading something. There's no
| attempt at "infinite scroll," which universally results in
| stuttery scrolling and a generally sluggish experience. No fake
| modals with infuriatingly small close buttons, heckling you for
| your email address.
|
| The WWW has become stuffy and stale, and this site is truly a
| breath of fresh air.
| hinkley wrote:
| I enabled ad blocking on my iPad primarily because a webcomic I
| read put one of these fucking ads at the top of the comic page,
| and it seems to be "optimized" to load in just as I'm about to
| click the comic image to zoom in on it. I must have clicked
| that ad on accident a hundred times and I hate it. How many
| cookies is that? How many networks now know how much more about
| me. Fuck that. You've gotten a lifetime of ad revenue from me
| boyo and we are done. Everybody is done.
| troymc wrote:
| Neocities has a similar vibe.
|
| https://neocities.org/browse
|
| As its name suggests, it was inspired, in part, by Geocities.
| richardburton wrote:
| Let's be friends: https://spacehey.com/ricburton
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| Excellent achievement!! A good feel of the Internet before
| monetization poisoned it.
|
| > I've stopped myself from working on any new features in the
| past months, but rather improve the existing ones and make
| SpaceHey overall a bit smoother.
|
| Wise. Not everyone is willing to do the hard word of slogging
| behind the scenes with little or no visible changes to users, but
| it makes a huge difference. Kudos.
| asdf6969 wrote:
| I love it. I'd like to make something similar.
|
| > One million people from all over the world have used SpaceHey
| so far - an independently run platform that does not track you
| and does not show you personalized feeds nor ads.
|
| Does anyone here know how it's funded or what this would cost to
| host?
| AlienRobot wrote:
| I love this website's design. Look at those icons. They have
| color!
| OptionOfT wrote:
| Side note: the status page spacehey.com uses is one of those
| websites that'll do ANYTHING to get traffic.
|
| On the blog [0]: 6 Best Self-Hosted Status Pages
| 0. Instatus Instatus isn't self-hosted, but you can use it
| to get a quick & beautiful status page that's free forever.
|
| [0]: https://instatus.com/blog/best-self-hosted-status-pages
|
| Way to go to pollute search results when looking for a self-
| hosted status page.
| herpderperator wrote:
| I'm curious what sort of infrastructure this runs on (hardware-
| wise), as I'd bet it's not some crazy highly-available
| complicated distributed system that is often glorified in tech
| companies and even on here.
| herpderperator wrote:
| I'm curious what sort of infrastructure this runs on (hardware-
| wise), as I'd bet it's not some crazy highly-available
| complicated distributed system that is often glorified in tech
| companies and even on HN. If so, it would be a great example of
| "just go do it" rather than spending weeks and months over-
| engineering for scale that just isn't needed in 99% of cases.
| 76m67m7 wrote:
| If you design it right, I think you can have very little in the
| way of infrastructure. If you are sticking to the old ways, you
| won't need social network graphs or anything. You can more or
| less get away with turning everyone's blog into a static site.
| tshaddox wrote:
| I've seen this posted a few times in the last 24 hours across
| multiple platforms, and every time I've clicked the link the site
| has been down.
|
| And of course this is the only platform applauding the site for
| its underlying infrastructure. :)
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