Ask HN: Why are there no public social networks?

You need roads, bridges, water, electricity, and garbage collection to fulfill basic physiological needs, and also so you can swap menial tasks for higher level work/spending time with family/enjoying a better standard of living.

Framing in Maslow's pyramid [1]: Many of the goods/services the gov provides fulfill either level 1 physiological needs or level 2 security needs.

Social networks fulfill level 3 and 4 needs: love/belonging, and esteem.

We aren't yet at the point where we as a society decide we need to dedicate collective resources (taxes) to level 3 and 4 needs, especially while our level 2 and 1 services/goods aren't improving at the rate with which they did in the 20th century, and are in some cases deteriorating/being privatized.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Maslow#/media/File:Mas...

All the other answers are great, but I think they're missing the biggest and most important reason: a social network run by any government entity would only run on Internet Explorer 6 or Firefox 2, would store your password in plain text, and would run on 15-year-old un-patched IIS on a few Windows XP servers stored in the basement of city hall. And it would probably all be built on top of a deprecated social media Wordpress plugin.

There are government run (even if by proxy) social networks. The are worse that Facebook.

https://vk.com/ is government run.

The Chinese "Credit Score" is run by Alibaba and Tencent, which run all the social networks in China and therefore have access to a vast amount of data about people’s social ties and activities and what they say. In addition to measuring your ability to pay, as in the United States, the scores serve as a measure of political compliance. Among the things that will hurt a citizen’s score are posting political opinions without prior permission, or posting information that the regime does not like.

There are plenty more too. Just hope the US doesn't make a government-run social network.

Not sure why you are being downvoted as this is a very interesting question indeed.

Social networks tend to kill each other due to network effects as people are flocking to the most used network since there's the largest value for everyone. So having multiple networks might not really work well.

It wouldn't have to be several networks though and it doesn't even have to be your own government running it to provide the value you're looking for (social networking without users being monetized).

Image for example Twitter being bought by a country with good reputation, strong privacy laws and sufficient economy to sustain it in the long term. Iceland with some additional funding from the EU or something like that.

Does not sound too bad, in my opinion.

The biggest challenge I see to starting a government run social network (assuming US here) is the free speech issue. While Twitter and FB can censor hate speech, there would be an expensive legal battle over the government doing the same thing.

I might go so far as to say that our potential for a publicly operated social network is already here, or right close, but is being severely and intentionally hampered by ISPs more than anything or anyone else - and by extension recalcitrant, ignorant or paid-for representation.

Unrestricted symmetrical broadband would be a more than adequate foothold for robust frameworks that could fulfill the aspirations of one voice among billions in a truly decentralized fashion as well as provide a true springboard for thoughts, ideas and actions.

I believe the only role government should have here is ensuring access to the pipes that are regulated as an unhindered, affordable utility whose content is regulated only by you.

I also believe there are no words worth censoring. Yes, even nazi fucks. Let them speak and their words will prosper or fail on their own merit. We can't treat symptoms or causes if we drive unwanted words into darkness where they can fester and puss.

I think it's a great idea, assuming that you're from a country whose government you trust won't to spy on you. Other commenters seems not to see the potential benefit, so I'll spell it out: A government operated social network would be tax-founded, and thus not have any need for profit.

this, one could argue, enables a social network that doesn't spy on you, respects privacy and doesn't even have ads!

of course it also comes with the risk of the ruling party spying on you and engaging in manipulation. depending on where you live, and how..conspirationally inclined you are, this may or may not be a risk you're willing to take

I'm not sure that this is the best way to spend them tax-dollars. But the network itself would certainly be nice though

SMS could and should be expanded to include more social primitives within the protocol. Lately, I find myself using group chats in SMS more than any social network. Facebook and Twitter have a dis-incentive to do this, but Apple and Microsoft both make phone operating systems and don't have large social networks to compete with an open protocol. It is really annoying whenever I run up against walls like 'You can only have 10 users in 1 group chat ... unless they're all Apple' situations. The protocol should be device/os agnostic akin to http => browser. But I'm not seeing a lot of movement in the SMS protocol as late, just more messaging apps.

I keep thinking about this, but no way should this be run by a government. The tech for it to be peer-to-peer, without any central authority is already there and would make the best fit. The only - admittedly huge - hurdle is that no authority means no marketing, no support, integrations, and probably a harder setup/learning curve. While an organization like EFF could help sustain some of this, it has no resources to represent or support billions of users. Of course if the network would be open, smaller businesses could capitalize on it, taking over these tasks, but this could result in walled gardens and incompatibility.

Shaking off big corporations from services that should have been always open and free-for-all is maybe the hardest and most important question of the Internet for the future. I think an answer can only rise upon the ashes of the current big players, should that be a scandal, disaster, or else.

I'm assuming you mean available to the general public, run by the government? There probably are smaller, niche social networks for gov employees to collaborate. If there aren't there probably should be.

But to answer the assumed question, it's because there is no practical way they could compete with private companies. Sure, theoretically they could dump tons of money into developing cool new features, slick UIs, and obtain top talent. They would also need to spend billions to crush or acquire upcoming networks to maintain their dominance (Whatsapp, Instagram). Or legislate them out of existence. In practicality there is no way this would (or should) ever happen.