Raya and the Promise of Private Social Media | Hacker News Reader

Raya and the Promise of Private Social Media

newyorker.com

47 pointsmitchbob23 comments

>"Raya’s increased emphasis on work might be less a pivot than a reflection of how, for a millennial clientele, love, careers, networking, and identity formation often flow seamlessly together. Erotic capital intermingles with economic capital. Two perfectly curated lives frictionlessly intersect. “In the age of everybody having a personal brand, Raya’s the place where people compare personal brands,”

this sounds more like the premise for a dystopian Netflix show than it sounds like a social network

Honestly I would recommend, if people feel isolated, visit a chess-club. It's a good game for everyone, it's having a renaissance, you meet people from all ages, looks, and walks of life (instead of just the millennial petite bourgeoisie) and you're probably not going to run into a lot of influencer types.

> this sounds more like the premise for a dystopian Netflix show than it sounds like a social network

"'Our decision is final,' the fateful message to rule breakers reads." When I read that I imagined it spoken by a man in a red hooded sweatsuit and black fencing mask with a PlayStation symbol on it -- and followed by a burst of machine gun fire.

Yet Affleck was allowed to remain

Affleck, in this metaphor, is one of the VIPs who get to enjoy the entertainment of the game without risking anything.

He also transferred content outside of the network, while contacting someone who did not wish to be contacted.

Everything about this app is about as dystopian and stupid as you’d expect. It’s run by a former Facebook exec who was part of the group that proudly got rich “gamifying” and ruining everyone’s lives with what late-2000s Facebook was obsessed with (which, as we all know, they are now unsuccessfully attempting to scrub from memory). I can’t understand why someone who made millions creating mental cancer decides to double-down on the damage he inflicts on society.

There will be a list of “distinguished” Facebook alumni one day, as a watch list for people who cannot be trusted to use their intelligence and privilege for anything beyond personal gain. Some people never learn.

> A private social-media platform like Raya can certainly be safer. It is also by nature less open and more stratified than we’ve come to expect social networks to be.

This matches well with lots of the smaller social networks that have enthusiastic memberships, SSB[1] is one of the first that comes to mind. With a small membership, you get a community of like-minded people--but to keep membership small you either need to be a niche (like SSB) that doesn't (yet?) have broad interest from the greater population, or you need to create imposed exclusivity like Raya does.

However- the game could change if you're not trying to provide a layer of discovery. If "discovery" means going out into the world and meeting new people out-of-band, then your existing group of friends and family can provide the same experience of an exclusive network. That's the tack I propose with open-source Haven[2]: self-host, and grant access to others instead of letting them search and request access.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secure_Scuttlebutt

[2]: https://havenweb.org

I'm glad this exists. Powerful people need to understand how badly social media sucks, and there's no better way to teach them that lesson than pitting them against each other in an app where they're exclusively locked with their contemporaries. I can't imagine any of the milquetoast characters they name-dropped having anything interesting to say, so frankly: let 'em have it!

In the meantime, I think the rest of the world should be switching to more privatized social media. Platforms like Mastodon, Pleroma, Misskey and the all-uniting ActivityPub standard have created a frankly fantastic infrastructure for keeping people connected. I've been greatly enjoying the pull-first style of microblogging it offers, and it greatly alleviates the doomscrolling of Twitter or Facebook. Want to check in on your friends? 30 seconds of scrolling through your Mastodon feed will get you up to date. Twitter took me a few minutes to even catch my bearings, and after that I'd have to sift through the promotions and completely unrelated content to get to the stuff I cared about.

Seems like Discord is the real private social media out there.

The problem is finding interesting people to follow. Do you have any suggestions for Mastodon?

It all starts with finding a good instance. Instances are usually designed to collect like-minded people, which makes for more interesting discussion (eg. you wouldn't want BTS fans to interrupt a cybersecurity thread). You can still chat outside these bubbles (hence the federation), but the main interaction loop is stronger on your local instance.

I'd recommend https://instances.social/ to find a good starting group. There's quite a few technology/computer science instances out there, many of which are quite active.

That’s a standard, generic recommendation, but it hardly compares to recommending a blog you really like.

It would be like saying there are lots of good blogs on Substack, or lots of good books in the library. It’s true but not helpful.

What do you like?

> admission rate is in the single digits

> expects to receive its millionth application by the end of 2021

> subscription fee of $7.99 per month (now $9.99)

To still turn a profit after paying 40 staff members and all the costs of maintaining and developing an app, this thing would need at least 50% of its registered users to be active. I really doubt this is possible for a dating app. Curious what other revenue streams they might have.

It's not a typical dating app though... I don't know if it's still true but supposedly it had 6-12 month subscriptions to start. It's also mostly used by celebrities and people adjacent to celebrities. For those folks - it probably pays for itself and they're not hurting over $10/month. It's also highly selective and so if you get selected then of course you'll pay - it's a relatively cheap status symbol. There are probably a lot of networking opportunities on it beyond just the dating aspect. A lot of other industries are very dependent on "who you know" for anything to happen.

I'd gladly be a longer term subscriber if there was an app that A) connected me to people (most dating apps just don't do this to start for most straight men) and B) connected me to people who were what I'm looking for (very few people on dating apps I look at and feel drawn to). As it stands - all the dating apps right now are extremely disappointing. The filters I would like in an app just don't exist. I would legitimately pay $100+/month if I knew the apps would lead to dates with people I was interested in or if I would be able to connect with likeminded individuals that lead to real world interactions.

If I was a celebrity or adjacent to celebrity stuff - I would gladly be on an app like Raya because it sounds like you could at least filter out the overwhelming majority of people who you're not gonna line up with.

You’re right. Even if they don’t use it these folks probably don’t even remember they have recurring subscription.

I don’t think what you’re saying you want in the second paragraph is quite like Raya. A small and exclusive platform would filter out a lot of noise, but it would also exclude a lot of people like-minded to you. What you described sounds like a LinkedIn with much more intelligent recommendation/matching algorithms.

> I don’t think what you’re saying you want in the second paragraph is quite like Raya. A small and exclusive platform would filter out a lot of noise, but it would also exclude a lot of people like-minded to you. What you described sounds like a LinkedIn with much more intelligent recommendation/matching algorithms.

I do think I want something similar to Raya. Something where there's a hard filter that you have to pass. Someone has to look at you, your profile, etc. As it is - current online dating has no review mechanism or hard filter for people to pass. I really do want something where there's just a more curated pool with higher quality candidates.

I would bet people are staying on over 50% given the acceptance rate and self selection there, but that's 12M in revenue even at 100% active paying and 10% acceptance rate.

That's 200K per employee - server costs. Seems like they're likely near break even, but even if not, they aren't burning a ton is my bet. VC's would be head over heels for that audience for even just a whiff of influence or monetization being dangled in the future.

What sort of monetization do you imagine? From my perspective, ads probably won’t work well because it would ruin the premium feel of the platform. Shady paid-for influences (such as making something appear up high in some listing without being labeled as an ad) might work, but if they’re caught the user base would not be happy.

I don't imagine any would work that I can think of, but I imagine some VC's will bite at some idea, hence the very careful language there on the original post :)

From what I know is that it was a membership of the beautiful and famous.

Seems like a good profitable niche and a lifestyle business.

But by definition they can not scale as they have to be exclusive to maintain existing members and avoid dilution of that aspect.

https://archive.ph/urLmR

It uses Instagram to “verify identity”.

So is this Just another Facebook territory in disguise?

I remember this being on Billions.

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