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Comment by Alex3917 | Hacker News Reader

Why not just pay a few bucks a month for a social network, and get all the benefits of centralization without the evils of ad-supported corporations? Most of us here use and trust GitHub, and imho that's what we need more of.

While I'm a huge supporter of blockchain projects and their allies, in the case of social networks I don't see how this is going to turn out any differently than FOAF.

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Because not all of my friends and family are willing to pay a subscription fee :-/

Would you pay to be a power user who can invite and manage say a dozen family & friends?

In this model it might be possible to assist uptake by having a class of power user who can manage their group over onto an ad free network.

Example: I have a private github account with repos I share with various friends who are not paying github users but are nonetheless now engaged in the github platform.

That's not a terrible idea. You might also give some users free access if they're net-beneficial to the network

Yes, this is an under-appreciated idea that may be critical to having the whole thing work. If it's a paid service users should be able to pay for other users to use it.

WhatsApp had this. :-/

Doesn't matter. Our data is only secure when it is encrypted. The user should have absolute control over their data. If the user deletes their data then it should be permanently deleted.

how would you trust a centralized network NOT to use your data even if they make you pay for the service?

That’s what the ToS and privacy policy are for.

Contracts are all well and good, but if there is no such thing as actual oversight to ensure they are implemented as intended, it's very hard to give a proof of good faith.

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