I feel like this isn't so crazy of an idea, but any can't the city host it's own website with forums and everything? This could enable easier and more clear threading than Facebook, and you can look through history and pin topics/announcements. The library could be in charge of hosting it and archiving everything (isn't this already something libraries are supposed to do? The archiving of local news.) There's plenty of free software to do this too.

There are so many variants that could be done off of this too. A federation of these servers, as towns help one another balance and archive data. Or help communication between towns. I'm sure a discussion somewhere like HN could quickly improve on this idea in a way that would be robust and easy to implement (because a key thing is that we want to get small towns to be able to implement this)

Maybe a fork of some wiki application can act as a digital townhall library? They usually publish meeting notes on their websites, so why not on a wiki platform, many of them have discussion pages and you could add open sections for public suggestions and it could act as an archive or library for town information. It's just the matter of taking it seriously and giving it an appropriate budget like they do with any other public structure or organization. But if it proves to be valuable component of public organization it would be budgeted and administered appropriately.

> can't the city host it's own website with forums and everything

Of course it could... but with tight public budgets it would likely be implemented so poorly as to be useless.

That's why I suggested a group of technologically savvy people undertake the challenge to devise a system that is trivial to implement. Cost likely isn't going to be much considering a small town isn't going to need much bandwidth and since many do already run websites (albeit shabby).

My city can barely make a webpage (poor content structure), and event calendar that isn’t woefully out of date.

What about the US Digital Services? A WPA program for 21st century?

Well then as a rebuttal:

>> I'm sure a discussion somewhere like HN could quickly improve on this idea in a way that would be robust and easy to implement (because a key thing is that we want to get small towns to be able to implement this)

>The thing that holds me to Facebook is that it's become the town square

Yep, but most social platforms are not really tuned to being a town square, and instead are optimized for feeds and stirring emotions. They often rewarding behavior that's counterproductive to finding common ground. We need platforms like DinnerTable.chat [1] that is built around the idea of bringing people together across the spectrum and localities. DTC is an open community-driven live discussion platform that matches you one-on-one with others to playfully challenge perspectives, while unlocking achievements. It's been my passion project for the last two years, and since beta, we've been growing steadily.

[1] https://dinnertable.chat/about

I say this with respect and for your benefit: this is the most cringe inducing product description I’ve ever read.

Ah, thanks for that feedback. Would you like to try your hand of writing a better summary here? It would be appreciated, as it's hard to improve from just a single word criticism (cringe).

"Product abc.xyz is like Facebook, without the suck."

"A cure for the common platform"

I'm suspicious that for the cringe might result from the suggestion that alternative points of view might have value.

Can you elaborate on the source of the cringe? I went to read it based on your description, hoping for a dose of cringe. In the end, I did not detect it.

To me it seemed like a decent introduction to a tool designed to help get people take a look outside of their bubbles.

I think it's from

> to playfully challenge perspectives, while unlocking achievements

Who's looking to "playfully challenge perspectives"? and "[unlock] achievements"? Discussions aren't generally a game, but this seems to pitch it that way. I don't know about you guys, but I think more often than not, discussions are a generally stressful thing that people do because they must. The description might benefit in changing to a somewhat more serious tone.

Also, talking of "unlocking achievements" gives the project a manipulative kind of feel. The description states what it offers to people, and in that is the mention of being able to obtain fake internet points in the form of achievements. Is fake internet points supposed to motivate one to join the project?

Anyway, I'm just trying to expand on what's probably cringey. It's still good work.

It’s this mainly. It’s not cringe because it’s stupid, it’s cringe to me because i think it’s naive. Baking in the playful aspect makes me imagine that the person creating this has this vision in his head that people are friendly and that playfully challenging each others perspectives will result in anything. People are invested in their perspectives and they aren’t going to change them — not in light of facts, logic, threats or playfulness. This guy thinks that playfully challenging perspectives is going to scale to more than a handful of people? It’s naive. Maybe I’m reading it wrong but that’s how I read it.

Also, the achievements angle is also cringe for me because achievements are a buzzword fad that makes me think the person behind this thing is not a very deep thinker, doesn’t appreciate the fact that it will look bad to advertise the achievements, and maybe is a person who has trouble thinking for himself and gets swept up into actually believing fads.

If I were going to write a description it would be something like this: a platform where people are given the opportunity to refine their opinions based on civil discussion with the assistance of a tasteful incentive scheme.

It seems to bring down to earth a bit. Reading criticism that is so personal can be upsetting. I genuinely hope that I have in no way upset this person. We all learn these hard lessons from time to time. I know I’ve had more than I can count.

Ah, let me see if I can add some details and re-adjust the wording:

"DTC is a community-driven live discussion platform that matches you one-on-one to challenge ideas. The experience is fun and quirky as users control talking virtual avatars and rate each other on their politeness. Achievements are earned for good behavior (via similar techniques Overwatch uses to curb aggressive behavior), while toxic behavior is flagged to be reviewed by moderators. Good behavior is also rewarded with points that allow further avatar customization and new environment unlocks."

Does this help?

I'm not disagreeing with you (I've never used this service you linked) ... but what becomes "the town square" has nothing to do with how optimized or tuned it is for that purpose. People are gonna do what people are gonna do, and if you want to be involved with certain people, you gotta go where they are.

Thanks, we're in the process of connecting directly with different communities. There's a few towns in California that we're working with to bring local civil debate topics to the platform. It's actually been a common topic of feedback for many of these towns that it's hard for people to discuss policies in a physical location because of time constraints, as well as traveling across town during after work rush hour traffic. Facebook groups/pages are often used for local community discussion, but they are not in practice 'town halls' where people talk about policies and are able to work through differences of opinion. There's a lot of research out there now that shows that Facebook and Twitter have had very little success in fostering cross-viewpoint discussions, mostly due to the platform mechanics.

that doesnt appear to serve the same function.

when I think of a local facebook group for a neighborhood its a bunch of people helping each other or complaining. stuff like "we're those gunshots, road xxx is closed so is taco bell, my cat is missing, hey this event is happening this weekend, im having trouble making rent this month." it works, because everyone is on it. network effect + a lack of baked in structure.

If you ever market your product in France, don't use that acronym.

Explain please?

Nextdoor comes to mind, but not necessarily a local online town square which I agree with your comment that a source like that is invaluable to keep up with local issues.

I've seen too many stories of people discovering their neighbors are racist/classist assholes on Nextdoor to want to participate. Leave me a few illusions about the inherent goodness of people.

(SF Bay Area here) I personally enjoy watching almost every ND convo degrade into which person is the biggest victim (race, class, and so on). Bothered me at first, but now it is sheer entertainment

Must be a geographical issue. I’m very active on next door and I’ve never seen such behavior. Sure there are a few spats like recently about fireworks but I’ve never witnessed anything “racist” or “classist”. I understand this is anecdotal, my experience might not match others.

Probably. I live in Seattle and people seem to frequently complain about having to see homeless and other "undesirables" in their neighborhood. I love it when their posts also include stealthy photos of the offenders in question. /s I've seen neighbors who live in my same building posting this sort of crap. Obviously there are a lot of issues to address in the city, and people should certainly find ways to do that, but I find it really maddening when people pile on and and take out all of their frustrations on a single person.

Cannot possibly be worse than the way people act on Facebook.

Not sure about other areas, but there seem to be some really power hungry moderator tyrants on there... similar to some HOAs for example.

What if our very own public Libraries had the ability to host local communities' dialogs etc. One of the things that it would protect is "freedom" of speech and it would be a better platform for communities to voice their concerns etc, without the fear of having their data mined or even have their voices or issues removed, because it was offensive.

Of course it would not be a perfect platform, but as an American, we need to start understanding and protecting the liberties and rights our own Constitution is providing us.

Peace.

I'm not sure why you're being downvoted - but I really like the idea of public libraries hosting community social networks. Librarians have traditionally been fiercely privacy conscious and they could provide an archived platform for local government as well.

When I bought my new house, I got to join the neighborhood Facebook group. That’s where all the news happens. They used to have a listserv, but the on onboarding is better / easier on Facebook and you get more features than a listserv - because everyone is already there plus threaded comments.

I really wish it were somewhere else so I didn’t have to log on. I’m just not sure where else it would be and still see the same level of engagement.

MeetUp has potential... but the fact that it requires one paid account to start groups is probably whats holding it back. Otherwise, I love it

MeetUp got very expensive and their tooling is very disappointing. They used to be great for small social groups (I ran a quite popular one for boardgames and bars) but they got too enchanted chasing Enterprise-y recruiting events and their pricing model got all sorts of crazy.

Facebook serves similar functions in my area, and is the best way you can find out if paving/waterline work/etc are causing street closures, or if wrecks or similar are causing a closure.

I think an app like Telegram or Signal should fill that place. FB is too feed algorithm driven. For a townsquare like requirement, a chat group should be sufficient.

"Public Good" and "for profit" are incompatible.

some schools for instance, announcements to parents are made via Facebook, so an account is almost essential.

It seems like we are all royally screwed if policy is now being decided on and only through facebook. I have never had a FB account and will never have one. It seems extremely crazy to be required to go through a bunch of legal terms of service just to participate in government. In fact it may be illegal technically.

I totally agree with you. And I'm very scared of the day a job, the school my kids go to or whatever important life activity will require me to have a facebook, whatsapp, linkedin, twitter or whatever account. We need something to replace these, possibly a federated, open standard, but I guess even the self hosted forums of yore were much better than this.

There are numerous alternatives that could (and hopeful should) replace FB - through what is referred to as the FediVerse - specifically via Pleroma, Mastodon, GnuSocial, etc. While admittedly mastodon is the platform that gets the most mindshare (and most users access the fediverse through it), it is not the only one...And much like email, users employing mastodon as "their tool" can communicate with other users who might employ other tools like pleroma, etc. Users have a choice! And, this federated universe is all aligning on open federated standards like ActivityPub [1]. So, yeah, there are options already in existence...and, the challenge is less technical, and more: "how do you get YOUR network of friends/family onto the fediverse?" Well, the migration has already begun, so it should only be a matter of time...

[1] https://www.w3.org/TR/activitypub/

> Well, the migration has already begun, so it should only be a matter of time...

As much as I would like this to be true, they said the same thing about XMPP.

That seems extremely exaggerated. What’s illegal about private citizens choosing to use a service like Facebook to talk to each other?

If you want to “participate in government” nothing stops you from showing up to town or county council meetings, planning commissions, and so on, or from sending letters to your elected officials, or a phone call, or running for office yourself.

At which point it stops being private and becomes public instead though? And what to do after it happens? Discussing town policy isn’t something that should be kept behind a gate, and especially not Facebook.

> At which point it stops being private and becomes public instead though?

When the actual decisions are being made there. Many places have “open meeting” laws that require decisions be made out in the open.

Facebook is not the ballot box, it is not the county council, it is not the town meeting. It’s just a place where people can choose to talk to each other.

> Discussing town policy isn’t something that should be kept behind a gate, and especially not Facebook.

This is what freedom of association and freedom of speech is though. If your neighbors choose to talk to each other through Facebook, Nextdoor, a google group, an email list, a BBS, or in their own living rooms, you shouldn’t be able to stop them from doing that, whatever it is they prefer to do.

You still need to have a city council meeting etc... my guess is that FB just helps get the conversation going. My problem with FB townhalls is that it just degenerates into politics, gun rights and trolls. You also get out of towners weighing in usually as trolls. I think the local newspaper is better forum.

Then people should meet at the town hall and talked, this kind of stuff got done before facebook. And people where just as busy, bringing kids up going to work etc.

Maybe they should. And maybe people should handwrite letters like they used to. But even if it might be what they should do, it's not what they are going to do.

Discussing and taking part of a topic online is also about seeding motivation, it's as important as actually going to a place.

Plus, having the ability to plan, discuss, reference, lookup etc - _while_ discussing something, saves a ton of time and effort that would be wasted when speaking face-to-face.

Well gee, wouldn't that be great.

But a couple people leaving Facebook isn't going to lead to it.