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We Need More Alternatives to Facebook

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Re: We Need More Alternatives to Facebook

#131

Post by type0 »

anigbrowl wrote: post #102
Bahamut wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there is space for an alternative - keep in mind that that doesn't mean that they have to be hugely popular. For example, some online communities I am a part of subsist mainly in chat rooms, or forums. Those communities are so tightly knit in many ways. While a lot of us are also friends on FB, our ties in these communities are still very strong.

I'm in some such communities too, but efforts to get anything going on other sites outside fb come to nothing because you just end up with more social media to keep track of for no real benefit - you can't do anything sufficiently interesting that you can't already do on FB, and you've lost all the network effects for content discovery, rapid dissemination of news or sufficiently entertaining content etc. OK you gain…

> I assume everything I do online is visible to spies and corporations anyway unless I go to the bother of running Tor

Not quite sure what's your point here but most subject specific forums on the web have a huge bunch of users with nicknames and not their real names. With the same reasoning you could also say: no need to close the door to WC when you go there to do your needs since people outside know what you're doing there anyway! If you use VPN and a lot less of your personal information will be sold to advertisers.

Re: We Need More Alternatives to Facebook

#132

Post by wcummings »

jancsika wrote: post #123
tdb7893 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People here seem to always want their social media to be decentralized but I doubt that would happen unless you could convince the standard consumer that it's actually better, and I think that's a hard argument to make to them. When I talk to people about what their solution looks like it tends to sacrifice usability, which no consumer wants to sacrifice

To be specific-- the current choice is between well-understood, scalable, battle-tested centralized designs and half-baked, work-in-progress, decentralized designs that don't work very well. Example-- building a centralized Facebook replacement is doable. Some idealistic developer can sit down one summer, break the problem into little pieces and iterate on it. If enough other developers and investors get interested,…

Youre setting the bar too high. RSS support in "microblogging" apps (including Facebook, ideally) gets you a simple federated social network. Discoverability could be handled by any number of third party aggregators, like Google. Publish your email to receive "DMs".

Something can be decentralized without bleeding edge p2p crypto tech.

Re: We Need More Alternatives to Facebook

#133

Post by skewart »

marmaduke wrote: post #110
skewart wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm assuming that people participating in this network are all using a new kind of email client designed to work with these feeds. On the receiver or "follower" side of things the client would filter emails coming from addresses you follow into a separate social feed box. All your other emails (e.g. from other random people, or the notification that the shoes you just bought online have been shipped) would be display…

Agreed that the existing infrastructure is sufficient. My main question is how to support both direct and indirect (via a "social" client (as if email wasn't social)) usage in a sustainable fashion. Otherwise I don't see it gaining traction.

Yeah, supporting both uses would be critical. I think you're right that making sure it could interop with existing email clients in as painless a way as possible would be critical.

I'm not sure how much of a chance it would have of succeeding (I'd like it, but would anyone else?). One thing that gives me a bit of hope is the rising popularity recently of email newsletters on specific topics or from specific writers/thought-leaders.

Re: We Need More Alternatives to Facebook

#134

Post by type0 »

slim wrote: post #56
godelski wrote: post #47

It seems to me that a social network is one of those natural monopolies. It works so well because so many people use it. Remember the big reason many social network alternatives failed, no one else was on them. There are some things (very few in fact) that just work better as monopolies. But that just means you need to regulate it differently. And there's an interesting discussion, how best to regulate natural monopo…

Nationalise Social Networks

And what would you call that National social network, Fascistbook?

Re: We Need More Alternatives to Facebook

#135

Post by type0 »

danellis wrote: post #73
Eerie wrote: post #31

No, we don't need More Alternatives to Facebook. We need Less Alternatives to Facebook. That is, Zero Alternatives to Facebook AND Zero Facebook. Stop wasting your time!

Why is keeping in touch with friends in one place online wasting time?

More like waisting your freedom, integrity, privacy etc...

Re: We Need More Alternatives to Facebook

#136

Post by type0 »

anigbrowl wrote: post #107
Eerie wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook is not about keeping in touch with friends, it is about selling your views to advertisers by maximizing the time you spend on the site. To keep in touch with friends you should use a fucking mail list.

So anyone who doesn't do things your way is wrong, OK. Thanks for clearing that up.

But forcing others to use unethically driven website by the means of social pressure is even more wrong. Two wrongs don't make you right.

Re: We Need More Alternatives to Facebook

#137

Post by kentonv »

rpdillon wrote: post #120
simplehuman wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The tension/problem as I see it is this: we need distributed networks, where people run their own services, and are servers as well as clients, but at the same time a large proportion of people do not or cannot run their own services. cloudron.io is tackling this very problem. sandstorm was trying to solve this as well but the project is not active anymore.

https://github.com/sandstorm-io/sandstorm Looks pretty active.

It's not as active as it used to be, but yeah, we're still working on it.

See also: https://sandstorm.io/news/

Re: We Need More Alternatives to Facebook

#138

Post by crdoconnor »

type0 wrote: post #121
crdoconnor wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>People here seem to always want their social media to be decentralized but I doubt that would happen unless you could convince the standard consumer that it's actually better, and I think that's a hard argument to make to them. We need a well designed pretty home server that's as easy to set up and use as a smartphone. That's all, really. The killer app would be ultra fast backup from your phone and laptop over a lo…

> We need a well designed pretty home server that's as easy to set up What do you do about all those people whose ISPs don't allow them to run public facing server on residential connection?

VPN, maybe.

Re: We Need More Alternatives to Facebook

#139

Post by closeparen »

kem wrote: post #13

This touches on so many issues at once I don't even know where to start (private versus public, social medial popularity cycles, distributed versus centralized services...) I think it's not just an alternative to Facebook we need, it's a distributed paradigm, with a distributed network, with distributed services. The tension/problem as I see it is this: we need distributed networks, where people run their own service…

Facebook as a website builder hasn't been true since the news feed appeared.

Its main value-add at this point is discovery and messaging by real name and social graph (you can find people you met in real life but don't know well enough to exchange phone numbers).

Secondarily, it's a long form town-hall forum on, for example, campus-specific pages where students discuss goings-on and outrage-of-the-week.

In distant third, it's a way for people to broadcast content to their followers. Really only important life milestones, travel photos, and political outrage are socially acceptable here.

Website publishing is barely even used anymore. No one fills in a public profile. A specific person's Facebook page is just a WHERE clause on the larger News Feed.

At least, these are my observations as a Millenal going on 10 years of Facebook membership.

Re: We Need More Alternatives to Facebook

#140

Post by Sir_Substance »

skewart wrote: post #133
marmaduke wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed that the existing infrastructure is sufficient. My main question is how to support both direct and indirect (via a "social" client (as if email wasn't social)) usage in a sustainable fashion. Otherwise I don't see it gaining traction.

Yeah, supporting both uses would be critical. I think you're right that making sure it could interop with existing email clients in as painless a way as possible would be critical. I'm not sure how much of a chance it would have of succeeding (I'd like it, but would anyone else?). One thing that gives me a bit of hope is the rising popularity recently of email newsletters on specific topics or from specific writers/t…

>I'm not sure how much of a chance it would have of succeeding (I'd like it, but would anyone else?)

It may, because it doesn't have to build it's own network effect, it can piggyback on emails existing userbase, which is basically everyone.

I was talking with my housemate, we came up with the idea of a combination push and pull following mechanism. I can offer you the option to follow me by sending you a mail with the X-SOCIAL header and a "follow offer" header content, plus a really simple mail body that says "hey, substance just asked you to join their social updates list. it seems you don't have a social client, to get one". If you've got a social client installed already, the body gets hidden and you get the follow offer in your social client.

However, you could also send me a mail with the X-SOCIAL "follow request" header, and a similar introductory body: "Hey, skewart wants to keep in touch with you via social mail. Download a social client to connect with them". If I have a social client installed, I get a friend request instead.

The great thing is, your email inbox has a timestamped record of all these requests, so it's like a somewhat unreliable replayable social history, which means if I don't have a social client, I can read the introductory body, go grab a social client and come back, and it will re-parse my inbox and offer me the same follow request, no need for you to resend it.

God damn it, now I like this idea.

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