Forget Twitter alternatives. How about a social network that mirrors real world social interactions? Only adding people you actually know. Keeping conversations private. Encryption to prevent censorship. What is the social media equivalent of signal?
This is already how people use social media like Instagram and features like Stories only viewable to your list of special friends. It’s pretty old hat by now.
I use Facebook and Stories every day (Stories seem lame but are too useful for, say, meeting women, to dismiss) but if you went to my profile you’d think I haven’t used Facebook in seven years.
In case you don’t know, the Stories system replicated on every social media platform including Youtube and Twitter most recently lets you post ephemeral images/video/text and anyone who responds to it is sending a private 1:1 message.
It’s a surprisingly healthy direction away from the awful default public posts with public comments and likes. It’s liberating to post stuff as a story where nobody can know if 0 or 100 of your friends engaged with it.
Just throwing this out there since most HNers aren’t really hip with how social media is used these days.
In others words, people are on Twitter quibbling in public because, like HN arguments, we actually like doing it. Not because there aren’t alternatives.
Are you willing to pay for such a service? More importantly, are you willing and able to convince enough of your network to pay for it?
Otherwise, any system will asymptotically look like Twitter/Blah. You could very well use your group chat feature on regular cell phone as a start (takes care of the payment aspect). But soon you or your friends will want feature X. So, cough up more $$ again.
Another option is to cultivate real life friends/family that you can hang out with, chat, share photos in the privacy of your home/blah (wait till covid passes please).
This is what Google thought Google+ would be, but users were more about connecting to anyone and everyone and it became too messy for Google to want to deal with.
G+ was glorious in the beginning days. With no qualms it was the best social network I've experienced yet. IMO, what killed it was Google requiring the real names - which I still believe was a good idea - but then the death knell was when they waffled on that. If they would have stood firm on the real names policy, I'm convinced they would still be here today and there is a very good chance they would have surpassed both Facebook and Twitter.
