The tech community is actively discussing alternatives to mainstream social media platforms, with many developers and users seeking slow social media solutions that prioritize genuine connections over engagement-driven algorithms. This movement comes as criticism mounts against platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok for their addictive design patterns and commercial focus.
Proposed Slow Social Media Features:
- Friend cap: 300 connections maximum
- Mutual connection requirement (no followers)
- Chronological feeds with natural endpoints
- Post limit: 5 posts per day maximum
- Pagination instead of infinite scroll
- No recommendation algorithms or analytics
Learning from Past Attempts
The discussion reveals that previous attempts at connection-limited social networks have faced significant challenges. Path, a social network that implemented strict friend limits based on Dunbar's number (the theoretical limit of meaningful relationships humans can maintain), experienced rapid growth but ultimately failed. Path initially capped connections at 50 users, later expanding to 150, demonstrating the practical difficulties of enforcing relationship limits in social platforms.
Dunbar's number refers to the cognitive limit of stable social relationships that humans can maintain, typically estimated at around 150 people.
Path Social Network Timeline:
- Initial friend limit: 50 connections
- Later expanded to: 150 connections (Dunbar's number)
- Status: Discontinued despite initial growth period
- Concept: Based on meaningful human relationship limits
Current Alternatives Gaining Traction
Community members are finding partial solutions in existing platforms that weren't originally designed as traditional social media. Discord has emerged as a popular choice for interest-based communities, offering topic-focused discussions without heavy algorithmic interference. WhatsApp, Signal, and Telegram group chats fulfill some social connection needs, though they're limited to smaller, interconnected groups where members typically know each other.
Some users point to Tumblr as an early example of blog as social network, where content was structured as personal posts and updates, creating different posting behaviors compared to Twitter-style platforms.
Current Alternative Platforms Mentioned:
- Discord: Interest-based communities, minimal algorithms
- WhatsApp/Signal/Telegram: Group chats for close connections
- Tumblr: Blog-style social networking
- Reddit: Topic-based discussions with less algorithmic interference
The Attention Economy Problem
A key insight from the community discussion centers on how social media has monetized human attention, creating what some describe as an unregulated attention currency. This monetization occurs through view counts, likes, shares, and follower metrics that act as stores of value, similar to how individual banks once printed their own currency before central banking regulation.
For profit social media is totally possible. But a 'healthy' version won't happen until govts reform social media such that Attention is demonitized or remonitized.
The comparison suggests that just as unregulated currency printing by individual banks caused economic chaos before central bank oversight, unregulated attention monetization by social platforms may require similar regulatory intervention.
Challenges for Alternative Platforms
Despite growing interest in slow social media concepts, significant obstacles remain. The network effect favors existing large platforms, and as one community member noted, when thoughtful users abandon mainstream platforms, important societal discussions continue happening on those same problematic networks, exposing everyone to their negative effects.
The funding challenge also persists, as few users are willing to pay monthly fees for social media services, even those they use daily. This creates a fundamental tension between sustainable business models and user expectations of free services.
The community discussion suggests that while perfect solutions don't yet exist, the combination of specialized platforms for different needs - Discord for communities, messaging apps for close connections, and emerging slow social media experiments - may provide a more healthy approach to online social interaction than relying solely on algorithm-driven mainstream platforms.
Reference: Slow social media