Ask HN: Should there be a not-for-profit social network?

pclark · on Feb 18, 2009

for what benefit?

why isn't there simply a decentralized for profit social network, where your data is stored on your personal web hosting

TrevorJ · on Feb 18, 2009

I agree with the comment re: defraying costs, but Open source software has been able to find a way to survive and THRIVE with a not-for-profit model, so there must be a way to do it.

Decentralized and for-profit is an interesting idea, but my main concern is that a for-profit model gives the organization a reason to mine the data and monetize it, which could be done even if the hosting isn't centralized.

The reason I like the not-for-profit model is because it tends to (partially) preclude some of the shady privacy intrusion that the for-profit model could push a business towards.

brand · on Feb 18, 2009

Open source does not thrive on the fuel of non-profit alone. Red Hat and Sun are for-profit, but they're major contributors to open-source projects.

Open source is successful with not-for-profit models because people like hacking on open source. I don't think that's necessarily impossible for a social network, because people like to waste a lot of their lives on social networks, but are open-source hackers going to be interested in working on a project they aren't interested in using? I'm assuming that the primary appeal of social networks has long moved past the techie demographic.

tokenadult · on Feb 18, 2009

Foundations might fund online networks that help people contribute more to society. One example is Cogito.org,

http://www.cogito.org/default.aspx

which has full membership for young people who pass a screening process, but good resources for lurkers too.

Allocator2008 · on Feb 18, 2009

Who would pay the hosting costs in such a scenario? Costs have to be offset some way or other. Unless users want to do "donations" or something like that, as what wikipedia recently did.

TrevorJ · on Feb 18, 2009

Agreed, you do need money from someplace. Open-source projects manage to make it work so I think there must be a way.

Or let users decide how they want their data to be used. Whats say you have the option to opt-in for anonymous data mining but you get a share of the profit? The main point being that each user has absolute control of the personal data.