Posted on August 29, 2022
Can Amino Be Saved Before It's Too Late?
Alright here we go.
A first blog in what…four years. It feels insanely jarring to be writing a
post on a platform that I left such a long time ago after witnessing the
neglect that was going on. But my shock aside, let’s get into why I am
writing this post in the first place. You probably have read the title of
this post by now and so I will give you the answer you came here for. The
short answer is no. Amino is already in such a state to where it is too late
to save. Its original developers, Narvii, abandoned the platform and
MediaLab stepped in to acquire it. If you do not know who or what MediaLab
is, they are a multi-billion-dollar corporation that controls a lot of major
social networking and information outlets. They are most well-known for
platforms such as Kik and Imgur. And in recent years they acquired Amino
from Narvii after Narvii promptly jumped ship and left their app for dead
more or less. Why is MediaLab acquiring Amino a problem?
Well, the answer is that it’s not necessarily the acquisition that is the
central issue.
The problem is that Amino was already dying well before MediaLab had
acquired the platform. MediaLab’s acquisition just exacerbated the existing
issues because, as with any giant techno-corporate company, money is always
going to be the main goal. Narvii had already severely damaged their own app
in the years following 2017 because of wanting to maximize profit and
eventually ended up not only destroying the unique user experience that
Amino used to offer, but also wrecked their support staff system on top of
it all. Bots, scammers, and more started becoming more and more problematic
as time went on, but any complaints to the developers at Narvii fell on deaf
ears. Sometime before the acquisition by MediaLab, the CEO of the Amino App,
Benjamin Anderson, walked away from the platform and Amino was rendered an
orphan. The greed combined with the general apathy for the future of the app
has led us to where we are now. A hyper-corporate disaster that is nothing,
but a shell stuffed with advertisements, malicious bots, unnecessary
features, terrible interfacing, and many other nightmares. There is
basically nothing left.
So why am I writing this post?
Well, I am writing it because, despite the fall of Amino, I want to try and
build a platform in its ruin. Even though Amino has been treated like dog
shit over the years and abandoned to die on its own, I genuinely miss what
Amino was during its golden age. It was simple, elegant, and free. There
were no ads, antagonistic ranking systems, useless overlays, etc. back then.
It was easy to get around and see things. Communities were run far more
responsibly, and administration teams had a better set of tools. Now Amino
is basically the laughing stock of social media. It has committed every
single sin that other social media platforms have, plus some. The state that
Amino was left in unironically makes Discord, Twitter, and Reddit look like
angels in comparison. And that’s saying a lot since those three platforms
that I listed are getting worse and worse by the day. And in general the
sociL media market has only been devolving. TikTok is a prime example in
this case.
The solution to replacing Amino is either to rebuild it from the ground
up or mod the application to work with custom clients.
I will say this once, and once only: Custom clients are going to be much
more restrictive and difficult than rebuilding the experience from the
ground up. It also means that if Amino itself eventually gets shut down
someday, those custom clients become completely useless. For this reason, I
am very much for just rebuilding the entire platform from the ground up, but
with freedom and security in mind. One of the biggest issues currently in
social media development is that everything is centralized and monetized.
Ever wonder why you never have to pay to use Instagram, YouTube, and the
like? That’s because YOU are the payment. Your data, content, advertisement
viewing rate, etc. are all generating cash for these corporations. A lot of
people do NOT understand this, and they need to. While you might not care
about what happens to your data (classic “Well I have nothing to hide”
sentiment), malicious parties are more than happy to do jack all with your
data. Eventually this leads to tracking, targeted ads, data trading, social
engineering, etc.
In rebuilding Amino, I envision a decentralized network that is free of
monetization and advertisements.
How is it run or supported? The install base (us) will keep it running with
our own efforts. The new platform that I have in mind would run entirely off
of self-hosted connection points that would interconnect to build a
federated network of sorts that sit under an umbrella. Every single user
would have their own profile that would more or less be their very own
website. I know that many people don’t have time to build websites or are
too intimidated by the task which is why I am building a profile interface
framework from SCRATCH that can easily be copy and pasted to generate a
brand-new user profile that mimics classic Amino. With profile generation
handled, blogging and chatting could be with essential HTML and IRC clients
and web embeds. Amino back in the day was basically WordPress + Chatzy more
or less. It was a place where people could access a news feed, a forum, and
instant messaging chat rooms. These are the primary components that made
Amino what it was. As time went on, Narvii started to add more and more
useless bullshit that eventually detracted from what the app was about. It
used to be a place where people could manage their creations AND interact
with others. This allowed for things like video game tournaments, anime
drawing contests, blogging series, interactive fanfiction, etc. This is why
I say that Amino Classic was something of its own kind. No other platform or
application had actually attempted to do what early Amino was doing. And so
now, seven years later, as an adult, I want to revive that experience that I
had when I was a teenager. It helped me find friends, let me hone my
creativity, and even encouraged me on the path to my current
profession.
So, to get this platform rebuilding started I have decided to start
building from the outside towards the inside.
This means users first, overhead second. I want to build a network that has
a greater focus on the individuals who make up the community rather than the
community framework itself. Profiles will be developed which will all serve
as their own sub-domains and once there are enough, I can start constructing
indexes and a framework around them that will, more or less, create the
platform. And in doing this, everyone has full control over how their
profiles look, function, etc. along with all of their data. No giant
mega-corporation can come and shove advertisements in our faces or tell us
to get lost. We will own what we make, what we share, and how we connect.
Everyone will be able to have their own subdomain which is, as I have stated
in previous posts, your own piece of internet property basically. You could
literally transform your entire user profile into a hobbyist website,
business website, etc. whatever you want. You call the shots. Not a company.
And what’s even better is that you get to share your home of expression with
others on a freely interconnected network that you can join or leave at any
time and still retain everything you have published or organized. Below is a
sample of an app container I built that mimics the interface of 2016, Amino.
This app container would be like a client of sorts that can access user
profiles and any public spaces that are open on the new platform. And while
the default profile will look like the one shown below, you would be free to
make it look COMPLETELY different. Want buttons in different spots? Want to
remove a section? Want to add links in a new section? The choices are yours
my friend! That is the beauty of web design. If you are interested in being
an early supporter of this project, feel free to direct message me here on
the Mega Man amino. If we can even get 20 users created within this new
network by November, we will already be light years ahead of where the Amino
app is at now. No ads, no bullshit, no monetary crap. Just real freedom for
hobbyists like you and me!
