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Interviews: Ask Social Network Minds.com CEO and Founder Bill Ottman a Question

Posted by msmash on from the ask-away dept.

As you may have noticed, Facebook is not cool anymore. The social juggernaut has been mired in controversies -- infamous privacy scandals or the company's ruthless "grow fast and break things" approach to gain users, to name a few. Luckily enough, some people are trying to build new social networks and are coming up with interesting original ideas. Minds.com is one such social network.

The open source social network, which has been operational since 2012, works on a point-earning/exchange system to give users full control over the reach of their posts. One of the complaints people have with Facebook and Twitter is that they feel their posts are not being seen by all of their friends. Minds.com lets users earn points and then trade those points to boost their posts on the platform. Users earn tokens by being active on the platform and engaging in uploading, voting, commenting and other similar activities. They can then use these tokens, which can be exchanged within the platform, to boost the reach of their posts. The company last year launched a cryptocurrency reward program based on the ethereum blockchain for all users on the platform. Minds says it does not determine what should be censored. Users are free to post whatever they want. (You can follow us on Minds.)

We are excited to announced that Minds founder and chief executive Bill Ottman has agreed to do an interview with us. If you have a question about Minds.com for him or his take on the current social networking space, feel free to ask it in the comments section below.

5 of 84 comments (clear)

  1. New Social Media or No Social Media? by chispito · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Is anybody here really looking for a new social media site to join, or are they more likely looking for ways to cut it out of their lives?

    --
    The Daddy casts sleep on the Baby. The Baby resists!
    1. Re:New Social Media or No Social Media? by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Is anybody here really looking for a new social media site to join?

      Sure. I would like a SM site that provides a simple forum for group discussions with friends, families, and interest groups, without all the noise and distractions.

      But Minds.com doesn't sound like that. Their point system encourages "activity" (quantity over quality) including reposts, voting, sharing links, etc. The very things that have turned Facebook into a cesspool. There will soon be bots auto-posting crap to build up points.

      It looks like they used Facebook as a baseline, and figured out a way to make it worse.

  2. Minds vs Steemit by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    What differentiates Minds.com from Steemit?

  3. Slashdot moderation system by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Did you know about Slashdot's comment moderation and meta-moderation system? Did it inspire Minds moderation/incentive system at all?

  4. Will Minds adopt an Open Discussion standard? by alternative_right · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Open Discussion standards are those which protect the user from censorship and deletion of their work on the site. They generally permit removal of illegal material or grossly offensive images and slurs, but do not permit censorship by content type or topic.

    Will Minds.com adopt one of these, and if so, will that make it hard for it to become a popular social network since most people "seem" to want a steady stream of inoffensive palaver and kitty pictures instead of substantive issues, debates, articles, discussions, etc.?

    --
    Alternative Right.