Yope raises $12.3M to build a private social network without algorithms or ads
Focused on private groups of friends and family, Yope has raised $12.3 million in seed funding from investors betting that the future of social networking lies in small, private communities powered by messaging, photo sharing, and, blergh, AI features designed to strengthen real-world relationships. It sounds kinda like old-school Facebook meets the fediverse, but with AI.
https://techcrunch.com/2026/07/22/yope-raises-12-3m-to-build-a-private-social-network-without-algorithms-or-ads/Open linkView original on piefed.social
30 replies
I bet 7 liters of my own blood that they will 100% use algorithms, show ads and have subscription grade accounts. The second they smell any profits is the second they sell out. Greed consumes all.
The only question I have is what are you going to do with all that extra blood?
I wonder how many bets like these we could find on old twitter posts to remind people of the horrendous thing they forgot they have to do now
Don't most people only have 5 litres?
He could harvest it more slowly over time, we regenerate it. Hell he might already have that ready to go in the fridge.
That's the joke
Do you think sorting by "Hot" on Lemmy isn't an algorithm?
the fediverse works because its not trying to make money. if this company raised money already that means people believe they will see a return. so how does it make money?
i cant read the article because i guess techcrinch has i trusive ads and doesnt like my ad blocker
That and VC, apparently.
Lotsa luck!
*stage whisper*: It’ll never work
Well, It'll work for the founder(s) who will probably sell the company at the height of the platform's popularity for stupid amounts of money.
The new owners (or the OG VC investors) will want a return on their investment though, of course, and the platform will rapidly enshitify pushing out the userbase. Or maybe the users will just deal with it because of the network effect and all. Eitherway the founder(s) will have gotten rich off the sale so they don't care anymore which is pretty much the only goal in founding a company at this stage of capitalism
"premium, subscription-based experience for power users", lmao
That's weird. I'm running FF with noscript and ublock origin and am able to read it. But anyway to answer your question it looks like they will have basic and premium user/group types, with the latter being paid.
I use Adguard Home and my browser has uBlock Origin and I can read it just fine, but I suspect it's a regional thing. Some countries may allow blocking because of an adblocker whereas some don't. Most of my country's news outlets now say "accept ads and cookies or reject and pay money", and they're starting to be able to block the reading mode workaround.
It's interesting, when I first opened the article, I was denied because adblock, but I clicked it again and it loaded the second time. They may be A/B testing something or it could be it really didn't like that my initial click was a fresh incognito tab was too sanitized. Who knows.
Fediverse:
A website without algorithms is like food without chemicals. It cant exist.
I think they mean harmful, manipulative algorithms, not
if A < B. But either way you may be right :)https://hunaba.github.io/Bettermotherfuckingwebsite/
Cool. And how does the font get drawn? Magic? Telekinesis? How does it know where to position the text? Or what text to make a hyperlink?
An algorythm is simply a repeatable set of instructions to achive an outcome. They can be as simple or complex as you want them to be. Facebook uses an algorythm to decided what it is going to serve, this dosent mean its the only algorythm on the site though.
There's also federated social media. If anyone needs a primer, I made a video on it. No AI. No Ads. Just great communities and human moderation.
Social networks need to be big to work. Power users are a minority. So a social network funded by subscriptions of power users is bound to fail.
This obviously is an investor SCAM, and/or they are just lying and plan to do ad-funded free-to-use once they grew big enough.
Data scraper.
The thing I like about social media is that no social media has the answer to what's wrong with all social media but you can bet everyone on social media loves their version of social media and believes everyone should use that social media.
Thats gotta be some money laundering scheme, i bet it'll never release.
So, a group chat.
So it literally is just a fancy group chat. Or I guess a singular feed of multiple group chats...
Without algorithms it won't exist.
AI features designed to strengthen relationships, but has no algorithms.
DOA.