Whee, buzzword salad!

Cool enough concept, the issue I have with your statement is: if you're trying to build a "antisocial" network, how is it any better than/supposed to differ from a normal social network?

Is it distributed? Are posts cryptographically anti-tamper-verified? How are you planning to stay away from censorship and corporate influence? 

And moreover, how will you gain traction?

@Dylan Bleier--I saw your request go out on a few chats and asked for more info--you sent me an invite to the private project which I checked out and then declined. I did so because I believe (a) if you're serious about some of the values you describe in the detailed description in the project you'd share it with the world NOW; and (b), I didn't get the feeling that what you were proposing is actually better than Hackaday.io. I also don't really mind traditional social media (like facebook, etc), so I wasn't a huge fan of the constant references to "antisocial media". 

Make your project public, then folks like @ML144 can get a better handle on what it is. Otherwise you're developing in isolation, which [to be perfectly honest] is kinda insulting to the already excellent and 100,000+ strong Hackady.io community.

I'm in school and have a ton of other priorities, and other people are likewise busy, but as soon as we refine the idea a little we'll make it 100% public.  What's the point of coming out with junk or something that's flawed and easy to criticize?  We have to formalize a few principles and structures and guidelines in the beginning that prevent this from being derailed.  That's far from trivial.

Let's be real... hackaday.io is a benevolent oligarchy.  There is no focus on participatory self-government or activism for genuine democratic empowerment.  A benevolent oligarchy is much better in the short term than a malevolent oligarchy, but Hackaday is not sufficient (or designed) to radically transform the political climate from one of being passively governed by the most convincing crook to one where everyone directly participates and contributes and matters. 

The basic idea is that everyone must have an equal vote and a voice that is heard equally.  Whether your voice is actually listened to and amplified by a big cultural/social movement... well that's an issue of social censorship, some of which we should consider acceptable – but a whole lot of which we should not (and we should democratically construct structures to allow for unpopular dissent and criticism to have a transformative impact).

You prove this point quite well – before we go public, even after we have fully hashed out the details, we need to do lots of research and writing to contend with the inevitable harsh criticism from establishment groups – or else we will just become irrelevant.  

Just imagine how game changing it could be if we could come together to do something that made the US into a genuine, functioning, vibrant democracy (probably with more elements of direct democracy like federal referendums, and structures that would enforce accountability for public servants).  The empire could be peacefully deconstructed, international relationships would vastly improve, and domestically we could form a much more fair society.  Democracy can't be out of reach because the only other alternative is indefinite global occupation, genocide and subjugation and then inevitable nuclear destruction.  We need a popular movement in the US, not for one candidate or one particular niche issue but for systematic, widespread change that gives power to the people and restructures tyrannical power systems over which people have no effective control.

I think Alex is right. I get that you're asking for help starting some kind of a social network, but the social network you're describing seems to be based on buzz word salad. I have a feeling that this is just a joke, but for some reason I enjoy breaking things like this down so that's what I'm going to do.

How is a social network Democratic? Would the members vote on things? What would the members be voting on the purpose of the social network? If so, how can you be sure it will remain an "activism incubator".

The word "social" has more than one definition and it seems like you're trying to use multiple definitions at the same time here. Saying "democratic social" makes me thing your talking about the democratic socialism, which is fine if that's what you're into, but then you're finishing it up with network and I'm completely lost. Are you trying to create a social network for democratic socialists and supports democratic socialist activism? If that's the case, it can't be a social network that is democratic because the members could not elect to change the purpose of the network in a way that no longer supports democratic socialist activism. So... What are you talking about?

I get what you mean by "activism incubator", something that supports the development of activism, but without knowing what kind of activism you are talking about I don't know if I want to help create one. I know I don't want to support activism for the sake of activism because I might end up supporting activism for causes I don't want to support. For example, I don't want to support Neo-Nazi political activism. You're going to have to be more clear on what kind of activism you're talking about.

"Participatory alternative to antisocial media"... What? The word "media", in this context is a little tricky for me to define, but I basically define it as the impersonal distribution (as in the sender doesn't necessarily know the people on the receiving end) of content to a group of people. What are you referring to as antisocial media? I know what social media is, content distributed over a network in which any member can contribute content. Think when most people refer to "the media", they are talking about the relatively small group of people who generate content for the majority of other, people who are not currently allowed to produce content distributed on the same network. So, are you saying "the media" is anti social and you want to make a participatory alternative? That already has an alternative, social media, and I don't get how what you're proposing is different in any way. Do you just have a beef with the social media networks that are out there right now so you're calling them "antisocial" media because you don't like them? What are you talking about? The current social media is participatory, so what makes your new "democratic social network" different? If I find a reason that I don't like your social network, would I be justified in calling it an antisocial network? What makes your social new network social media and what makes other networks antisocial media.

If you think that the current social media is antisocial, why would you want the help of social media experts? You're providing an alternative, right. If you're providing an alternative to the bad thing that already exists, why would you want experts working in the field of that bad thing? That makes absolutely no sense.

Returning to activism, what kind of activists are you looking for? Do you want separation of church and state activists or do you want religious right activists? Do you want both of them to work together on a group that each group knows will be supporting the other? If the network is democratic and the separation of church and state activists outnumber the religious right activists, are the religious right activists going to be required to become separation of church and state activists? How do you think that will work out?

The only things that seem to make any sense is that you need some code monkeys to build your site and you want to be able to pay them. Okay... What's the site for and how are you going to pay them?

You said that you need people to help refine and develop the idea. I'd advise that you forget about the other people for now and really work on the idea. All I take from your message is that you want to create a social network that will somehow support some undefined kind of political activism (I'm making the assumption that you're talking about political activism from the context, but that's even pretty sketchy because you could be talking about any actions taken to achieve your undefined goal).

You honestly just sound like you've been listening to way too much Alex Jones and now you're repeating phrases that have no real meanings. Since your brain has heard them so much that it intuits them as meaning "unified concept of a real thing that is good" or "unified concept of a real thing that is bad". Fact is, the words that you are using have more than one meaning and cannot be simultaneously applied while maintaining coherency. I have no idea if what I'm about to say is correct, but I'm just using it as an example to illustrate the point: { There is a country called The Democratic Republic of Congo. The president of the Democratic Republic of Congo is not democratically elected.} Is the a statement that John Brown, the president, is a democratic president true or false? The answer depends on what you mean when you say "democratic". Take a bunch of words like that, try to use the word as a unified concept with that somehow encompasses all the definitions at once, make a sentence with those words, and you come out with phrases sound good like "democratic social network" that have absolutely no coherent meaning and "activism incubator" which tell people you're trying to be active without telling them anything about what you're trying to do.

No offence meant if you weren't making a joke. You just might want to think about what you're trying to say and make sure the words you are using describe it.

Alex Jones is a madman.  This is also not about democratic socialism.  

It's primarily about creating online democracy and community where everyone participates and is engaged, enabling fair policy through fair exchange of ideas through fair airtime and exposure and engagement, and cultivating democratic, egalitarian, and non-exclusionary values, principles, culture, activist movements, etc.

Who would I want to join?  I think it boils down to anyone who realizes that:

- people's human rights and needs and desires often conflict with each other, so logically the only power structures and governing policies that can be considered fair and justified and legitimate in the long run are those crafted democratically by all the people affected and which are fair to everyone without unfairly marginalizing or denying any individual their human rights. 

- the "reasonable person" standard can be used to determine fairness, just like a jury "of your peers."  However, is that a reliable measure of truth and justice when your entire culture is intractably ignorant, illogical, unscientific, disconnected from reality, racist, classist, sexist, imperialist, corporatist and totalitarian?  No, but that's because of everything we are exposed to and not exposed to by the media and in state schools.  Then again, how else could you evaluate fairness?  It's either going to be done by a democratic process or by private power (which is usually more abusive and tyrannical).  Probably the only way to deal with this problem is to start by democratizing media and schools and figuring out other ways to bypass, subvert and undermine the propaganda channels, which can in turn democratize the culture, imbuing people with the values needed to fight for fairness in society.  It's happening right now but rather quite slowly, and private power is fighting hard to take us in the opposite direction.

- fairness in society (by cultivating democracy) in the US is more important now than ever... we are a nuclear power now and our political landscape could quite easily become fascist which would have devastating consequences for the whole world.  Genuine functioning democracy in the US would be globally game changing. 

- thus, working for fairness in information communications technologies, news media, and schools are of critical importance

- working for fairness in social interaction and social control over exchange of ideas is also incredibly important.  Even democracy has its own issues resulting from the social repression of all dissenting ideas, so we should democratically construct and support some structures that allow unpopular ideas to have some exposure.  This doesn't mean promoting thinly-disguised vile radical hatred and violence and oppression coming from the extreme fringe – but rather it means that we need to support unpopular ideas that can overcome the thinly-disguised vile radical hatred and violence and oppression coming from the mainstream and those in power.  This issue of repression of good ideas through popular social censorship is a direct result of our deeply totalitarian, coercive culture which says "submit to authority or suffer violent retribution" and which makes us think "there are things it just wouldn't do to say because they threaten the powerful" and "wouldn't it be so much easier to just go along with the majority even if you are forced to sacrifice your values and integrity?"  

- repression of ideas both though forceful top-down control of media structures (and schools and the workplace and other public spaces) and through the social/cultural means of censorship (cultivated by authoritarian structures in our society) serves to silence most of the really significant creative, insightful, unique and original viewpoints that would have a positive impact on society, and it eliminates any criticism or dissent from the discussion if it has any chance of being effective in changing the status quo and shifting power in an egalitarian direction.

- private centers of power like corporations and similar top-down totalitarian organizations illegitimately govern our lives.  all power structures should have a democratic basis as the prerequisite foundation for fairness. 

Sure, we need to rewrite the whole thing to focus on specific concrete principles, guidelines, structures, function, etc... but we're not halfway there yet.

The second and third sentence are just buzzwords that don't mean anything to me... Can you describe what you're doing more precisely somehow?