Ask HN: How to Make Friendster Great?

Hacker News Discussion ↗

Vision: Value over Addiction

  • Some argue “addictive” reinforcement is necessary for growth; others reject this, wanting Friendster to help people maintain relationships rather than hijack attention.
  • Several see doomscrolling and passive consumption as core problems; they suggest emphasizing creation, events, and relationships, not endless feeds.

Real‑World Social Focus & Target Niches

  • Strong support for tools that catalyze offline interactions: meetups, clubs, local “third places,” dinner parties, game nights, run clubs, reading groups, charity, civic engagement.
  • Repeated niche ideas:
    • 30+ / parents who struggle to organize across school, building, family groups.
    • Millennials nostalgic for early Friendster/Facebook.
    • Platonic friendship (especially for men) distinct from dating apps.
  • Many want a better “old Facebook”/Meetup: event organization, birthday reminders, hyper‑private family photo sharing, simple LinkedIn-style professional contacts.

Identity, Bots & Trust

  • Desire for bot‑free, real‑person networks: ID verification, small fees, postcards, invite/karma systems, or pricing models that make bot scaling expensive.
  • Others argue full bot prevention is impossible; better to design so bots and algorithmically pushed junk are irrelevant.
  • Debate over real‑name/verification: some want accountability; others note stalking, swatting, and safety concerns.

Product & UX Principles

  • Popular asks: chronological feeds, easy muting, no/optional algorithms, no infinite follower model, mutual connections only, hard caps on friend counts, limited or no public content.
  • One influential thread proposes: no followers, likes, reposts, or viral sharing; mutual connections only; conversations over audiences, “sparks” over broadcasting. Counterpoints worry this becomes “just texting” or too niche.
  • Interest in strong group/club features, nested comments, profile customization/themes, and mixing “best of” patterns from Reddit, Discord, old Facebook, forums, etc.

Decentralization & Interop

  • Multiple suggestions to build on open protocols (ATProto/Bluesky, ActivityPub, Nostr, Mastodon) so Friendster is a federated or atproto-based app, not a closed silo.

Monetization & Governance

  • Many urge subscription/no‑ad models and treating the network more like a co‑op, community center, or “church” than an ad business.
  • Others claim you can’t fund hosting and dev without either ads or addictiveness; skepticism that a non‑enshittified model can scale beyond a niche.

Safety, Moderation & Politics

  • Ideas: AI for negativity spam detection, curation over top‑down moderation, user-controlled filters, community vetting, banning corporate pages.
  • Concern about spam/porn and nation‑state manipulation; suggestions include clever spam sandboxes.
  • Several criticize any “make ___ great again” language and warn to avoid visible political leanings.

Overall Skepticism

  • Many doubt a reboot can overcome network effects, distrust of social platforms, and the structural incentives that broke previous networks, though they’re curious about a small, well‑designed, nostalgic, niche product.