I came across the idea of creating a social network whose purpose it is to connect you with people in your area/neighbourhood. Such a network would also be managed by someone in your neighbourhood and would be aimed at creating in-person connections, making people meet and come together.
Such a network is the perfect opposite of currently widespread “social” network platforms, which mostly aim to engage users online as much as possible, ultimately at the cost of direct interactions. These networks are also centrally controlled and usually come with algorithms that steer conversation into inflammatory directions.
Even the open source and federated alternatives to these platforms often only change the centralised and closed part but still maintain most of the attention-taking design that I don’t see as ideal.
In my vision of a local network (as I will call it for this post), people should be able to find others nearby with similar interests and be supported in meeting up for activities, sharing/exchanging goods or services and more. Creating something like this is tricky, it needs to be very useful and shouldn’t become a time sink of its own, however it should still be attractive enough for people to actually want to use it.
Do you have any thoughts or suggestions what are some helpful and necessary features or aspects to keep in mind, and perhaps even more critically, what should not be present?
Looking forward to your thoughts!
Bonus ideas:
- Such local networks could still federate, so neighbourhood networks could federate on some level to connect larger areas in a city. What should federate, and how far?
- Local networks can also be hosted on non-internet networks like Freifunk since they are geographically based in a small area. This can also improve resilience of such networks in catastrophic situations.
- Is there a good way that geographically more spread-out groups of activists, perhaps even in different countries, could make use of such networks? (How) Can this be compatible with keeping it simultaneously locally rooted and local-first?
In my opinion, the biggest problems with local/online muddling are safety and privacy. How do you meet a new local person, and know they are legit? Not trying to scam you or rape you?
Nextdoor was in a position to solve this problem by requiring a postcard, received at your address, to sign up. But they mostly squandered the network by trying to be feed and ad-based.
I envision a new type of network whose foundation is identity. Your face is your username to login. Using facial recognition, a cartoon avatar is made, customizable of course. A single user can create multiple “faces” to interact: professional, personal/hobby, dating, buy/sell, or anonymous (shitposting, gossip, complaints, etc). But this would be a different kind of anonymous. Your identity is protected but you still have a reputation. The whole network should have peer-based reputation for users, both ratings and even written reviews of in-person interactions. When somebody posts something racist or hurtful, or is flaky about a sale, or whatever their reputation can be harmed. Reputation for one face affects others to an extent, so you can’t be an anonymous troll with one face while being helpful with another and expect to have a good reputation. And a persons good reputation impacts how much their opinion can damage others reputation. In this system trolls and haters will just be silenced and shadow banned by having a low reputation, they may think they’re interacting but nobody will see their comments or posts, and their downvotes don’t matter. With that somewhat complex foundation figured out, we now have a way to interact with others online that allows for control, and safer reveal of true identity.
Another thing I’m surprised doesn’t exist is a simple marketplace with escrow. Basically if I’m selling something, to buy it the buyer puts up an offer with escrow. I accept the offer and I can see that the money is there. The buyer and seller meet and exchange the goods. The buyer releases the money in escrow, and the ad for the item is removed. This could possibly reduce the number of people asking “do you still have it?”. For larger items like motor vehicles, the escrow could be like 20% or something to show good faith to purchase.
Another thing I’d like, if peers can be trusted with a reputation system, is a kind of lending library. Video games, movies, music and tools for example aren’t needed full time. It would be cool to have a way to post items available for lending, with the system tracking who has borrowed what, when it’s due back, and of course reputation so that only good lenders and borrowers are participating. Need a tile saw for a backsplash, or a line trimmer, or chainsaw? Want to read a new book? Real local friendships can be formed just by sharing. But it all starts with a digital trust system.
Online reputations sound nice in theory, but quickly fall apart in practice. It is essentially a social credit system Like China uses to control people. In a system like what you’re describing, people would probably ding someone that they simply didn’t agree with. That means someone with a controversial but perhaps well thought out and valid take would be booted. Thus, intelligent debates and discussions take a hit and then you have the Echo chamber of Reddit.
https://www.wired.com/story/china-social-credit-system-explained/
It’s a bit different when the credit rating is issued by the government. Community requires trust, and trust requires accountability. Maybe downvotes of another user also hurt the rating of the person doing the down voting. It’s not impossible but it would require some careful thought and experimentation. If it was easy somebody would have done it already.
Yeah, I’m with you that it’s tough to figure out. Good points, and I didn’t offer a solution because I don’t have one! Just… gah, I left reddit because the echo chamber/hive mind is destructive to intelligent conversation.