What we have now on social networks is objectively shit though. Marketers cooking up AI families to sell supplements. Constant A/B testing without any hypotheses which ultimately lead to the extreme forms of clickbait imaginable. I have ideas for doing ads differently but that's a discussion for when we have hundreds of thousands of users, not when we're starting out.

Ah I forgot to remove the videos section. Ultimately you can just create a Gallery post with a single (short) video but we can't allow YouTube style videos yet because it's the one cost that can throw a huge wrench in our finances. I'll remove the Videos section now but all the code is there to get it working.

Docs are important because it allows a page to be customized. If you write an entry today like an About Me, it's tagged July 3, 2026 and slides down your feed. You can create an About Me as a doc and in settings -> theme you can set the doc as your landing page. The official @PIECES page (https://piecesof.me/@PIECES) landing page itself is a doc.

To be more precise about what I mean by exodus, I don't think that instagram is going away but I do think its utility as the de facto social network to keep in touch with friends is at risk. I know a lot of people who are quitting and I know a lot of people who don't really care for it but are on it because everyone else is on it. I'll probably have an IG still in 5 years but I see a world where I don't use it much.

I think most social media/networks now are terrible for keeping in touch with people we want to hear from. I was listening to a podcast with the musician Zedd and he mentioned that in the golden days of Facebook, he could post that he was doing a show in Toronto (or any city) and every person in Toronto who followed the Zedd Facebook page would come see him. Nowadays. he could do a post about being in Toronto and his Toronto fans will be like, "wait, why didn't I know you were in Toronto? I totally would've gone!"

Ironically, I've been enjoying IG now because I have PIECES as my place to share memories. I went to Coachella and magically IG started recommending me a ton of cool Coachella content. I open my IG now and it's a ton of World Cup content. Last month it was all Knicks content. Yet when I posted about PIECES on my Facebook, neither my aunts, uncles, or cousins saw that their family member created something he was proud of. I reached out by DM to tell them about it.

This is what happens when social platforms get to use ad revenue to fund their moon shots. All they have to do is turn on more ads to get the needed capital to fund their AI and -verse bets. As another user pointed out, The Social Contract we published isn't foolproof as a basis to assure our members that PIECES will be any different than incumbent social networks. But it's certainly a start.

Thanks for trying it out though and I hope to see you on the platform.

I'll say this: when you log into one of the incumbent social networks like IG/X/SnapChat/Facebook and you see a post that you don't care at all to see, why are you seeing that? It's because they want you to see it. They think that this post with this content and these reactions has the highest chance of making you engage with it and see more ads. The best example of this is navigating reddit.com vs old.reddit.com. The fancier reddit.com always recommends me stuff that I don't really care about but end up clicking through on because I am weak and they know I am weak. old.reddit.com is closer to the old internet that I enjoy: I check in on topics/subreddits I'm interested in and then when nothing is new or interesting, I do other things.

Arguably, building a platform that's less addictive is foolish and leaving money on the table. But as someone who had to quit IG for 2 years (though I'm back on it now) I really don't want to sell people a digital drug addiction. I see YouTube videos which are basically just rage bait and I'm like, why would I want to support a world where acting in bad faith is the hallmark of a lucrative career?

To answer your question more directly, the internet has given me a lot. One of the reasons I'm so into soccer/football is because following the /r/soccer subreddit taught me about the sport and after browsing on/off for a couple of years I can tell you all the big storylines. I never in a million years would've been a football fan if it weren't for the subreddit. I've picked up hobbies like shuffling to house music by following various shufflers on IG. I keep in touch with friends from middle school who, if I grew up in earlier decades, I would've lost contact with a long, long time ago. All because of social media.

The internet can be a great place when the platforms themselves allow us to control our attention. I'm optimistic about PIECES and the other platforms we're building. I want people to feel connected to other people. Is there anything more important than that?

IMO The Social Contract that we publish is a step in the right direction. If you're on IG and you look at your feed in 2018 vs 2026, you can tell that something has changed dramatically but there is nothing in writing about what IG promised in 2018 vs what they do in 2026. It's all by feel. If they published it, IG users would be able to point out every promise kept and broken.

In the future, perhaps members can sign contracts like sports stars who agree with their club to have ABC terms for XYZ years. But this is where we're starting and I'm happy to get feedback from our members on how to better assure them in future versions of The Social Contract.

The playbook that you lay out is basically the playbook every social network has come up with... and where are we now in 2026? Has that playbook produced anything good?

The niche social networks don't work and will never grow beyond their niches. Everyone is trying to start the niche thing, but ultimately, photographers want to be around non-photographers, animators want to be around non-animators, etc.,. Historically this was solved by people being on the incumbent platforms like IG/Facebook/Twitter/whatever, with niche networks to fill those specialized needs in. But I guarantee you that in the next five years there's going to be a huge exodus out of the incumbent networks and there will be a vacuum with new platforms vying to fill the space. These new platforms will have their own takes on what makes a good social network. PIECES is me throwing in my hat.

I built PIECES first and foremost for myself. I had a xanga that I loved, multiple tumblrs that I still reference, an insta to talk to my friends, finstas that I still sometimes lurk on, a Substack, and a Twitter that I just re-started posting in, but at this point nothing really compares to PIECES. The most analogous is tumblr but that too became a niche platform that has been abandoned. PIECES has been great for me because it's a place I can express myself without getting caught in some other company's algo while also being able to share exclusively with my friends.

I can write more but I'll finish with this. It's July 2026 and I declare that PIECES is here to stay. There is no world where I write on the home page, "Hey everyone, it's with a heavy heart that I have to tell everyone that PIECES is closing..." I've been on the internet for 28 years now. PIECES is good. It's going to be slow growth because I refuse to build in any type of addictive/gamified functionality or make false promises or w/e but as the exodus away from incumbent social media takes place, PIECES will be one of the platforms there that promises something different.

But we'll see and I'll return back to this post in July 2030. I don't think I'll be eating my words though.

If you're interested still despite limitations (Ultra HDR Images also won't be seen by many people) I can look into this more.

I recognize that we'll have to re-think things once we hit millions of users (I am an optimist). But for the first ten thousand or hundred thousand, I'm confident we can keep it a people-centric place and then strategize for future growth once our strategies start to be less effective.

Stay tuned and thanks for your patience.

I got back on instagram recently and the first thing I see when I login now is content from repost accounts and it's like, do I really want to see this? Is this what happens when we optimize for engagement blindly? A hypothesis I have is that if we make rules in the beginning this will be easier to enforce at scale. See an account that's just reposting stuff -> report it -> review

Would love if you tried it out!

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48750402

Points: 63

# Comments: 61