Still Unbuilt

All 100 ideasCommunities

#20 of 100 · Communities

A social network you own

An open, federated or peer-to-peer Facebook, Twitter or Instagram where they own their data, can self-host, and friends can actually join.

21asks, each re-read
21separate threads
13of 19 years
2since 2024
2010first asked

Asks per year

’081’1022’122’143’1612’1821’2011’221’242’26

What the askers want

  • Would pay0%
  • Want it local or private29%
  • Object to subscriptions0%
  • Want it open source or self-hosted67%
  • Want AI to do it0%

Share of the 21 asks that say so, as judged by Jev.

What exists on Show HN

Built, still asked for29 Show HN launches do this job, and 11 more do part of it. People still ask, so the launches are missed, unknown, or not what they want. Ask what they’re missing before you build.

Instead of: Facebook, Twitter, Mastodon, Diaspora

The idea, as matched

A decentralized, federated or peer-to-peer social network (Facebook, Twitter or Instagram-like) where users own their identity and data, can self-host, and can bring their existing social graph.

Jev first matched 30 requests to this idea; a second reader kept 21 of 30.

Every ask, newest first

Each line is an AI paraphrase of what the writer wanted. The link goes to their own words on Hacker News.

Reader’s note. Most asks predate Mastodon and Bluesky growth; network effect is the stated blocker.

  1. Nov 2025Wants a decentralized, censorship-free Instagram alternative, noting Pixelfed lacks traction and Flashes has no Android app. Read it: a post: “Ask HN: How long until solid decentralized alternative to Instagram?”
  2. Jun 2025Wants any replacement for Facebook and Instagram, even empty, believing technical users will bring friends over. Read it: a comment in “Facebook is starting to feed its AI with private, unpublished photos”
  3. Dec 2023Asks which self-hosted social software to run, leaning to GoToSocial because Go lets them contribute. Read it: a comment in “Mark Zuckerberg: Threads accounts will be available on Mastodon”
  4. Aug 2022Wants decentralized social platforms because friends are all on tracking apps like Facebook and Messenger. Read it: a comment in “Is this the end of social networking?”
  5. Jan 2021Wants a hugely popular open-source or free social network without nasty practices, since they have blocked Facebook. Read it: a comment in “The Buy Nothing Project”
  6. Sep 2020Wants an open, global social protocol like modern email, filtering noise and ads, with signed posts and pseudonyms. Read it: a comment in “Reddit.com on July 25th, 2005 – 1 month after launch”
  7. Jul 2019Wants a platform of original content only, imagining a WordPress plugin linking friends' blogs into a social network. Read it: a comment in “Facebook Research Warned of ‘Tipping Point’ Threat to Core App”
  8. Jan 2019Wants a decentralized way to passively view friends' photos and life updates, with no extra account to create. Read it: a comment in “Ask HN: Is there any social network you trust?”
  9. Oct 2018Wants a good social network interface on top of Solid that can import Facebook data. Read it: a comment in “Facebook exodus: Nearly half of young users have deleted the app”
  10. Mar 2018Left Facebook as creepy but misses sharing, and asks what alternatives others use. Read it: a post: “Ask HN: What do you as an alternative to Facebook?”
  11. Jun 2017Asks why no open source counterpart to Google and Facebook exists, like Ubuntu is to Windows and Mac. Read it: a comment in “Ask HN: What are we doing about Facebook, Google, and the closed internet?”
  12. Sep 2016Wants an Open Twitter on standard protocols anyone can run, but doubts funding and abuse handling. Read it: a comment in “Twitter may receive formal bid, suitors said to include Salesforce and Google”
  13. Aug 2016Wants a social network blending IndieWeb and Diaspora or Friendica ideas. Read it: a comment in “Hello from Orkut”
  14. Jun 2016Wants a free, open, decentralized network that copies the Facebook social graph so friends can migrate. Read it: a comment in “Reasons not to use (i.e., be used by) Facebook”
  15. Aug 2013Wants a distributed network with no central failure point and a solid API, distrusting App.net's promises. Read it: a comment in “The Great App.net Mistake”
  16. May 2013Wants a public-key peer-to-peer social network where signed keys prove you know someone, replacing LinkedIn suggestions. Read it: a comment in “LinkedIn: The Creepiest Social Network”
  17. Nov 2012Wants a decentralized, peer-to-peer Twitter and Reddit alternative with competing clients, no censorship and no monetization. Read it: a comment in “Twitter's descent into the extractive”
  18. Apr 2012Asks why peer-to-peer social networking is missing, where data lives only on each user's own node. Read it: a comment in “Tim Berners-Lee: Tell Facebook, Google you want your data back”
  19. Mar 2011Wants an OStatus-based threaded microblogging service like Jaiku for deeper conversations than Twitter. Read it: a comment in “Burned by Twitter, Developers Launch Distributed Microblogging Service”
  20. Mar 2011Asks for a community-owned, open Twitter clone that anyone can use freely. Read it: a post: “Ask HN: Any example of a community owned web service? (thinking of Twitter)”
  21. Apr 2010Wants a federated social setup where everyone hosts their own friends list and activity stream for authorized clients. Read it: a comment in “The Facebook Cull”

Building this?

Read ten of the asks above first, because they say what the existing launches miss. If you ship it, post it as a Show HN so the next run of this list finds it.

See all 100How the counts work

Ship it like Vercel, on a server you own

This site runs on ShipTiffin. A push to GitHub deploys it, the way it would on Vercel, but the server is a Hetzner box in your own account. Postgres, sign-in, email, jobs and analytics are already on it, every project gets a hard limit, and nothing is billed by usage.

Get your own box

$19 a month per box, plus about $10 for the server at Hetzner. Open source, so you can also run it yourself for free.