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Towards a world without Facebook

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Re: Towards a world without Facebook

#141

Post by tcpabc123 »

rootlocus wrote: post #59
seattle_spring wrote: post #38

Boy this is getting old. I hope FB dies for no other reason than for HN to get real content again instead of the same old tired anti FB crap that's dominated the front page for the last 2 weeks.

Yeah! Any technology that affects the lives of millions of people in potential harmful ways should die because it gets to the front page of my favourite news aggregator TWO days in a row!

any negative facebook article gets front page, its been that way for years. the issue is that literally nothing new gets said

Re: Towards a world without Facebook

#142

Post by pmlnr »

Moru wrote: post #125
gurrone wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would like to add: Do they understand that it's impossible to delete anything that got commited to the block chain once a block is accepted? I mean at least if they think about a blockchain in the sense of the Bitcoin blockchain. Implementing a deletion of prior blocks is an interesting problem.

I expect that is exactly the point, no more "censoring overlords" :-)

"People are stashing irrevocable child porn links, dox, copyright infringement, and leaked state secrets in the blockchain" - https://boingboing.net/2018/03/19/cant-block-the-signal.html

Sometimes it's not about Big Bad Censoring Governments.

Re: Towards a world without Facebook

#143

Post by allannienhuis »

ColinWright wrote: post #110
allannienhuis wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

on the first point - I'm not looking for new friends or to promote any of my own views. I'm looking to get birthday party pictures and the occasional meme from my existing friends and family. Like most people I think - I post pretty rarely, but like to comment from time to time on other people's posts/content. I agree it's a chicken-egg problem. But there has to be enough value in it for people like me to be worth th…

> ... I'm looking to get birthday party pictures and the occasional meme from my existing friends and family. Noted. Mastodon really is a twitter substitute, not a FB replacement. For these things you're right - there is currently no FB substitute (at least not that I know of, I'd be happy to be proven wrong). We wonder if Mastodon can become that. > I treat anything I post on facebook as 'public', regardless of my p…

> "Mastodon really is a twitter substitute, not a FB replacement."

That's interesting, because I'm one of those that never really 'got' twitter. I _think_ the main difference is the distinction between the relationships - 'follower' is different than 'friend'. Following seems to be more impersonal, and so Twitter seems to be more about public information feed from people that think they have something interesting to say (like an rss feed on a blog). Facebook seems to be more about sharing things/stories/events with your friends/acquaintances, although it does have the extra layer there of corporate and celebrity accounts that are followed as well. For me the second category of stuff has been in the 'nice to have' category; it's not why I log on a check my FB feed. I just never found any content worth consuming on twitter - I go to other communities (like HN) or use rss (Feedly) for that sort of stuff.

Re: Towards a world without Facebook

#144

Post by nkkollaw »

I tried to follow the article, but I don't get what the blockchain technology has to do with a social network.

Also, given how innefficient Bitcoin became with just a few transactions, how could the thing handle the billion of pictures that get shared every day?

Re: Towards a world without Facebook

#145

Post by harryf »

Yoric wrote: post #74
sharpercoder wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

simpler is not directly needed, as Facebook already reaches the minimum viable simplicity for many functionalities. More compelling certainly would help. The killer in getting adoption of any social network is the network effect. You want to be on the social media application because your friends & family is on it.

Which means that it could work on specific communities, right? Just as Facebook started from a single community.

The principle is already well described in Crossing the Chasm[1]. You need early adopters and then figure out from there how to go a mainstream audience.

You probably also need some groundbreaking shift in the medium to create an opportunity e.g. how shift from laptops to smaetphones made photos and videos more compelling than text for some use cases, leading to Instagram and Snapchat. And then Facebook bought Instagram and used it to make Snapchat redundant...

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossing_the_Chasm

Re: Towards a world without Facebook

#146

Post by sanderjd »

marknadal wrote: post #83
tlb wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When people propose blockchain solutions, I always think: How would it work with just a regular database? How would a blockchain make it better? What coalition of people will run the blockchain, and why would they be more trustworthy than whoever would run the database? There are good answers to these for some applications, but I don't see what they are here.

The algorithm needed for Multi-Master (decentralized) data is a CRDT (Conflict-free Replicated Data Type). Specifically, this solves the problem of data consistency across different node/peers without needing a central (ie, Facebook's servers) master. The way it works, is like so: http://gun.js.org/distributed/matters.html However, a blockchain is still actually useful for a P2P Facebook. A blockchain that uses a con…

Whew, finally a comment with some actual details on how this might all work and be useful.

How do I delete data in this scheme? Maybe by signing each data "node" with a separate key, which can then be shredded if I want? Where would those keys be stored?

Re: Towards a world without Facebook

#147

Post by magice »

How on earth is blockchain going help? Seriously! There is no conceptual situation, in theory or practice, that blockchain will improve upon Facebook situation.

Generally speaking, Facebook is bad for about 5 reasons: 1. Privacy: unexpected people see your data (legally). 2. Right-to-be-forgotten: your data sticks around longer than expected. 3. Data Security: your data is stolen from your data keeper. 4. Cyberbully: Unwanted data surfaces without your control 5. Fake news: wrong information is fed to you.

How do blockchains help with ANY of these? 2. is certainly getting WORSE, since blockchains never forget. 1. is probably getting WORSE, because most blockchains are public. 3. is getting SO MUCH WORSE, because so many other people will now store data, and compromises in any of them will expose everything (think African Prince scam). 4. will become impossible to solve, because the data is going to be public and cannot be deleted, and because all of those anonymous mechanism will ensure that the culprit is impossible to track. 5. won't be impacted.

So, tell me, how the hell do blockchains help? Seriously.

Look, I know blockchain is a cool idea (yay! no need for central database!). However, central database can help in many situation, especially in anything involves history, limit of access, and regulation.

Re: Towards a world without Facebook

#148

Post by [deleted] »

cornholio wrote: post #5

The quintessential moat Facebook has is its strong network effect facilitated by ease of use. Facebook is simple. To the point where my elder relatives refer to Facebook as "the Internet": the place where they can see funny clips, talk to friends and share their photos and thoughts. For every person bemoaning how Facebook extended and proceeded to take a dump into her favorite aspect of the Internet - be it online pu…

[deleted]

Re: Towards a world without Facebook

#149

Post by humanrebar »

ghostcluster wrote: post #20
cornholio wrote: post #5

The quintessential moat Facebook has is its strong network effect facilitated by ease of use. Facebook is simple. To the point where my elder relatives refer to Facebook as "the Internet": the place where they can see funny clips, talk to friends and share their photos and thoughts. For every person bemoaning how Facebook extended and proceeded to take a dump into her favorite aspect of the Internet - be it online pu…

I think you're downplaying the technical sophistication of Facebook, as well as the pioneering moves it made during its growth phase. Compared to MySpace, which was incumbent during its rise, Facebook did everything faster, with less friction for the everyday user. MySpace would often try and stuff full interstitial page loads between core parts of its user interface. Facebook invented photos tagged with social profi…

> Facebook invented the one-column social news feed.

Did it? Seems a lot like a twitter feed one could build for oneself.

And I disagree that facebook won for being faster or more innovative. Most people I know switched because it was less obnoxious with glittery animations and autoplay audio. Also, the crowd, at least initially, was more attractive to young adults since it was exclusive to people with a university email address.

Arguably it took the lead, at least initially, by doing less.

Re: Towards a world without Facebook

#150

Post by [deleted] »

tlb wrote: post #25
cornholio wrote: post #5

The quintessential moat Facebook has is its strong network effect facilitated by ease of use. Facebook is simple. To the point where my elder relatives refer to Facebook as "the Internet": the place where they can see funny clips, talk to friends and share their photos and thoughts. For every person bemoaning how Facebook extended and proceeded to take a dump into her favorite aspect of the Internet - be it online pu…

When people propose blockchain solutions, I always think: How would it work with just a regular database? How would a blockchain make it better? What coalition of people will run the blockchain, and why would they be more trustworthy than whoever would run the database? There are good answers to these for some applications, but I don't see what they are here.

[deleted]
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