We should replace Facebook with personal websites • Hacker News Board

Re: We should replace Facebook with personal websites

#191

Post by jdhawk » Thu, Dec 20, 2018, 7:35 PM UTC

amerkhalid wrote: post #72

jdhawk wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been looking for a solution to this for a while. How can I let my friends and family stay connected with photos videos & related metadata, but retain security and ownership? I thought NextCloud might be a good solution, but I'm still searching.

Same here. I am continuously searching for such solution. Previously, I used self-hosted WordPress blog for sharing photos, password protection was great but got tired of administering stuff. Also I wanted to backup my photos on VPS, so I was uploading full-resolution photos which of course, was not very price efficient for backup. Then I switched to SmugMug with unlimited space. This was great because I can upload p…

The critical piece is running a stand-alone environment that has low friction for the users - my family.

I want my Significant other to be able to post as easily as Facebook. My parents to browse easily on their devices, and uploading pictures from my phone to be Facebook Simple.

Mastodon is pretty close to having all of this if you turn off Federation, other than not being able to run a fully private node. You can still access public pages for users.

On my list to check out are: HumHub & Hubzilla.

Re: We should replace Facebook with personal websites

#192

Post by unicornporn » Thu, Dec 20, 2018, 7:36 PM UTC

ip26 wrote: post #60

saucoide wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When i try to think of what my ideal social media would look like, it always ends up sounding similar to an RSS feed, with the ability to lookup and requiring the other user's approval to get the actual content, you could use different clients, some could give you recommendations for events,etc based on your subscriptions if you so choose, or just run your own locally. life would be so simple

The magic usually missing from RSS is really good recommendation/discovery. I've got a list of feeds I follow, and that's all I'll ever get.

Re: We should replace Facebook with personal websites

#193

Post by byteface » Thu, Dec 20, 2018, 7:36 PM UTC

Around 8 years ago I tried to pitch to Nokia/Microsoft to use .git somehow so users were paid to allow access to their data. They didn't listen but I still like the idea that people own their own data and can monetize it themselves somehow.

Re: We should replace Facebook with personal websites

#194

Post by racl101 » Thu, Dec 20, 2018, 7:38 PM UTC

Is the author saying, in so many words, that we should go back to the Geocities era?

Re: We should replace Facebook with personal websites

#195

Post by superkuh » Thu, Dec 20, 2018, 7:41 PM UTC

jamesb93 wrote: post #40

Okay, I pay almost nothing for my domain. Provide me with the tools to create a cheap, mobile friendly, HTTPS website and I'm in.

Run the webserver on your home computer (apt-get install nginx, etc). Make a static site out of html files. Tt's as easy as my sitefirst post

some content

. For HTTPS you can use the LetsEncrypt easy setup packages.

Re: We should replace Facebook with personal websites

#196

Post by eppsilon » Thu, Dec 20, 2018, 7:43 PM UTC

jasode wrote: post #180

solatic wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> that doesn't mean RSS readers can replace Facebook because that technology is missing a "real names" reverse directory lookup database But that's the point, isn't it? Personal websites isn't what will "solve the customer's problem", persé, but it is what will allow Facebook to no longer be irreplaceable, which is the real reason why people stay on the platform. The question isn't whether personal websites can repla…

> Personal websites [...] is what will allow Facebook to no longer be irreplaceable, which is the real reason why people stay on the platform. No, you're making a common mistake of looking at the surface level of what Facebook shows to users (the so-called "webpage"). Therefore, the seemingly "obvious" solution to beat Facebook is -- Everybody Has Personal Websites. Since I've seen many smart techies and programmers…

Surely a new social network could use others' authentication providers (Facebook Connect, Google account, etc.) to get real names/numbers of users and their friends. Smartphone apps could use contacts from the phone itself. I don't think FB's social graph is as hard to replicate as its overall reach. Users think, "If everyone I know is already on FB or one of the other established networks, why use anything else? "

Re: We should replace Facebook with personal websites

#197

Post by cft » Thu, Dec 20, 2018, 7:43 PM UTC

will_brown wrote: post #190

jasode wrote: post #11

>most of what people like about Facebook—namely the urge to post about their lives online. Where does the author get that idea? The majority of Facebook's 2 billion users do not post to their profile feed. Instead, the FB account is mostly used as a way to passively receive content. Some of the content is from family and friends, and some is from media outlets (NYTimes, etc). Recommending "personal websites" is talki…

When YC experimented with applying/voting with YC applicants on HN, this was a part of my idea...tomorrowbook ;) It’s part domain registration, web builder (simple website with fees you add content to via text message), part automated dns records, part social media/search engine. So imagine these personal websites are all connected, one website can follow another, that’s it. You own the content, traffic, ad revenue.…

In 1997 it was called Webrings

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Webring

Re: We should replace Facebook with personal websites

#198

Post by stcredzero » Thu, Dec 20, 2018, 7:43 PM UTC

paulddraper wrote: post #133

ticmasta wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The nefarious problem with FB is the illusion of recommendation/discovery. They're not trying to find new and interesting things for you the way say, the cultural aspects of HN performs this feat; they're trying to define your profile and then serve up more of the same to increase engagement or capture your entire sphere of awareness so they can manipulate and shape your perception.'

> they can manipulate and shape your perception. That sounds pretty malicious for what basically amounts to attempting to serve you the content and ads you want.

That sounds pretty malicious for what basically amounts to attempting to serve you the content and ads you want.

Basically, serving you the content and ads you want can turn out to be pretty malicious. By doing so, a big company can manipulate and shape your perception. Year by year, data processing is making big companies ever more potent at doing just this. Is it any wonder that it eventually got to a point where we started seeing problems?

Re: We should replace Facebook with personal websites

#199

Post by masterdrift » Thu, Dec 20, 2018, 7:45 PM UTC

asdff wrote: post #167

masterdrift wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Open source social media dashboard? That way you could still use all the traditional social media apps without being reliant on any single one.

Several years ago facebook gutted a lot of RSS features. You used to be able to follow your notifications via RSS, but that went away when facebook realized people wouldn't stay on the site as long.

Is there no possible workaround? Zapier supports custom RSS feeds from popular social media sites, so it's definitely not impossible.

Re: We should replace Facebook with personal websites

#200

Post by OptionX » Thu, Dec 20, 2018, 7:46 PM UTC

And then there would be indexing services where you can put all your friends websites for easy access and a feed of their new content. After that the most popular indexing services would offer hosting for those sites on their servers, then the format would converge in a template-based pattern for ease of use. Finally we would end up right where we started in my opinion.