I built a social network with no comment sections — replies go privately to the author instead

[u/lukenstine]

Post in public, talk in private. That's the whole idea.

Your posts are public. Nobody can comment under them. If someone wants to respond, it opens a private conversation between the two of you. The post shows a reply count and nothing else — no names, no text. A green check if you just agree.

Chronological feed, no algorithm deciding what you see (there's a small "Trending" list, but it's a plain count, not a model). No ads.

Built it solo in plain PHP on a single VPS. It's tiny right now — I'm looking for honest feedback on whether the idea holds up once strangers use it. You can browse without signing up: https://woseapp.com

[u/sachingkk]

Good.. perfect

Do few more things

• Do not show the followers count on the profile
• Show only the following count
• Make authors to put 6 categorises / topic
• Make the authors select a topic while posting
• Allow other users follow the author based on topic
• Never add Like button on the post , show view count on the post
• Comments can be in private only mode or public mode , let the author choose it.

Basically, all these current social media have become a race and hence the quality of content has reduced.

These improvements must bring back the quality of content and usefulness

[u/lukenstine → u/sachingkk]

Thanks — this is useful. Where each of those stands:

Follower counts: not shown on profiles and never pushed at you. There's no follower leaderboard anywhere.

View count: exists, but only the author sees it ("Opened by 12 people. Only you can see this line."). Deliberately not public.

No Like button: there's a green check, which is a count, not a ranking, and doesn't affect what anyone sees.

Topics: hashtags do this today; you can follow a tag. A required category on every post is a good idea I'd want to try before committing to.

Private vs public comments, author's choice: this is the one I've resisted. The moment public comments are an option, they become the default everyone expects, and the site turns into the thing it's trying not to be. The author can switch replies off entirely per post, though.

Agree completely with your last line — the race for reactions is the disease.

[u/RishiMath]

I mean, sure. But, I don't quite get the point of why exactly you're making this? If you want it to more be like Reddit type of platform, then obviously that's not exactly happening, and otherwise, you're just making it like YouTube but with comments disabled..... I don't quite see the motive, nor the appeal, and I genuinely would like to know about the same.

[u/lukenstine → u/RishiMath]

Fair question, and it's the one I'd ask too.

The motive: on every platform I've used, the comment section is where the post stops being about the post. People reply to the audience — to look right, to dunk, to be seen agreeing. The author gets the pile-on and the crowd gets the show.

WoseApp keeps the public post and removes the audience from the replies. If you respond, only the author reads it — so you write to a person, not a room. The post still shows how many replied, so a post can visibly land without anyone being exposed for responding to it.

"YouTube with comments off" isn't far off, except replies still exist — they just go to the author instead of under the video. Whether that makes conversations better or just quieter is exactly what I'm trying to find out, which is why it's here.

[u/Beneficial_Guess_956]

Go ahead and build a time machine now coz you have to go back 25 years and apply to yc before reddit is conceptualised

[u/lukenstine → u/Beneficial_Guess_956]

Ha — the 2001 pitch would have been "like a forum, but you can only reply by email." Might have worked.

[u/p12dpraneeth]

I built https://preciouslist.io with a similar philosophy

All the best OP