[HN Gopher] The Social Smolnet
___________________________________________________________________
The Social Smolnet
Author : aebtebeten
Score : 99 points
Date : 2026-03-20 13:02 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (ploum.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (ploum.net)
| bovermyer wrote:
| OK, I love that. I'm going to try it out right now.
| mentalgear wrote:
| > with blogs and email, we already had a decentralized social
| network
|
| Yes, coupled with a good WebFeeds solution and we are practically
| there !
| TimFogarty wrote:
| > The biggest lesson I take is that "social networks" are not
| about protocols but about how we use the existing infrastructure.
|
| It's also not about scale and breadth. Focused social networks
| around niches can be a breath of fresh air compared to the social
| behemoths. I joined a couple of more targeted social networks
| recently and it seems like there's a far more positive community
| when people have a shared interest. Fable[1] has a social network
| for reading and that has a generally positive and cosy vibe.
| Bryan Johnson's Don't Die[2] app is focused on health and
| longevity and it has a supportive atmosphere. You'd think that
| something like Reddit with its many niche subreddits would be
| able to replicate this. But it seems like Reddit has its own tone
| that permeates everywhere.
|
| It seems like social networks that stay small and focused can
| maintain a fun and productive environment that degrades over time
| in larger networks.
|
| [1] https://fable.co/
|
| [2] https://dontdieapp.com/
| SoftTalker wrote:
| > there's a far more positive community when people have a
| shared interest
|
| Even old fashioned web forums and email listservs are still
| thriving in some niches and work this way.
|
| I think reddit fails here because it's too frictionless.
| Requiring a little bit of intentional action to join or
| subscribe keeps out a surprising amount of drive-by trolls.
|
| HN is pretty big now and has its share of trolls and bots but
| because it doesn't use social media accounts it's not nearly as
| bad as Facebook or Reddit.
| ploum wrote:
| is it because I was young? I still believe phpbb forums were
| the best!
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| > It seems like social networks that stay small and focused can
| maintain a fun and productive environment that degrades over
| time in larger networks
|
| I would love to find some good social networks for myself but
| discovering them is hard and I don't have the free time to dig
| like I used to to find the hidden gems
| rambambram wrote:
| Been saying this for years. The www is already a social network.
| homeonthemtn wrote:
| Just bring back bulletin boards with mods
| ploum wrote:
| try gemini://bbs.geminispace.org
| janalsncm wrote:
| > with blogs and email, we already had a decentralized social
| network
|
| I've been using this social network lately. As someone whose
| inbox is mainly a dumping ground for receipts and confirmation
| emails, it feels kind of transgressive to write to and receive
| emails from a human being.
|
| I have a blog and I thought about adding a comment section for
| substantive discussion. But that's way more complexity, and
| lowers the bar for useless comments. Instead, I let other
| platforms handle it. And if people want to email me directly,
| they can and have.
| bttmchnd wrote:
| This idea is fascinatingly similar to Dokieli[1], an obscure and
| barely adopted social frontend previously for ActivityPub
| protocol, and now for Solid[2]. It's pretty much the same, sans
| Email: you browse the Web, and if you want interact with some
| site, you launch Dokieli interface to comment, share, make
| annotations etc.
|
| [1] https://dokie.li [2] https://solidproject.org/
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2026-03-20 23:00 UTC)