I live in a town with around 115,000 residents who communicate using a vast number of Facebook groups and other social networks. My experience of these networks is that they are not always happy places to be with members quick to attack one another, promote their businesses, search for plumbers or complain about our town’s shortcomings. Very often members leave after a short period because they posted a comment that launched attacks on them.

I believe social networking has a lot to answer for, particularly in American Politics but I firmly believe, structured correctly it could be a force for good… and I plan to prove it.

I am in the process of building an altruistic social network for our town, with objectives that include fair moderation (using AI and human intervention) and initiatives that bring the community together in a positive constructive fashion. The network will also enable members to post pictures of cats and sofas as they would on Facebook, but they can chat in a well supervised and transparently moderated environment.

There is however another plus for members. I believe they can both save money and effortlessly raise funds for charitable initiatives.

Wouldn’t this be effective altruism??