We believe social networks have significant benefits for people and society. However, the big social networks suffer from major problems: fake accounts, rife advertising, security breaches, poor accountability, unstable pricing, and restricted rights; these problems harm people and society. We want to explore the viability of new social network that aims for more social good. This document is a request for comments.

About this document:

• We welcome comments: use issues or [email protected] or @joel_henderson
• This plan is a work in progress and likely to change as we learn more.
• We edit quotations lightly for content and anonymity.

Ideas that we are exploring - please let us know your comments.

Beginnings:

• Audiences: general public, niches, special interests?
• Comparisons: similarities/differences versus others?
• Communities: how can we encourage people to help?
• Motivations: gamification, extrinsic, intrinsic?
• References: articles, blogs, commentaries, etc.

Implementations:

• Scopes: benefits, features, minimum viable product?
• Names: real names, fake names, no names?
• Feeds: linear, algorithmic, customizable?
• Data: who owns it, who uses it, who controls it?
• Funding: advertisements, donations, subscriptions?
• Schema: data modeling, domain driven design?

Policies:

• Conduct policies: code of conduct, community guidelines, etc.
• Privacy policies: user rights, transparency guidelines, etc.
• Disclosure policies: security reporting, bug tracking, etc.

Possibilities:

• Matrix and Riot: secure decentralized communication and client
• Scuttlebutt: Secure Scuttlebutt (SSB) distributed messaging

Technologies:

• Topologies: centralize, decentralize, distribute, federate?
• Routes: how to reach people, places, items, resources?
• Project management: priorities, expectations, timelines, tools, etc.
• Stacks: languages, frameworks, databases, interfaces, etc.
• Security: spammers, hackers, masqueraders?

Context of this project includes areas such as:

• Bigger social networks: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, Snap.
• Smaller social networks: MeWe, Vero, Ello.
• Distributed social networks: Mastodon, Patchwork, GNU Social.
• Blogs: Wordpress, Medium.
• Static site generators: Hugo, Metalsmith, Jekyll.
• Chat: WhatsApp, WeChat, Telegram, Signal, Discord, LINE, Kakao, Slack.
• Active communities: Reddit, Hacker News.
• Websites that use technology for social good: Wikipedia, Craigslist. Archive.
• Foundations: Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), Free Software Foundation (FSF).
• FLOSS groups: Open Source Initiative (OSI), Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC).
• Social coding sites: GitHub, StackOverflow.
• Social identity: GPG, Keybase.
• Protocols: XMPP, ActivityPub, OTR, Signal.
• Crowdfunding: Patreon, GoFundMe, Kickstarter.