Pivot - Phase 1
An admin announcement regarding the future of Ruqqus has been long overdue.
We believe, as primary maintainers of an open-source project, our focus should be developing software and not moderating content that hinders project growth, community, and opportunity. We still believe in the mission of building open source software that empowers freedom of expression and online discourse but our execution thus far has faced major setbacks. For the sake of project longevity, we believe it is best to take a software-first approach (Ghost, WordPress, Discourse, etc.).
It is not viable long-term for three hobbyist developers to host high-risk content (death threats, incitement to violence, etc) as we risk our livelihoods to cancellation, real-world harassment, and the like. Quite simply, it's not worth the personal risk.
So, we will be focusing our time and effort on the software side of things. Let people host their own communities, with whatever content (and level of responsibility) they want. We will happily build the software to enable that. We do not expect massive adoption of such a niche product, but it is something we very much enjoy working on. There are a couple of self-hosted instances that have pioneered cloning Ruqqus for their own purposes.
We will gradually roll out changes to foster this mission. This is but one part in a number of multiple moving pieces.
Before we describe those changes, we'd like to go over the project's history, purpose, problems, etc.
Why Ruqqus was born
In June 2019, we saw an opportunity to create a lifeboat for communities threatened by closed platforms. We set out to build an open platform that could be a new home to those displaced by more restrictive platforms. Here is a brief timeline of happenings so far.
- July 2019 - The first version of Ruqqus goes live
- August 2019 - User base expands beyond the founding team
- February 2020 - The beta version officially launches
- May 2020 - Ruqqus is shared outside of early adopter circles
- July 2020 - Week-long dumpster fires caused by explosive growth
- September 2020 - Ruqqus passes 50,000 sign ups
- December 2020 - Community donations exceed server expenses
- February 2021 - The Year in Review is published
- May 2021 - Ruqqus forks appear and gain traction
- Now - Pivot announcement is published
What we accomplished
For a hot dumpster fire held together with hopes and dreams, quite a lot actually.
- 80,000 sign ups
- 600,000 posts
- 1,800,000 comments
- 17,000,000 votes
Lessons Learned
What the market wants and needs
- People seeking independent communities do not necessarily need a free(er) clone of competing closed platforms. A clone can face many setbacks such as culture clash, disagreements with the administration, and unsavory optics (all of which severely hinder growth and adoption). Regardless if you solve these issues, the market still may not desire a clone at the time of launch. If the market needs a mode of transportation, do not offer another car. Build the jetpack.
- Finding product-market fit is incredibly difficult. In fact, most startups will never achieve product-market fit. You can spend all day asking customers what they want, build it, and have nobody show up. Be wary of faux product/market fit. Spikes in product adoption derived from competitor blunders, media attention, etc. can fizzle out. A few months after the launch of our beta in February 2020, we experienced explosive growth which, unfortunately, stagnated over time.
Community is everything
- Community is the most integral part of a small, budding social platform. In the early days, you have to define the community's culture and ethos. Be upfront about the standards and inform community newcomers of these standards. It is said that "well-kept gardens die by pacifism"; if you do not actively plant flowers, weeds will crop up. If you do not make an effort to pull these weeds, the remaining flowers cultivated in your garden will wither and die.
- Centralize the discussion. It is detrimental for a tiny community to disperse its population into sub-communities. Contain the few members you do have within a tight-knit area. Focus all discussion on a few topics rather than spreading it thinly over every possible niche. You are better off restricting community discussion to a few broad subjects than appeasing every niche. On the surface, the latter may temporarily satisfy everyone but it is a trojan horse that will bite you in the ass later down the road. It is not sustainable for a healthy, active community.
- Do things that do not necessarily scale. You cannot rely on your "bullet-proof" algorithms for every little edge case that might crop up. You do not need a TikTok-tier recommendation engine for a platform of a hundred daily active members. Get your hands dirty and curate the best user-generated content. This encourages quality submissions, improves optics, and shines a light on content that algorithms may miss out on. Tend to your garden.
Insights for entrepreneurs
- Focus on building products, not company building.
- Analyze meaningful metrics. Retention is a better indicator of product-market fit than sign-ups. Are people infatuated with your creation? Do they love the product and tell others about it? Do not bullshit yourself with these questions.
- Do not repeat failures of the past and expect different results. This sounds like common sense but bias can delude founders into thinking "ours is different". Tweaking the brand color and mission statement is not enough.
- Community building is extremely difficult. If you can start with an existing community of some sort, you will save a lot of time and headache.
- Explore utilities that do not require critical mass. Imgur and Pinterest are great examples. Both are useful tools with and without a critical mass of users. Once you have achieved a critical mass of users, explore baking social features into your product.
- Do not rely on external factors (competitor blunders, media attention, etc) to make your product "take off". If you are patiently waiting for company X to perform Y, consider pivoting.
How this impacts the community
Moderation Updates
As we are steering the .com (this site) in a direction that showcases Ruqqus the software, we will be tightening our rules on violence, harassment, etc. While we have been lenient in the past, we simply do not have the time and energy to moderate content that reflects poorly on the community. As discussed above, the personal risk is too high.
The following will result in a permanent ban and removal of content:
- Calls for violence, as announced last week
- Harassment including user ping-spam, user stalking, and malicious off-site/IRL interactions.
At the end of the day, this is an open-source project fueled by passion. We are here to develop and grow the project so that
anyone can launch a community and bypass censorship. Violence and harassment impedes these goals and has no place here. If you do anything that makes this project "not fun" for people involved, we reserve the right to remove your content and ban you from the website.
We will be publishing more announcements like this in the near future.
Development priorities
With a renewed focus on software first, we are trying to develop Ruqqus (the software) to be as "idiot-proof" as possible. With this in mind, we will be working towards:
- An easier experience launching your own Ruqqus instance - as close to "one-click" as we can get it
- Improved administrative tools for instance owners (originally we didn't put much effort into these, since we weren't expecting other people to have to use them)
- Options for instance owners to integrate user accounts with the main Ruqqus instance, preserving usernames across "the Ruqqus network" of sites (think "sign in with ruqqus")
- Other options for federating content and integration across Ruqqus instance servers
In conclusion
We are incredibly grateful to have experienced this community with you. From the handful of people who supported us at inception to the loyal fans who participated through the multitude of flaming dumpster fires, it has been an unreal experience.
Thank you to the contributing developers who volunteered their free time to push code and squash bugs.
Thank you to those who relentlessly shared content with the community.
Thank you to those who donated time and financial support to make all the dumpster fires more bearable.
-The mismanagement
