This was met by obvious pushback from the Canadian tech industry as it makes it even less enticing to start a business or give venture funding within Canada.

Despite the current prorogation, the finance department says the CRA will go ahead and enact this change despite the bill ever going through parliament.

It's pretty scary that the government can implement new laws like this without it ever going through the democratic process of parliament.

I'm curious if the technology is now vastly out preforming the demand here or if the demand for compute is outpacing the tech.

I've been working on a platform called Sociables (https://www.sociables.com/) that gives content creators a place to offer their community as a part of their product offering. The difference between Patreon is it is much more focused on allowing creators to set up a place for their community to interact with each other instead of the more para-social style relationship seen on Patreon.

I've been working on a platform that blends social features from Discord with the discoverability of Reddit. What we're building is intentionally not just another Reddit or Discord clone. We're trying to create an all-in-one place for people to create communities first and foremost and not just posts/chat messages.

https://sociables.com/

I think that's where social, discussion based platforms come in. I'm a huge hip-hop fan and have been running a page dedicated to giving people a space to discuss and share all things hip-hop.

https://sociables.com/community/TheJive/board/trending

This bill is not about supporting independent media like they claim. This is first and foremost a link tax, and the result of it is damaging to free press. Independent media sources depend on traffic from social media platforms to function. They themselves are often the ones sharing the links to their own content to drive traffic and readership from in which they monetize through ads. Furthermore, many of these local publishers leverage their social media following to share content on behalf of other local businesses through sponsored articles and posts. The Canadian government playing strong man here when repeatedly warned of the outcome is putting independent media companies in serious jeopardy of remaining solvent.

Meta and Google are in the right here, and I hope they continue to stand their ground. If they cave on this issue, it sets a terrible precedent that jeopardizes the health of the internet as we know it. Companies should not have to pay the source whenever a link is shared on their platforms. It's just backwards.

If you are talking about situations where they are scraping and displaying the contents of an article, that is a different issue, and seemingly not one that is the primary target of this bill.

Lots of communities have started the process of migrating to different platforms. The federated alternatives like Lemmy have had recent success although I question the complexity of it in terms of getting mass adoption. Most of the alternatives seem to be missing the core idea of what Reddit really is (a community of communities). I think first and foremost the community aspect of Reddit is what makes it appealing.

I've been building a platform called Sociables which is intentionally not just another Reddit clone. We are trying to create an all-in-one place for people to create communities first and foremost and not just posts.

https://sociables.com

While Discord does some things right in the community platform space, I don't think its a suitable replacement for Reddit. One of the biggest issues with Discord is how the content posted into a community is lost into the abyss. The discoverability of content on the platform is basically non existent.

Lots of the Reddit alternatives, including Discord, seem to be missing the core idea of what Reddit really is (a community of communities). I think first and foremost it's the community aspect of Reddit that makes it appealing.

I've been working on a community platform called Sociables that combines the feature set of Discord with the discussion boards and discoverability of Reddit. It's like a Discord/Reddit/Patreon hybrid where the posts are search engine indexable. We've built a place to monetarily incentivize ownership over the communities created on the platform as it feels like the people curating the communities should be rewarded for the work that they do.

https://sociables.com

Shameless plug, but I've been working on a platform called Sociables that focuses on providing a place for people to create communities instead of just posts. It's like a Reddit/Discord/Patreon hybrid taking the best features of each platform and combining them under one umbrella. One key aspect is we have optional non-intrusive monetization methods baked into each community where the revenue primarily goes to the community owner.

https://sociables.com/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36729396

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

As I mentioned in the attached article, we actually do have a monetization strategy in place outside of relying on advertisements and VC funding.

We take a cut of each transaction that occurs on the platform to help fund the development. Some examples of such transactions include:

1. Giving communities the ability to offer tiered monthly membership plans. Users will also be able to purchase memberships for other users similar to the system on Twitch. Communities can also chose to gate entire communities behind a membership.

2. We are also adding the ability for users to pay to bump posts and buy comment awards which the revenue is all shared with the community owner.

3. Adding a platform wide subscription fee that would give users some additional benefits however we haven't fully fleshed this out yet.

See this section of the attached article for more on that:

https://sociables.substack.com/i/134540416/monetization-mode...

At a high level, our platform is like a Reddit/Discord/Patreon hybrid. We took all of the best features from each of those platforms and combined them under one umbrella.

Here's a list of the core features of each community:

1. Customizable discussion boards: Community owners can set up threaded discussion boards for different topics related to their niche. For example, if a user creates a community for a niche like "Sports", they can create different discussion boards for subcategories like "Soccer", "Football", “Hockey”, and "Golf". This is different from Reddit, where you only have a singular discussion board per community. All the posts within these discussion boards are crawlable by search engines, meaning they will appear in search results.

2. Voice rooms: Community owners can set up Discord-style voice chat rooms where users can seamlessly jump between different rooms to communicate verbally.

3. Real-time text chatroom: We modelled the chat after Twitch so communities can have a form of instant messaging-style communication.

4. Synchronized YouTube/Vimeo player: Community owners can create a playlist of YouTube/Vimeo video embeds. Each community has a media player that cycles through the playlist and synchronizes the playback, so people within the community can watch the same video at the same time.

5. Baked-in monetization: Community owners can offer customizable tiered monthly membership plans that allow members to financially support them. Owners can also link their PayPal accounts to receive donations. Users can purchase post bumps within the boards and comment awards, and the revenue is shared with the community owner. (Note: Tiered memberships and paying to bump posts/comment awards are in development. Communities can currently only offer a singular membership tier).

6. Link-in-bio page: Each community has a link-in-bio style page where community owners can display a list of links related to their community. Posts from the community also appear on this page along with buttons to monetarily support the owner. This page is meant to act as the “cover” page of the community.

7. Moderation tooling: Communities can set up custom user roles and assign different permissions within the community to these roles. You can assign permissions such as being able to move posts between boards, remove posts/comments and more. (Note: Our moderation tooling is currently in development. We are exploring integrating AI to automatically scan and flag posts that the moderators should review).

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36724030

Points: 7

# Comments: 6

I've been working on a community platform/Reddit alternative that has a business model exactly like this.

It's like a Reddit/Discord/Patreon hybrid taking the best features of each platform and combining them under one umbrella. One key aspect is we have non-intrusive monetization methods baked into each community where the revenue primarily goes to the community owners. The monetization stuff is completely optional and disabled by default, however it feels like the people curating the communities should have the option to be rewarded for the work that they do.

https://sociables.com