pond - Our Attempt at A Slow Social Media Site.
I was initially inspired to start this due to this blog post by Herman https://herman.bearblog.dev/slow-social-media/.
For those who care, we did and currently use a lot of AI tooling to get this up and running as fast as we did. Over time, that will become less and less as the platform matures and we can afford to spend some real money on human made assets.
Social media platforms use engineered features like infinite scroll and algorithmically curated feeds to exploit our psychological vulnerabilities, turning quick checks into hours of compulsive scrolling. This addiction comes at a steep cost: increased anxiety and depression, disrupted sleep, damaged self-esteem, and the ironic reality that constant digital connection often leaves us feeling more isolated than ever.
pond, in contrast, is a pretty simple social media site. No followers, only friends. No unlimited friends, they are capped at 100. No Algorithm, just a chronological feed. Posts and images are also auto purged after 30 days.
We don't keep any data, we don't track you, we don't have any ads.
At pond, post’s take a more blog like approach with markdown and image support. Dump a few photo’s, treat it as a simple blog about your life, or use it as a micro blogging alternative. It’s really up to you.
In addition to the idea, I did take a lot of inspiration from BearBlog. Its simple and more relaxed approach to styling reminds me of the earlier days of the internet and I can probably speak for a lot of people when I say that the earlier internet had a much bigger community vibe to it.
So for now, it's in active development, there are tons of weird issues and we’re still figuring out our tech stack… but its kind of functional!
If you’re interested in pond then you can sign up at:
https://www.pondsocial.ca
or if you're just interested in following along, giving suggestions for features, or just want to chat, you can join our small (but mighty) discord!
https://discord.gg/ewPHGDBze4
We'll be limiting sign ups to ensure the platform can handle more than a few users at a time :).
This is my first time putting together a larger project and things do slip through the cracks, so apologies in advance for any odd functionality.