When Village Media CEO Jeff Elgie watched social media algorithms amplify racism and toxicity in his hometown of Sault Ste. Marie in Ontario, Canada six years ago, he had a realisation: “It almost felt like it was our responsibility to try to build something better.”
That impulse led Village Media to launch Spaces, a hyperlocal, community social network designed to foster safe, authentic engagement rooted in real neighbourhoods and shared interests. It launched in October 2024 after the idea was delayed due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
In South Africa, Daily Maverick followed a similar path, launching Daily Maverick Connect in August this year to offer its Insider members a virtual space to connect with each other.
These initiatives, cultivating direct audience relationships, represent what scholars have described as exploring “the best means for circumventing social media” prompted by growing dissatisfaction with the major platforms.
Village Media: Social media ‘with the DNA of a news organisation’
For years, news publishers relied heavily on social platforms like Facebook, X, Instagram and Tiktok to reach audiences. Yet, shifting algorithms, decreasing referral traffic and monetisation challenges proved platforms were unreliable partners.
At Village Media, which owns 27 local news sites, the answer was Spaces, a community network in 13 communities with dozens of hubs dedicated to interests like hockey, live music, vintage cars, gardening and photography.
After nearly a year of operation, it has 105,000 unique users and 12,500 fully registered members.
Spaces was designed to nurture meaningful engagement on passion-focused topics. CEO Elgie told Press Gazette: “That was the deal for us with Spaces, that we would treat this with the DNA of a news organisation, meaning we’re not allowing massively inflammatory content, lies, violence et cetera.
“We need humans to be able to moderate this, [but] the moderation requirements are near zero.”
One big difference between Spaces and major social media platforms is that it presents content that is highly organised and in chronological order. “There’s no algorithm that decides I’m going to throw a cat video in every three posts, or something completely irrelevant,” Elgie said.
Spaces has deepened Village Media’s relationships with its communities. Community members use Spaces to convene real-world events, Elgie said.
“For example, we have a vintage car Space called Cruising Queen, because Queen is our main downtown street. And, the host has organised bi-weekly car shows using Spaces.”
Daily Maverick: ‘We felt like it was time to give something back’
Daily Maverick Connect was created as a response to social media’s toxicity, misinformation, and the sense of disillusionment many users were feeling, explained Alet Law, the South African newsbrand’s head of audience development.
Law and her team wanted to provide a safe platform where their paying Daily Maverick Insider members could share knowledge, connect with each other, network, and benefit from each other’s expertise.
Daily Maverick runs on a voluntary membership model, where approximately 1,500 members support the publication financially. Launched in early 2025, it aims to give members a secure, judgment-free space to connect with each other and the newsroom.
Law said: “People in the Insider community are so supportive, they give so much to us, in addition to the financial support… we just felt like it was time to give something back to the community as well.
“And we wanted to create a space for them where they could connect with each other and benefit from each other’s expertise as well.”
Connect members show up differently on the platform. “They show up much more authentically,” Law explains. “It’s not as performative as you often find on social media. People are keen to offer assistance and offer information that might be helpful to other people.”
The environment resembles a forum more than a feed. Members share expertise freely and engage in supportive conversations. “Here, because it’s safe, people are comfortable to share and to be involved in those conversations, which is great,” Law said.
Daily Maverick journalists use the platform for co-creation of journalism with the audience. Law said: “Daily Maverick Connect is such a great platform for having members directly engage with our newsroom, give their input, make suggestions, ask questions, and then for our journalists to either answer them if they can, or build journalism from that.
“That’s the point of it all: how can we be of service to our community and our audience,” Law continued.
“Not just doing audience journalism for the sake of it, but actually for them to benefit from that in some way.”
The business case for building your own social platform
Village Media’s reach-based, ad-supported model requires sufficient audience to monetise, but constantly adding journalists is expensive. It can therefore benefit from reusing user-generated content (UGC) from contributors in Spaces.
Elgie also said Spaces offers a way to reach audiences that might not want to visit news sites every day.
Daily Maverick sees Connect as both a potential member acquisition and retention tool, with people staying because they feel part of a community and feel like they belong, Law said. “We do believe that it is monetisable, because it’s such a safe and toxicity-free environment.”
Both publishers built moderation into their platforms to filter toxic content, but discovered they barely needed it.
Daily Maverick built an AI tool to filter out the worst content, allowing their human community manager to manually moderate the rest.
“We’ve used that tool twice, because there’s just nothing,” Law said. “It’s such an organic, authentic experience, there is no need, no one is being hateful, no one is being toxic.”
Building a new social network from scratch is no small feat. Both Village Media and Daily Maverick emphasised the long-term commitment required to grow user habits and participation.
Village Media’s Elgie cautioned that small publishers unable to commit the time, expenditure, in-house technical teams or sufficient audience reach may find it difficult to replicate.
He noted that it took Village Media nearly two years of research, prototyping, design, wire framing and development before launching Spaces.
“It’ll take us two years to figure out what kind of Spaces work the best, how do we promote them, how do we drive audience?” he said.
“And it’ll take us another year before we get a point where we say, hey, this thing’s really got some legs and it’s taking off.”
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