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Comment by TameAntelope | Hacker News Reader

I gotta keep asking the obvious question: Why won't someone else build a Twitter?

Not a "free speech" Twitter, not a "better" Twitter, just... figuratively rebranded Twitter. Same concept, maybe different implementation details, some modest innovations, but give the people who want to leave a place to go.

The only answer I've ever gotten (that isn't solvable by being good at software engineering) is, "network effects!" but... now is the moment, if ever there was a moment, where the network is most fragile on Twitter.

Give people a place to go for a "Twitter Classic" experience, before the rudeness and hate get re-platformed!

Whoever does this, I feel confident in saying, will be a millionaire. I dunno if there are any more "Social Media" billionaires left, but millionaire? That feels very achievable!

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If it's such a sure investment, why not do it yourself? You can fork Mastadon[1] and get the thing deployed this afternoon!

The "network effect" isn't some little thing you can easily solve. Like saying "building rockets is easy, the designs are all there, just solve the gravity problem".

[1] https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon

I would absolutely do this myself if I had not already committed to an existing startup.

Also, I don't think you quite get what I mean if you think Mastadon is what I'm talking about.

For example, can I run ads across all of Mastadon?

There have already been a lot of alternate Twitters built, including the federated Mastodon network. If you haven't heard of them, why not? That answers the question.

For any Twitter competitor to work, they need a hook to get people to actually use it instead of Twitter. It's hard to think of a really good one. People who feel they have been too censored on Twitter are a possible source, but then the people who were enthusiastic about censoring them go on the attack at any new site, making them have to address a lot of hard problems earlier than otherwise.

Not to mention being able to get top-tier software engineers to work there instead of Twitter or any other company.

The hook is, "Not owned by Elon Musk."

A couple people have replied with the generic, "Network Effects are hard!" reply, but y'all seem to have ignored my whole point; Twitter's "Network Effect" is vulnerable right now. They could be a Digg looking for a Reddit, but nobody's trying to build a Reddit for some reason.

Also, you definitely don't need "top-tier" engineers to build a Twitter clone. There are hard problems involved in running a site at Twitter scale, and Twitter definitely needs and (currently, anyway) has top-tier engineers, but even 1/100th of Twitter scale would make you a millionaire.

Alternatively, you could just hire all of the engineers who want to leave Twitter because Elon runs it now.

Just take the parts of Twitter that don't fit with Elon's vision (but might be the parts that make Twitter valuable), build a new company out of them, and make a bunch of money. I just see an opportunity here, is what I'm trying to say.

I'm not sure if "Not owned by Elon Musk" is a sufficient hook to get people to sign up. I mean that literally - it might be, or it might not be. But seeing as how technically Elon Musk doesn't actually own Twitter yet and this whole brouhaha only seems to have gotten serious a week or so ago, I'd say give it some time. Surely, no matter how good or bad Musk's ownership of Twitter turns out to go, somebody will start yet another alternate Twitter with that hook, and we'll all get to see if it works or not.

Give people a place to go for a "Twitter Classic" experience, before the rudeness and hate get re-platformed!

...and before the copious amounts of illegal content. One other aspect that is briefly touched on in the article and other related writings (of which I cannot recall any specifically, unfortunately) is the virtue that is required of a Twitter user on the platform.

Twitter has a difficult time dealing with the sheer volume of illegal content popping up on the site (and I mean illegal, very immoral, not just something that can be handwaved as opinion - I mean things like e.g. straight up CSAM [0]) and I suspect that even if you solve the social network problems (and you have to solve that and try and get everyone over onto the platform together as whole social units, otherwise you have nothing but a void that people shout into), any competitor will eventually bleed itself dry with its "free" model due to the amount of money being thrown towards trying to close the floodgates, or at least stymying the tide of, incoming illegal content.

(Interestingly, I suspect this is true of any other social media platform as well, and I think once you try and factor in the costs and technological innovations needed to try and stop the problem, it becomes a truly impossible task to try and displace any existing giant at their current financial states.)

I do disagree on the millionaire bit, though - perhaps billionaire would be more apt for one to solve all the issues that social media can encounter given the kinds of valuations these platforms pull.

[0] https://endsexualexploitation.org/twitter/

Here you go https://truthsocial.com/

If Trump is on a social network, yet never posts, does it exist?

> not a "better" Twitter, just... figuratively rebranded Twitter. Same concept, maybe different implementation details,

Isn't that what Yo, Secret, and all those other long-dead flashes in the pan were? 2014 VC decks were probably full of pitches for the next big thing in social media.

I wouldn’t really build one because I’m not sure how Twitter makes money. Ads? Selling data access (firehouse)? Are any of those things actually sustainable?

Twitter feels less like a social network and more like just a tool.

Yes, they sell ads. There is no other way to make money in B2C software because the users themselves don't use it to make money.

A social network, like most websites, is just a tool.

Setting aside all the spicy hot takes about "discourse", politics, free speech, censorship, addiction mind control, etc, most of which is overblown, A social network is just a tool to allow people to form persistent connections with each other and communicate, or consume curated content.

Some days, you have to wonder where we’d be if Pownce actually won out against Twitter back in the day. That Twitter won out ended up being more consequential than anyone could have expected.

After trying out all of the alternative Twitters for conservatives, my assumption is that it must take a lot more work than most of us think it will to build a polished experience that someone wants to use. Every alternative I've used has sucked in comparison.

? Twitter is a community, not an app.

To think of it as 'tech' and not the set of relations between the people is to misunderstand it.

Making that community again would be really hard.

There would have to be a 'very strong impetus' for it.

Trump is a very popular figure, and it's feasible he could be the basis for a new kind of social network, but as we saw with Parler and 'Truth Social' - he'll likely fail for obvious reasons. (And thankfully so).

And FYI - it's not at all obvious what would make a 'better Twitter'. Just adjusting the alg a bit, allowing 'more' expression, being better at spam - none of that would be enough for a 'new entrant' to make any progress.

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