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735 points mklyons | 2 comments | | HN request time: 0.538s | source

I built this site as a quick test if a time boxed social media experience feels better than an endless one. So far I've just been using it with friends and it feels nice, but it seems like it is time to bring it to a larger audience.

Let me know what you think! It is just based on EST for now, sorry.

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locusofself ◴[] No.43328690[source]
I've definitely considered trying to create a social media website that only allows you to connect with, say 150 people (Dunbar number), and only allows you to make one or two posts per day.
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1. sksksk ◴[] No.43329937[source]
There was a social network called Path, that was this concept, you could only have 50 friends on the network.

It was a really nice app, but they just couldn't make it work.

I have an idea kicking round the back of my head... when I was a teenager I ran a php forum on a shared server. I shared it with my school friends, and we had about 30 regular members on it. It turned into a full blown social network, we'd have our own memes, we'd talk about who's going to the school disco, make jokes etc...

It was really nice, there was no monetization, no ads, the "feed" was chronological, no bots, or spammers.

I also used it to learn programming, reading and modifying the code to add our own features.

My idea is an open source social network. Completely customisable. It wouldn't be designed to scale up past a couple of hundred users. You'd host it yourself (on aws, heroku or similar), and would be completely in control of the instance.

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2. prmoustache ◴[] No.43330928[source]
You can do that already with many open source tools, disabling federation from those using activity pub and blocking new sign ups once the user number has reached you desired limit.

The reality is things do not work like that, even to maintain a small community forum you need a small but constant influx of new users as people regularly just disappear/leave as in any social group.

The real challenge is to let decent human people join without the trolls, bots and scammers.