I agree with this. I think current social-network websites highlight the most extreme "news", posts and articles - which they benefit from, and therefore encourage, it's a vicious circle. It doesn't end well for the users, just for the owners.
That's what drove me to create an experiment: could you run a genuinely data-minimal social site ? Are the algorithms necessary for the success of such a site, or is it just corporate greed made manifest ?
Enter blewit.uk [1], because I think they all did. It's not ready yet (I'll do a proper announcement when it is, with a technical dive and so on, some of that is genuinely interesting). I'm also still waiting for regulatory and legal clearances before I launch (criminal penalties for getting it wrong are such a downer [grin])
Blewit:
- only uses a username and a password (and which country you're connecting from for regulatory reasons, the UK has higher standards of regulation for primarily-UK-user websites). We don't know your creed, colour, clothing preference, whether you're bald, or whatever. We don't even take an email address, and we don't preserve your IP (it's held in memory, for rate-limiting purposes, but that's it)
- doesn't have any algorithms to influence post/comment presentation. At all.
- doesn't sell your data (we don't have any to sell)
- doesn't track you. We set 1 cookie (sid) which is an ephemeral session cookie to
keep you logged in, so your preferences apply
- has no advertising network integration. In fact, no advertising at all. Blewit is going to be self-funded via Patreon and/or Kickstarter.
- has no analytics, no tracking pixels, no third-party scripts.
Apart from all that, I've taken the liberty of improving things a little on what I thought reddit always lacked :)
When I first set up a website, you had to email CERN to get put on the "websites in the world" list. These days there's a lot more compliance for a user-to-user website, don't I know it, but blewit is what social networking sites would have looked like back in the day when the web was still a hope, not a reality. A time before the ad-networks and the tech billionaires screwed it up so badly. It'll be interesting to see if something like this can survive in the modern world :)
Looking to launch in 4-6 weeks, depending on the things not under my control.
I agree with this. I think current social-network websites highlight the most extreme "news", posts and articles - which they benefit from, and therefore encourage, it's a vicious circle. It doesn't end well for the users, just for the owners.
That's what drove me to create an experiment: could you run a genuinely data-minimal social site ? Are the algorithms necessary for the success of such a site, or is it just corporate greed made manifest ?
Enter blewit.uk [1], because I think they all did. It's not ready yet (I'll do a proper announcement when it is, with a technical dive and so on, some of that is genuinely interesting). I'm also still waiting for regulatory and legal clearances before I launch (criminal penalties for getting it wrong are such a downer [grin])
Blewit:
- only uses a username and a password (and which country you're connecting from for regulatory reasons, the UK has higher standards of regulation for primarily-UK-user websites). We don't know your creed, colour, clothing preference, whether you're bald, or whatever. We don't even take an email address, and we don't preserve your IP (it's held in memory, for rate-limiting purposes, but that's it)
- doesn't have any algorithms to influence post/comment presentation. At all.
- doesn't sell your data (we don't have any to sell)
- doesn't track you. We set 1 cookie (sid) which is an ephemeral session cookie to keep you logged in, so your preferences apply
- has no advertising network integration. In fact, no advertising at all. Blewit is going to be self-funded via Patreon and/or Kickstarter.
- has no analytics, no tracking pixels, no third-party scripts.
Apart from all that, I've taken the liberty of improving things a little on what I thought reddit always lacked :)
When I first set up a website, you had to email CERN to get put on the "websites in the world" list. These days there's a lot more compliance for a user-to-user website, don't I know it, but blewit is what social networking sites would have looked like back in the day when the web was still a hope, not a reality. A time before the ad-networks and the tech billionaires screwed it up so badly. It'll be interesting to see if something like this can survive in the modern world :)
Looking to launch in 4-6 weeks, depending on the things not under my control.
[1]: https://blewit.uk/