Ask HN: What if there was a non profit version of Twitter? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What if there was a non profit version of Twitter?

5 pointsasim5 comments

Curious to know what people think of the idea of a not-for-profit version of Twitter. Obviously the technology is not difficult to replicate and there are many competing companies attempting to build a version of Twitter ala substack notes but we rarely see anything that's for the public good.

Edit: Should note people are bringing up similar issues around moderation, hate speech, etc. Potentially solution would be to operate it much like a community run forum that self moderates and provides tools to do that?

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I'm not sure being non profit is as important to Twitter users as other characteristics, for example:

a) Not-for-Profit

b) 'Free' Speech

c) Free of 'hate'

d) Open platform/API

e) Lots of potential readers for my tweets

f) Lots of interesting content to read/follow

g) Not run by an egomaniacal tyrant/someone I disagree with

A company like Twitter might struggle to hire staff without being able to offer market salary rates and the financial equivalent of stock options.

Mastodon just recently reached a 10 million user milestone[0]. Say what you want about it, but it's the future. If it scales exponentially over the next few years, we're looking at a true contender to Twitter. It is "for the public good" but as with any online service, it has its caveats. But with instances, you get different 'camps' who have different agendas, and you can filter those away with a blacklist if you don't want to engage them.

This is something Twitter doesn't have: the ability to silence entire political agendas and categories like porn, although porn still slips through the cracks on Mastodon, so it's not a given that you won't be ambushed by it.

[0] https://www.itworldcanada.com/article/mastodon-passes-the-10...

As it costs a fortune. Twitter has only occasionally been profitable.

So how do you pay for the staffing, infrastructure and communications costs?

Most of the internet only exists because it is paid for by advertisers. Users won't pay. Ok, 0.0001% will - maybe.

I think that nonprofit would be considerably more controversial that PBS and NPR combined. It would have to deal with the abuse prone nature of Twitter - retweets by accounts with large follower count that even slightly hint at retribution cause a dog pile of abuse that can spill over to real life.

And what about bots and info ops? What nonprofit could deal with subtle problems like that? Neither Dorsey era or Elon era Twitter could deal with bots and info ops.

And then there's "freedom of speech", which we've seen is a very odd thing for Twitter and Parler and Gab. Who gets to define it? If you let Nazis advocate and argue, it drives away everyone else.

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