Show HN: This is what social media could be | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: This is what social media could be

bloom.tendtoyourgarden.xyz

123 pointsterencehf79 comments

I made what I believe is a joyful slow social media. Would love to know what you think!

Need some at a glance way to read the posts.

Manually clicking every flower to see what it says is a nightmare when on a typically social network it takes scrolling dozens of posts before finding something interesting you would read or engage with.

It's really not that bad. Not everything needs to be optimized so one can consume maximum information in minimal time

Yeah but we need to be carefully about separating toxic addictive patterns from just plain ol’ effective ones. Think about the classical newspaper format: they present many partial stories on the front page, hoping to catch your eye with one you care about. Social media still needs to be effective media, IMO

> Social media still needs to be effective media

Why do you say that? What is "effective" media?

I want to know what I can ignore. Or filter on specific things that interest me.

Although, by forcing me to click on everything, that’s a signal to ignore everything. So mission accomplished?

Once you have a way to identify what you ignore, or rather what you are more likely to engage with, it will be optimized by producers.

Effective media allows consumers to listen to what they care about. Hiding information until you've clicked doesn't allow you to decide if you want to hear it or not.

Here’s my distinction that I think is at the heart of this: effective vs addictive

I think something is effective if it helps the user accomplish a task they want to partake in and addictive if it convinces the user to check out other unexpected content. Eg Facebook is addictive because people spend hours scrolling their feed hoping to luck into dopamine, but I would say they’d just be benignly effective if that time was an intentional activity that people just find valuable to be worth it — say, searching for information on out-of-touch loved ones.

There’s infinite edge cases to evaluate and make intuitive calls on from there, but that’s my high level definition. Do you see why I would defend the proposed UX change following it?

>Social media still needs to be effective media, IMO

Social media needs to be more ineffective, because the effectiveness is what renders these environments anti-social. James P. Carse once made the same point about travel. A lot of people nowadays are obsessed with traveling fast and effectively, yet ironically they skip the actual traveling, which is the part between A and B, the exploration you do on the road. People will hop through 20 cities but have not changed at all, or talked to anyone, they've eliminated the experience they were looking for.

I agree with this. A sneak peek feature or some other implementation could definitely make the UX more 'effective'.

i imagine a possible solution to this problem would be to hover over a seed to sneak a peek on desktop and perhaps long pressing on mobile. long press obviously doesn't seem like the best solution but I will give this more thought. Thank you for this! I appreciate you :)

What a cool concept! My friend and I created something similar at a 24 hour hackathon. Users were players who could walk around on a multiplayer 2d map, and you could leave comment blocks in the physical space. The comments were essentially nodes that could reference a specific portion of text from another comment, which reduced the ambiguity of what the responder agreed or disagreed with. Alternative mediums of social media are pretty interesting :)

> Alternative mediums of social media are pretty interesting

Just a heads-up: “media” is already the plural of “medium”. It gets kind of lost in today’s “social media” an (my least favorite[0]) “multimedia”. Each site is a social medium, and only collectively do they get the more-familiar term.

0: “Multimedia” should actually be “multi-medium” Just like when there’s transport that involves more than one mode, its a “multi-mode” transport, and not “multi-modes”. I realize this is a weird nit to pick, but I figured I’d share.

I don't know, I feel like this is a fish vs fishes situation. ie fish is already plural, but fishes is still, like, superplural - different varieties of fish is fishes.

Social media is a collective noun, I feel like if you want to talk about plural distinct kinds of media there's nothing wrong with saying "mediums"

Strong disagree regarding "multimedia". A "book" is the medium, but a passage of text from that book is a piece of "media". This piece of media might end up in an animated illustration that forms part of the "multimedia" presentation.

The difference with "multi-mode transport" is the end result involves more than one type of transport - train and truck. But a "multimedia" presentation ends up as one thing, such as a CD-ROM from the early days of multimedia.

Your platform sounds really interesting! Would love to check it out if it's still up somewhere! Alternative social media are interesting for sure :)

I honestly don't see how this is different than reddit or HN, other than the metaphor. On both sites, articles naturally fall off over time, and the ones that get the most engagement last longer.

How does this differ other than having to click on each thing to see what it says?

It makes you very annoyed at the UX so it prevents social media addiction.

hahaha i love this!

I definitely see where you're coming from. Personally, I find the metaphor interesting insofar as that there isn't a 'linearity' of threads. One of my personal peeves with HN/reddit/discord/forums which I'm inspired by is the 'list-style feed' of it all. It doesn't sit well with me as a design choice, if that makes sense. Another thing is for sure the 'metaphor'. I think that switching the design/psychological context of what you're doing adds a bit of respite from the, in my opinion, brutish psychology of these other conversational platforms. That being said, I don't oppose your interpretation. From a technical standpoint I believe what you're saying is more than fair and possibly stemming from my own need for growing/learning more as a programmer.

I think this can be simply boiled down to: have posts delete themselves if they do not get attention after X time. I don't know if the "garden" or gamified UI is required.

We just need healthier social networking and I think that comes with limits on availability, data being deleted after certain time frames, and so on.

Isn't that just the idea behind forums/imageboards?

Snapchat, Signal, (and now BeReal), etc. We already have social media that has such limits

Yes I too love dead links. Make sure posts go down the memory hole so it's impossible to find anything ever in the future.

Can I create an account without having to provide a birthday? Or an e-mail for that matter? (I know, "we won't be able to send you notifications or reset your password", etc. Let me make that decision.)

I love the look of this place, and would enjoy participating.

It doesn’t have passwords at all. You log in by clicking a link in the email.

hey, I'm glad you like it!

wrt birthdays and emails: date of birth is important to ensure no one under 18 can theoretically access the site. Emails are also just a far more common and straightforward way to index users and also maintain a general sense of 'accountability'.

I don't think these things will change any time soon, apologies!

Well that sucks

I love pure innovation projects. Just find some totally new way to do things that appeals to you.

Well done.

Hey, thanks! :)

If you're only interested in having users who are attracted to the gardening metaphor, it seems like a neat concept, I guess.

Maybe I'm wrong, but I think that's not a big group of people and it will be hard to build the network effects a social media site requires. The graphic design, aesthetic, and interaction metaphor are too opinionated to attract the general public. Personally, I find the cute look and feel of the site off-putting and I can't imagine most of my friends using it. And even if some were, I don't think it would be enough to get me to want to spend time there.

I recognize that my reaction is completely subjective but that's the point. People react subjectively to design. I'm just not interested in tending a garden, in real life or virtually, neither are my wife and most of my friends. (My sister would probably be right in there though. Not sure who she would talk to.)

Why does everything on the web have to be attempting to create an everything service with 1 billion users? Can’t we just have some fun?

+1 haha!

I see where you're coming from.

The design is definitely opinionated.

A long term plan I do have is to have users be able to customise their 'gardens' to whatever their own community's vibe is. Perhaps a 'moonscape', a 'wasteland', etc. They could possibly even design their own primitives to match, moving away from flowers to something else.

I appreciate you taking the time to leave me your thoughts, jp57!

I just clicked on a pixelated flower and saw

  NOXACUSIS RUINED MY LIFE
  I CANNOT SPEAK
  I CANNOT GO OUTSIDE
  I AM IN CONSTANT PAIN
  planted on: 09/10/2023
  time remaining: 68:35:32

Not exactly sure what to make of it, but joyful was not my first reaction.

Really cool UI. Makes me nostalgic for old NES games. I'm not sure this specific approach will catch on, but I'm excited to know that people see the need for a "slow internet" after years of algorithms and A/B testing optimizing people's feeds and attention-spans.

Thank you!

I agree the specific approach is slightly rigid but I'm not specifically big on millions of users, if that makes sense.

The tiniest sliver of chill people would be delightful all the same haha :)

So.. this is just a visual representation of the karma/upvotes/brownie points, what’s new here?! You will still have the same upsides and downsides of the current social media.

I see where you're coming from. However, the slight shift, I think, is that nothing lasts forever or changes about the individual in an 'on-platform' way. You can't discern posts by users who came yesterday from a year ago or someone who has received a lot of responses like 'karma' would. The individual user can, of course, by tracking their 'achievements' progress but the validity or interactive nature of the thought is time-bound and 'in the moment'.

wrt to the upsides and downsides of social media, I think this is trying to provide an alternative to the, I've said this in another reply too, 'list style' design choice of most social media. In my personal opinion, I think it's a bit brutish from a design standpoint.

Along with the 'repository' that you can always go back to that makes positing feel like climbing an infinite mountain as opposed to 'theoretically' moments of potential delight that come and go.

This is definitely just a few of my subjective points about what I think Bloom addresses, but I appreciate your point of view!

The "come and go" and "nothing lasts forever" aspects really really put me off. I have an archival personality. I frequently remember a conversation I had five years ago and look it up to re-read it. (This is also one of the many reasons I dislike Mastodon.) I chance across conversations from ten years ago and reply to them.

My first "social media" was h2g2, and everything since has been a downgrade.

If you're an archivist sort of individual, I imagine this would definitely not be your cup of tea.

For what it's worth though, If you're the poster of the thought, the post along with responses are available to you forever. They just 'die' from the point of view of the collective.

Of course, I understand this doesn't necessarily speak to your specific 'needs' but it is an overlap I kept in because I do resonate with your desired approach.

Different things work for different people. I don't think this is for me, but it is very interesting. I like the look of it, and the ideas behind it are cool.

Please stop sending me news e-mails without a one-click unsubscribe

I read the page but I still don't know anything about the site, or what it does differently.

It lists its features there - I think the minimalism is part of the point :). AFAICT it’s a microblogging platform that ties the concept of a “hot” post to a pretty little flower that grows bigger as people contribute. I don’t see support for forum stuff so I think it’s just that, with a friends list.

In my professional opinion, I think it’s cute. If I had the social energy to send a ton of “hey download this app!” texts, it could be a good way to stimulate some conversation

+1 to this! There's no friends, though, just members of individual gardens. But everything else is spot on haha!

I appreciate you, bbbor! :)

This is really cool. The volume bar doesn’t work on safari for iPhone though. Always the same volume if not muted.

I guess a way to scale this could be different gardens for different topics if the primary one starts getting too crowded?

whoops, will look into why that is and fix! thanks for pointing it out!

wrt to scaling, you're right. The idea is definitely for people/communities to start their own interest-based gardens. The 'community garden' is just meant to be a general common space and a taste of the platform, if anything.

Non-existing keyboard navigation and no scrollbar. No, that's very wrong direction for social media. Garden idea is nice, though.

Well I don't know if I'll register but just scrolling the garden with the sound in the background is really relaxing

hey, that's good enough for me! :)

(I kept the sound in the background for hours :D )

I like the cuteness of this, but it's incredibly low contrast. Can barely tell if there's text.

nice project, reminds me (a lot) of astrobotany on gemini

[1] gemini://astrobotany.mozz.us

[2] https://github.com/michael-lazar/astrobotany

My word, this is fascinating! Thank you so much for sharing!

It's not sending the verification mail

Really neat idea!

thank you! :D

i have to zoom out to see the entire garden

Why does one need to create an account with an email?

Most sites moved in that direction because dealing with customer support requests for folks who forgot their password gets old real quick.

This is what duck.com email addresses are for, imho.

that needs an extension in the browser. why?

To minimize abuse. It’s a nominal barrier to entry.

Nah

Interesting idea. I've actually seen similar things over the years, even as early as 2006. Unfortunately these cute little kinds of things usually generate a bit of buzz but then die out. Hope it grows well for you though.

PS: not a fan of the clickbaity title. If it wasn't a Show HN I would have ignored it. A better title might be just what you put in the description, "A joyful slow social media", for example.

I agree with you, the title was definitely be one of my lesser moments. Apologies if it annoyed you! You're title suggestion was what it should have been. Will do better going forward!

Also, I get where you're coming from about the flash-and-fizzle nature of these kinds of projects. I do hope it grows, too. Thank you so much!

Reduce the friction for people to try it out. It looks like it could be interesting, but the account creation - in particular asking for my email - to do anything is enough friction that I would rather just close the window and never revisit.

A lot of sites create "buzz" with an invite-only period. That got me wondering if there's a way you could limit enrollments to groups of people -- maybe a minimum of four? -- and have them all choose a common start time for when their accounts will first go live.

Then send out the invitations at the same time, so they all log on at the same time, so there's conversations and interaction for everybody from the get-go...

In terms of 'onboarding' or 'going-to-market', this approach was something I had considered. However, the hassle along some of my prior experiences in similar user workflows did deter me from following through.

If putting in an email to be able to post on a website is too much friction for you I dunno what to tell you.

I'm not creating an account to view discussions.

So, like FarmVille then.

"Please check your email"

No!

You lost me at email. If you can't even get past requiring email, then I have to assume your other ideas are just as unimaginative and unoriginal.

Death to email!

You may not be very good at coming to conclusions based on presented information

when grand claims are made such as what social media could be, I expect attention to fundamental details. Madtodon and lemmy are failing for similar reasons, they polish and reimagine existing stuff and mistake that for originality. You can succeed in 2023 without asking users email. It is more accurate to title it "this improvement of social media is nice". ,"could be" implies a holistic imagination/disruption.

But I accept your downvotes nonetheless since in my anti-email rant, I was unfair to the OP.

I agree with you, my titling was unintentionally misleading from a fair few points of view and I apologize.

I wasn't specifically trying to solve for 'digital identity' thus email wasn't something I was problematizing with this go and my 'improvements' were more to do with design context and other interactivity but I get where you're coming from, badrabbit.

I will do better!

Email for logins will hopefully disappear soon

You have nothing to apologize for and you're doing great.

I didn't need a valid email to signup for HN,Reddit or even matrix.org in its infancy. That's where I'm coming from. There are better anti-fraud measures and it should be up to the user if they want a way to reset their account. Ideally, you'll have 2FA and the non-email 2FA recovery will also reset the password (such as one time codes you write down, or prove multiple external identity control such as a phone number and creditcard, or ID photo and phone number).

But as I admitted, I shat on your work because I ran into this pet-peeve. So, it is I who should apologize (and I do apologize).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com