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DeleteFacebook: Perspective from Mastodon

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Re: DeleteFacebook: Perspective from Mastodon

#111

Post by lucideer »

nothrabannosir wrote: post #82

For the life of me I can't remember where I originally read this quote, but it forever changed my perspective of FB. Paraphrased: "Facebook is 3 things: the wall, the messaging, and an automatically updating rolodex." Many apps fill 1 and/or 2, but nothing satisfies #3. There is no alternative. For better or for worse: I want to stay in touch with people I've met in the oddest places. In the middle of bumsquash Urugu…

> nothing satisfies #3. There is no alternative.

For me at least, there is one app that's starting to mitigate #3 (if not specifically "fill" the gap): WhatsApp. Granted, it's also owned by Facebook, so we're almost back at square one, but it's still an interesting case simply because it doesn't fill the gap, but rather works around it. Which gives me a bit more hope that other tools could too.

WhatsApp does two things:

1. Creates a network from your (possibly completely offline) "rolodex" (phone contact list). And augments these contacts with info specific to their ecosystem.

2. Adds discovery. Through groups, I can connect with new contacts. Similar to Facebook's "suggest friend" feature.

My general point here is the an autoupdating rolodex is only required in a closed ecosystem. WhatsApp does do it's level best to close off its ecosystem, but it's a different paradigm to Facebook, and one currently dependent on existing phone numbers, so it ends up a little more open, and for me seems like a nice demo of how hooking into existing networks (people's saved contact lists) can get you pretty far.

Re: DeleteFacebook: Perspective from Mastodon

#112

Post by riffic »

badminton1 wrote: post #38

Sounds good in principle but how would mastodon scale to billions of accounts and maintain data centers around the world?

Anyone (or any organization) can self-host their own open source mastodon instance. The way it scales is the same way there are billions of email accounts - federation and an open protocol.

Re: DeleteFacebook: Perspective from Mastodon

#113

Post by nopreserveroot »

Goronmon wrote: post #103
nopreserveroot wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EDIT: Ads bother me because they are a security hole, so you're saying I should only visits sites without them? Please.

If your point was about security then you should have stated that. It seems unhelpful to assume that someone responding to your post is a mind-reader.

If the reason the ads bother me is relevant to your point, you should have stated that.

Re: DeleteFacebook: Perspective from Mastodon

#114

Post by pound »

egypturnash wrote: post #109
pound wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Democracy is not in danger, this is exactly what democracy is. Like it or not but he is quite a telling representative of a big part of the population. And democracy means majority rules. As simple as that. Consider it in light of 80-20 %% rule.

> And democracy means majority rules. As simple as that. Popular vote totals: 62,984,825: Trump 65,853,516: Clinton Vote weights, per state, due to the electoral college: https://theconversation.com/whose-votes-count-the-least-in-t... Also of course there are things like gerrymandering and voter suppression to consider. Democracy is a pretty complicated mess.

That's not about democracy per se, that's electoral college/states specifics.

Still democracy in general is exactly "majority rules". In democratic society of 100 people opinion of 51 would be enough to trump and ignore whatever remaining 49 want.

Re: DeleteFacebook: Perspective from Mastodon

#115

Post by buvanshak »

nothrabannosir wrote: post #106
vanderZwan wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, I think this is more a problem of perception than anything else. For one thing, loss aversion makes us think we'll miss things way more than we'll do (see also: FOMO). Losing contact with people mostly involves not thinking about them. If you don't think about them, you don't miss them either. Friends come and go in life, it's natural. And if you did miss them, you'd put in work to keep in touch through oth…

> Losing contact with people mostly involves not thinking about them. If you don't think about them, you don't miss them either. This is so far removed from how I interact with the world around me that I have a hard time empathising. I’ll keep it scientific and factual: more than once, I’ve gone back to a place I visited over a decade ago. I went on Facebook, found the person that used to live there, got in touch, an…

>The crucial point here is that I can’t tell in advance which places, until I decide to go.

You should have the foresight to write down their contact details. You meet a person, exchange contact details. Save it in your phone or cloud or what ever. Is that too hard? Will you run out of storage space if you save contact info for every person you meet? But hey, that requires a moments thought. Am I going to have to contact this person? No, we can't spent working a couple of neurons for that thought. I think people should use their heads more. To exercise fore sight. To actually remember birth dates etc, to plan things with out constantly "updating" on a mobile phone/social media...

Re: DeleteFacebook: Perspective from Mastodon

#116

Post by avoidit »

nothrabannosir wrote: post #82

For the life of me I can't remember where I originally read this quote, but it forever changed my perspective of FB. Paraphrased: "Facebook is 3 things: the wall, the messaging, and an automatically updating rolodex." Many apps fill 1 and/or 2, but nothing satisfies #3. There is no alternative. For better or for worse: I want to stay in touch with people I've met in the oddest places. In the middle of bumsquash Urugu…

>> For better or for worse

Its definitely the latter. Not because there is something inherently bad about staying in touch. It is because you do so despite the knowledge that you are not doing it at zero cost to others who care about their privacy. Analogy: I wish I could just throw all my garbage over into my neighbors premises rather than walk all the way down to the recycle bin. But I don't. I am actually violating their personal space. By using Facebook, you are also violating the privacy of folks who disagree with your view, and this is now open knowledge.

And things don't even out if my neighbors are also doing the same to their neighbors over on the other side (but, but, everyone is on Facebook!). Ultimately, all of us will end up living amidst a pile of stinking garbage, which is an excellent analogy to what is happening with social networks today.

Re: DeleteFacebook: Perspective from Mastodon

#117

Post by rainbowmverse »

godelski wrote: post #30

So I question the sustainability of these platforms? How are they supported when they have sufficient mass? If they aren't gathering data on users and selling ads then how are they generating revenue?

Both Mastodon instances I use are run by people working in tech and have limited registration. I doubt it's a huge burden, but I'd help spread a Patreon/Liberapay if they started one.

Re: DeleteFacebook: Perspective from Mastodon

#118

Post by rainbowmverse »

egypturnash wrote: post #73
godelski wrote: post #30

So I question the sustainability of these platforms? How are they supported when they have sufficient mass? If they aren't gathering data on users and selling ads then how are they generating revenue?

User payments. Mostly via Patreon. Some are also small servers run purely for the hell of it; if you keep the user count low it really doesn’t cost much to keep one running. These instances are of course more vulnerable to their owner being hit by a bus or whatever and not having shared their keys with anyone. Less so once account migration lands, and everyone’s gotten off their butts and upgraded their instances to…

mastodon.rocks is the saddest story. They had no backups, and lost the database upgrading to the version that would have let its thousands of users back up their own accounts.

Re: DeleteFacebook: Perspective from Mastodon

#119

Post by tunesmith »

I don't care about events, but I'd like my friends and weak ties to easily be able to keep up with what's going on with me. The only alternatives I can think of is signing them up all for a mailing list, or starting a website/blog. But if I don't want my blog to be public, I'm faced with doing something like setting up a wordpress blog with membership, and asking them all to register and sign in to see my semi-private blog.

Unless there's a free / open-source blog system with a decentralized federated SSO system, where everyone can choose to friend up (probably one-way, not two-way) to follow each other's feeds? I suppose like mastodon, but for long-form or free-form writing?

Re: DeleteFacebook: Perspective from Mastodon

#120

Post by mhb »

avoidit wrote: post #116
nothrabannosir wrote: post #82

For the life of me I can't remember where I originally read this quote, but it forever changed my perspective of FB. Paraphrased: "Facebook is 3 things: the wall, the messaging, and an automatically updating rolodex." Many apps fill 1 and/or 2, but nothing satisfies #3. There is no alternative. For better or for worse: I want to stay in touch with people I've met in the oddest places. In the middle of bumsquash Urugu…

>> For better or for worse Its definitely the latter. Not because there is something inherently bad about staying in touch. It is because you do so despite the knowledge that you are not doing it at zero cost to others who care about their privacy. Analogy: I wish I could just throw all my garbage over into my neighbors premises rather than walk all the way down to the recycle bin. But I don't. I am actually violatin…

For better or worse, I consider myself a fairly principled person. That is, I’ve chosen to live my life in a way that reflects my convictions. ... I’ve known that Facebook, the company, doesn’t line up with my politics for a while and have written about (almost 2 years ago) how uncomfortable the site makes me feel.

On Leaving Facebook: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16640855

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