My new social network wt.social now has over 25,000 members and growing. That's growth of 23,500 in a week. 1/
That growth at wt.social came about due to a small bit of press in Germany. I've deliberately not talked about it to the English language press as we dealt with some traffic issues. 2/
What is this? This is an evolution of the concept of WikiTribune as I came to realize that the problem of fake news and low quality content is as much about social networks (facebook and twitter in particular) as it is about news sites. 3/
Please read this entire thread to understand it, and then please join. 4/
Existing social networks work on a pure advertising business model. This drives them to addict you, to keep you on the site. Their incentives are in the direction of outrage, radical discourse, trolling - not your human flourishing.5/
It has been thought that only an advertising model could work for social networks - after all, not all my friends will pay, and the network is more valuable the more people who are on it. 6/
But I have a different idea: if only *some* people pay (maybe you! maybe not! pay if you want) then it can be free for everyone else. I think the people who will pay will be the ones who care the most about fixing the broken Internet culture that leads horribleness.7/
The other thing is that in order to succeed, in order to *replace* (yes, I am nervous to even say that word out loud, but let's be bold!) existing poisonous social networks, I need everyone to join and invite invite invite invite recruit recruit recruit.8/
Ok, but what is wt.social so far?
It's a quite basic but quite radical collaborative social platform. Everyone can post like on fb or twitter. Almost everything is editable. By everyone. It's wild! Try it out, if you're a nice person. 9/
It's a quite basic but quite radical collaborative social platform. Everyone can post like on fb or twitter. Almost everything is editable. By everyone. It's wild! Try it out, if you're a nice person. 9/
You'll please accept my apologies that it is so basic so far. I didn't raise money for it because I want to maintain creative control. You can post in any language, but the interface is only in English. 10/
There's a waiting list right now - we absolutely need this as we are working to make the infrastructure scalable. You can skip the waiting list by paying or inviting people, because that's what I want people doing. 11/
The business model of existing social media drives them in one direction but our business model drives me in a radically different direction. You will only pay if you think that WT is making a meaningful positive contribution to your life. 12/
So my incentives are not to optimize to keep you upset, outraged, and clicking. My incentives are you to think: ok, this is meaningful. This helped me learn, to grow, to be a better person in some small ways. This helps the world be better. 13/
Journalists: contact me. I'm in Dallas tomorrow and could set up some phone interviews. I'm bootstrapping this from nothing, so it's pretty crazy. Happy to talk next week.
Everyone: Let's try something different. Together. Thank you for reading! 14/14
Everyone: Let's try something different. Together. Thank you for reading! 14/14
