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Comment by helpfulContrib | Hacker News Reader

It is surprisingly easy to set up a phpBB forum or some such thing, on a tiny VM tucked into some obscure pool, set up a nameserver for it, invite a couple of your friends, and start your own community, completely disengaged from any major corporate shenanigans.

Big things can happen with such a virtual machine.

Even better, you could a mailman server, and get yourself a proper mailing-list of like-minded subscribers - for any subject under the sun - chatting away on a regular basis.

Fact is, all it takes to set up a decent social network is to do some social engineering. Even real, meat-space activities can be completely divulged of their toxic mainstream membership in the info-spectacle industrial complex, and replaced with a couple smart services, on a tightly bound VM, somewhere functional.

Big things happen because of the people, not the technology involved...

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Sounds very cool, I am interested in hearing more. I'm not sure how well I follow how one could set this up, basically. What constitutes a "tiny VM tucked into some obscure pool", what are you thinking of here?

And are you saying this could work with a few technically-minded friends, or with anyone? It's hard to imagine it working with anyone. Not to be a negative Nancy or anything, I wish it were possible all the same.

>"tiny VM tucked into some obscure pool", what are you thinking of here?

I imagine the OP meant that you can do a lot of things with just a tiny little VM, included in a pool of larger VM's somewhere, unassuming .. just off to the side of the main budget.

>And are you saying this could work with a few technically-minded friends, or with anyone?

Once you get a phpBB/mailmain system set up, its really easy to send less technically-inclined folks towards the community - but indeed, community-run servers tend to survive longer than those led by a BDFL ..

The barrier to entry for running your own site (something dynamic, as opposed to static hosting) is essentially the same in 2024 as it was in 2004. Gotta get a domain (and keep it registered). Gotta have an SSL cert (letsencrypt makes it better). Raspberry pi can run a lot, but getting your consumer ISP to give you a static IP is still more money. Definitely more VPS options now though. But self hosting your still basically looking at the same experience as 20 years ago, with slightly better options. Ipv6 had this promise that everyone could have mutiple public ips just for themselves, but this hasn't really been realized to its potential for some reason. We never reached that point where average Joe can run their own web presence without relying on some provider or "walled garden" owning them. If your average Joe and you want to share your thoughts online, best option today is a walled garden. How could it be made better? Average Joe can't run mailman, and certainly can't run their own mailserver.

You only need a couple technically competent members to keep things going .. its not that hard .. and in any community there is always a certain percentage of folks who want to learn these things, anyway ..

The point is it can be done, easily enough. We don't need these walled gardens.

It absolutely is not. Google has been downranking 'outdated' formats for years, and there is a dearth of independent communities to draw members from. Discovery is harder now than it has been at any point in the past.

That's fair from the discovery side. I was referring to the "supply side": how do we get more people creating content for the web, where they fully own that content? I used the web a fair amount before Google, and I don't recall having a problem finding content. Maybe my expectations were lower. Maybe my attention span was longer. I remember spending a lot of time in "indexes", browsing by topic. Now I use DDG exclusively. When I accidentally use Google I am increasing shocked by the low quality. I am also asking chatgpt to discover what to search for, which I find really effective. I feel like rewilding the internet will require users to try harder. Which I guess means encouraging users to understand why they should try harder.

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