Some quick thoughts on Ello

This was an email response I sent to my mother, after she forwarded me this Vice article:

I actually got onto this network the other day. They’re going through some growing pains still, so it’s kind of unstable and definitely some of the UI decisions are kinda poor. It’s obviously a network designed by designers for designers. Which is basically a group of straight white guys. One of the interesting criticisms of it from a sociological perspective is how designing something without that kind of diversity in the process produces technology that it tends to limit the users full range of expression, via things like binary gender selection during signup, and fails to consider how people want to control who sees what they say, like via a block button (which as far as I’m aware is still missing).

I’ve just been reading about this particular promise they’ve made; it seems unlikely they’re be able to keep it long-term. They did take VC funding, so it’s pretty likely they’ll be pushed to make money somehow soon enough. And how else are they going to do it than selling data?

I mean, I wish them luck – would be great to have a popular social network that doesn’t sell your data like that, but I remain skeptical that they’re really going to be able to follow through on their promises.