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Comment by jokoon | Hacker News Reader

Make a social network that is centered around people who live in a 1 kilometer radius

Make them interact and do things, generally they will be less toxic because it will reduce their online disinhibition effect.

Make them have meals, meet, walk at the park, whatever.

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I have considered a "physical social network". Standing on my usual street corner and holding a sign that directs strangers to join me and whoever else shows up, for a casual chat at the local coffee place at a specific time, with a few topics for conversation listed on the sign up front. If anyone has ideas for those topics, let me know, I'm likely to do it this Sunday.

you laugh, but bringing people back to reality might require using screens to do it

Actually I am open to the idea of an (minimalistic, non-profit) app helping solve this. What kind of app, I'm not sure, but I'm open to all ideas, including technology based ones.

I only said that because you reminded me of an idea I had, for a social experiment that tries to bring some "social media" elements into an in-person setting, to see what happens. (I do wish I could afford a camera and someone to man it, I've been told several times that I'd go viral.)

When NextDoor first came around, I recall walking down the street to help a lady move her couch down to the ground floor. She then gave me some cookies she'd baked. Fun! The notifications it sends me these days are less enjoyable so I send them to spam because unsubscribing doesn't seem to reliably work for me.

> Make a social network that is centered around people who live in a 1 kilometer radius…

Don't know if they still do, but Nextdoor required address verification via a postcard early on. I was pretty shocked at what some people in my area would post under their real names and locations.

(And well outside the realm of political nonsense. Someone posted a pic of their toddler's first poop in the potty.)

I think the power of shame has reduced significantly in recent years.

I think shame is still powerful, but in the context of Nextdoor we just don't see our neighbors very often anymore. In many cases they might as well be random people on the other side of the country. I live in a small town and I'm quite friendly with my neighbors, but I still see and talk to them relatively rarely.

Civility and sense of decorum have greatly diminished in the past few decades especially online.

When you have a toddler it's very surprising what becomes normal. We're potty-training our son and I sometimes get texts from my spouse with a picture of a poop in a bad spot and then just the word "help."

I mean, we did that, too. But there's a bit of a gulf between a text to the spouse and posting it for 20k people you run into regularly to see.

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