You can post your HN related stuff hashtagged #hackernews and others might follow.
That being said - IMHO if you want a social network or community, don’t call it a “communal product”. Products are for making money and whatnot.
I mean this question is way too big for this sort of thread. I would say that simply calling it a “product” already reveals a certain ideological bias to begin with.
It’s like the difference between a city square and a shopping mall as a place for a society or community.
What is unique about this place is that many people here are more than qualified to build pretty much anything. So, it would be safe to assume that if we wanted something different, we would probably just build it.
Also, "product" is a semantic argument. Product also means sum. Every application is a product of technology.
The opinion I’m expressing here is that excessively seeing things in that way when venturing out to do them doesn’t make inspire trust.
Running a world-scale social network requires immense computing power. Those bills have to be paid, and there's not going to be much difference between "break-even-driven" and "profit-driven" at that scale.
Appreciate Mastodon comes to mind here.
I disagree with the second part regarding product not being the right term. Take Mastodon as an example: Mastodon is a non-profit LLC and an FOSS software but its community as well as the LLC clearly _produce_ something users are using.
Because I’m not saying that it’s not a product. I’m saying that IMHO calling/thinking of something as a product upfront (as OP did) isn’t a good way to drive interest in it as a community.