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Ask HN: Would you pay for a privacy-first social platform?

sammiej Saturday, January 10, 2026

I'm researching demand for an end-to-end encrypted social platform focused on private groups (family/friends) rather than public feeds.

Core thesis: "They don't own you" is becoming a movement. People want: - E2E encryption (platform can't read content) - True deletion (cryptographic, not just "marked as deleted") - Subscription model (no ads, no data mining) - Open source (verifiable claims)

The gap: Signal is for messaging, Discord isn't private, Facebook is surveillance capitalism. Nothing serves the "private social groups" use case with real privacy.

Before building, I need to validate if this is a real pain point or just something that sounds nice but nobody would actually switch for.

2-min anonymous survey: https://forms.gle/bfZYPfxMUBCc1iACA

Honest feedback appreciated—especially if the answer is "this wouldn't work because X."

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