We should replace Facebook with personal websites • Hacker News Board

Re: We should replace Facebook with personal websites

#271

Post by QML » Thu, Dec 20, 2018, 10:51 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.

Can't you just have a website like Medium that acts as an aggregator (of RSS feeds) instead of a platform? The issue I have to whether stick with RSS feeds, which seem like it's dying, or to use ActivityPub, which doesn't seem to be developed that heavily.

Re: We should replace Facebook with personal websites

#272

Post by fuball63 » Thu, Dec 20, 2018, 11:01 PM UTC

fuball63 wrote: post #201

LastZactionHero wrote: post #168

I've made this suggestion on a few other threads, and I'll keep making it until it works ;) Anyone want to start a modern webring? - Self host your site - Put in a JS snippet to link out to other sites The idea being to drive some traffic to your site without being beholden to Medium/Facebook/whatever.

I'm not familiar with this concept but am intrigued. Does the snippet just pick a random assortment of links from other members of the webring?

Update: found this article on Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Webring

Re: We should replace Facebook with personal websites

#273

Post by pmlnr » Thu, Dec 20, 2018, 11:06 PM UTC

QML wrote: post #271

ip26 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Can't you just have a website like Medium that acts as an aggregator (of RSS feeds) instead of a platform? The issue I have to whether stick with RSS feeds, which seem like it's dying, or to use ActivityPub, which doesn't seem to be developed that heavily.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planet_(software)

Re: We should replace Facebook with personal websites

#274

Post by chx » Thu, Dec 20, 2018, 11:17 PM UTC

quickthrower2 wrote: post #244

chx wrote: post #185

Everytime people say "you should quit Facebook", I have two primary use cases: 1. Our high school class. Yes we used to use a mailing list but it's so much better with Facebook, with people freely sharing what interesting shit happens. We are a very closely knit class, at the 25th graduation anniversary like 25 of the 34 was there. 2. I have a group of friends doing all sorts of awesome shit (some of the more memorab…

That's the funny thing. Email is perfectly good enough, but there is a psychology of not wanting to send too many messages or disturb people. But posting lots of pictures on Facebook doesn't feel like that. Otherwise email is a great social network for people you already know.

We would need much much better email organizing tools before this can work.

Re: We should replace Facebook with personal websites

#275

Post by josephcohen » Thu, Dec 20, 2018, 11:35 PM UTC

whereistom wrote: post #230

josephcohen wrote: post #225

Facebook is now many things, but when it started it was about identity: this is who I am, this is who I know, this is what I care about. As Facebook has expanded, it's become a mostly passive experience. This is a byproduct of Facebook's business model, which is to sell other people's time . Like any business, it's incentivized to maximized its inventory, which in this case is time spent on Facebook properties. Peopl…

Wow this is sick! Excited to give it a try. Why don't more people know about y'all?

Only a matter of time, we think

Re: We should replace Facebook with personal websites

#276

Post by personlurking » Thu, Dec 20, 2018, 11:39 PM UTC

pmlnr wrote: post #15

Homepage. It's your home on the internet. It's good for you. Things to get started with: - https://www.netlifycms.org/ - completely free static website on top of github pages - http://mastodon.social/ - federated microblogging, which can be self-hosted as well - https://www.digitalocean.com/products/one-click-apps/ - one click wordpress for 5$/m - https://aws.amazon.com/lightsail/projects/wordpress/ - another near on…

Doesn't https://about.me (et al) fit on this list too?

Re: We should replace Facebook with personal websites

#277

Post by kristianc » Thu, Dec 20, 2018, 11:41 PM UTC

jancsika wrote: post #172

kristianc wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Diaspora never gained traction because being worse at all of these things than Facebook didn't trump "Decentralization", "Freedom" and "Privacy". Indeed, for many, the centralization of Facebook is a selling point, 'Freedom' might appeal to political activists / journalists but isn't of much interest to people who just want to find their friends rather than talk to 'happybunny123' and 'Privacy' has consistently shown…

> Diaspora never gained traction because being worse at all of these things than Facebook didn't trump "Decentralization", "Freedom" and "Privacy". Since when is "privacy" a feature of Diaspora? Their first big bug was, "any data from any users can be gotten by anybody willing to try." At least for a long time user's posts were stored in plaintext. (Not sure if that's still true.) And it's federated, not distributed.…

Decentralization, Freedom and Privacy are taken from the Diaspora homepage.

Also you’re conflating Privacy with Security.

Re: We should replace Facebook with personal websites

#278

Post by roystonvassey » Thu, Dec 20, 2018, 11:53 PM UTC

darkarmani wrote: post #102

ip26 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

RSS is really just the content/transport method. For a decentralized FB, you would move the intelligence into your local client and it would like more like a web-of-trust network. 1. You connect to friends and you either manually assign or "grow" a bunch of weights to your amount of trust in them and your interest in various topics they might post. 2. You and your friends make posts and assign "topic" metadata to the…

Google almost had this nailed with Reader before they canned it. Unbelievably stupid move while drowning millions in Plus and You and whatnot.

Re: We should replace Facebook with personal websites

#279

Post by aaavl2821 » Thu, Dec 20, 2018, 11:55 PM UTC

pmlnr wrote: post #15

Homepage. It's your home on the internet. It's good for you. Things to get started with: - https://www.netlifycms.org/ - completely free static website on top of github pages - http://mastodon.social/ - federated microblogging, which can be self-hosted as well - https://www.digitalocean.com/products/one-click-apps/ - one click wordpress for 5$/m - https://aws.amazon.com/lightsail/projects/wordpress/ - another near on…

For non-technical people who have some interest in learning html / css and a free weekend, its even easier:

- https://www.codecademy.com/learn/make-a-website

- host for free on netlify

- maybe simple intro to git to make updating and deploying to netlify easier

anyone can learn basic html / css (in 6th grade we did a week long "build a website" project and everyone did it -- this was back in the late 90s), and with frameworks like bootstrap anyone can make an attractive looking site.

with just basic html / css knowledge and netlify, you can:

- self-host and write a blog

- post photo albums

- share videos and audio (link to youtube)

- share status updates

- create an online course

- create a curated list of interesting articles, photos, recipes, food (a la pinterest)

- conduct surveys (link to google forms or other free survey tools)

- create a mailing list / online following (link to google forms or use mailchimp)

- get creative and personalize your site's appearance

- create links to your friends sites

- publish short stories or even e-books

- communicate with people via email (just create an email address for your site and publish it). posting publicly doesnt have to be the normal way to socialize online

- and probably much more

the only downside is if you don't want everything to be public you'd need a simple backend / auth framework, and youd have to host on heroku or something (idk if netlify only does static sites?)

and if you can do this stuff, and find html / css interesting, it isn't that hard to learn enough python or js to build stuff like forms, comments, like buttons, RSS feeds, or simple CRUD apps

the open source software and free-tier saas products we have today make so much of this so easy

Re: We should replace Facebook with personal websites

#280

Post by evo_9 » Thu, Dec 20, 2018, 11:58 PM UTC

I get what others are saying on this thread regarding the feed/content aspect of FB, and agree a personal website isn't a substitute for those FB features.

BUT - if you just happened to have gotten married like I did, and are on the path toward kids in the semi-near future, a personal website isn't a bad idea.

I was just starting to reconsider my no-FB account ever policy because of the need to easily share family pictures/news, etc. Then I read this and thought - NO! - I will not get sucked into finally having a FB account; a personal website is a viable option.