Jimmy Wales has quietly launched a Facebook rival • Hacker News Board

Re: Jimmy Wales has quietly launched a Facebook rival

#521

Post by Baeocystin » Sat, Nov 16, 2019, 7:30 AM UTC

cmonnow wrote: post #503

system2 wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As long as you use old.reddit.com.

I'm faintly surprised reddit's redesign didn't kill it, like Digg's did.

There have to be some folks there fully aware of the dark-pattern hell of their redesign, and smart enough to keep old.reddit running to appease the people who appreciate what the old style offers. And I hope they keep it up! Reddit is pretty much the last forum I frequent other than here, and the day they kill off the older version is the day I stop visiting.

Re: Jimmy Wales has quietly launched a Facebook rival

#522

Post by Corrado » Sat, Nov 16, 2019, 7:46 AM UTC

timdavila wrote: post #217

danielecook wrote: post #210

Previously someone mentioned the idea of a $1/mo. social network. I think if someone were to make facebook in it's first ~2 years and keep it very basic it we would be good to go. The only features you need are: a profile picture, a wall, chat, and events. In other words - a photo of yourself, a way of publicly messaging, a way of privately messaging, and a way to coordinate social events. What else do you need for a…

I would say you also need Groups. But I love the idea.

I really liked the idea of Google+ Circles when they first came out. It allowed me to organize people I interacted with into a focused group; work, Linux, TF2, etc. If I wanted to talk about AWS, I could switch my brain into that mode and just post things about a single topic. It was really nice.

Re: Jimmy Wales has quietly launched a Facebook rival

#523

Post by mpweiher » Sat, Nov 16, 2019, 7:48 AM UTC

ZainRiz wrote: post #359

AndrewStephens wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There already is a decentralized Reddit where subreddits are called websites and anyone can start one and run it as they please. What Reddit and similar sites bring to the table is a single pool of authenticated users. Once a user is logged into Reddit, posting on different subreddits is frictionless. Even with oauth and the like, it is hard to replicate that with a distributed set of sites.

I disagree. What Reddit brings to the table is: 1. Easy sharing: Subreddits, which are an easy location to share interesting information about a common topic. Creating your own website is an order of magnitude harder, especially if you want to allow anyone on the internet to post to it 2. Discoverability: You can easily discover subreddits information related to your interests. Reddit's ability to aggregate the vario…

> Creating your own website is an order of magnitude harder

So let's fix that?

Re: Jimmy Wales has quietly launched a Facebook rival

#524

Post by dlcmh » Sat, Nov 16, 2019, 7:52 AM UTC

moosey wrote: post #488

bufferoverflow wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You missed the most important point: 3. Discussions Try discussing anything on a random website. Discussions, just like on HN, are usually better than the linked content.

Honestly, I have a strong interest in US, Chinese, European, and now Russian politics, and how they relate to the future of the humanity and all life on earth. It is clear that most real innovation happens much more quickly and decisively if centralized under a government that decides to spend a lot of money on research, so those are discussions and reading materials that I have to find on places like reddit. Ultimat…

Please share some links to those materials. I’m interested in the same.

Re: Jimmy Wales has quietly launched a Facebook rival

#525

Post by flexie » Sat, Nov 16, 2019, 8:06 AM UTC

ratfaced-guy wrote: post #294

What I want is a decentralized Reddit not under the control of advertising needs. Reddit redesign has been bad for quality content. I actually find Reddit to be a better source of information and knowledge than Google at this point, mostly because Google has been inundated with paid blog-spam. It's a bit harder to get away with that in Reddit (for the time being, and for whatever reason).

Yesterday I needed to find the websites for around 20 Danish accounting companies based on their official company names. I thought it was so few that it would take longer time to ask someone to do it than to just do it myself.

The names are rather unique, mostly made out of a string of personal names like "Watson, Sherlock & Lestrade Accountants LLC" or of geographical locations "Central Dartmoor Accounting LLC". Such accounting companies are small businesses with around 5-10 employees and mostly local clients. Their real world competition is the other handful of local accounting companies in the rural areas they are in. However, with few exceptions, I had to go to page 3 or even 4 on Google to find the companies' own website because page 1 and 2 were cluttered with ads for other accountants or accounting applications, and, to my surprise, for different SEO optimized collections of company data on accountants.

I used to think that it was just hotel and restaurant websites you have to find on page 3 buried below Bookings, Tripadvisor, Expedia and the like. But even something as mundane as accountants now have to fight SEO websites to get some attention.

Re: Jimmy Wales has quietly launched a Facebook rival

#526

Post by jeena » Sat, Nov 16, 2019, 8:08 AM UTC

devinjflick wrote: post #318

thekyle wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah part of the problem with Mastodon is trusting that you're instance will stick around. The only ways I can think to do that are: 1. Host it yourself 2. Use one of the paid instances backed by an established company (I use Librem Social) Perhaps over time some ad supported Mastodon instances will pop up for those willing to pay that way.

Does mastodon have a tool that can create regular back ups to email to you??? Seems relevant for a common problem like this

On my instance I can (manually) request a backup every 7 days. It would be nice if this could be automated but it's all media etc. so it's quite big for email. If the admin would have announced that they would switch off the server you could have moved easily which is possible at least since v3.0

Re: Jimmy Wales has quietly launched a Facebook rival

#527

Post by LoSboccacc » Sat, Nov 16, 2019, 8:25 AM UTC

andrei_says_ wrote: post #443

ZainRiz wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. What Reddit brings to the table is: 1. Easy sharing: Subreddits, which are an easy location to share interesting information about a common topic. Creating your own website is an order of magnitude harder, especially if you want to allow anyone on the internet to post to it 2. Discoverability: You can easily discover subreddits information related to your interests. Reddit's ability to aggregate the vario…

Kickass moderation by committed individuals who are also experts in the field. See AskHistorians, Science, ModeratePolitics etc. This combined with huge communities results in incredible conversations.

I wouldn't use science as a paragon for moderation, they were involved in a huge vote manipulation controversy just last year

Re: Jimmy Wales has quietly launched a Facebook rival

#528

Post by LoSboccacc » Sat, Nov 16, 2019, 8:26 AM UTC

bluecalm wrote: post #348

AndrewStephens wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There already is a decentralized Reddit where subreddits are called websites and anyone can start one and run it as they please. What Reddit and similar sites bring to the table is a single pool of authenticated users. Once a user is logged into Reddit, posting on different subreddits is frictionless. Even with oauth and the like, it is hard to replicate that with a distributed set of sites.

You can't upvote though. One of the nice things same Reddit is that you can go to a subreddit about something you want to learn about and sort for the most popular posts from last year (for example). Some kind of system like that for websites could become a killer feature.

twenty years later we're back to Yahoo's directories

Re: Jimmy Wales has quietly launched a Facebook rival

#529

Post by sytelus » Sat, Nov 16, 2019, 8:32 AM UTC

To be contrarian, I feel ads are good and useful thing if done right. I look at ads as website working hard to figure out my needs. Ads connect products and companies which want to add value and the customer who otherwise might not discover them. It's win-win and normalizes platforms against paid services which vast majority of the world cannot afford. It's a slap in the face of 95% population when you say it just cost same as few coffee cups. I know the crowd here gets spooked when they see ads for product they were searching for. To me, its great that someone out there is trying to figure out proposing me competitive products I'm interested in right now. Again, its win win scenario but it has to done right (for example, no personal information transmitted to advertisers).

Re: Jimmy Wales has quietly launched a Facebook rival

#530

Post by username90 » Sat, Nov 16, 2019, 9:19 AM UTC

tachyonbeam wrote: post #102

wolco wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why the ad model works better. Local advertisers can bid on his data to show 5 cent ads where someone in northamerica may be worth 5 dollars. Trying to price this as a monthly service removes the ability to offer different prices per region without getting into fairness or causing people to get around the rules by signing up in different regions but watching from another.

They just pointed out that Netflix has different prices per region. Many service providers do.

An ad based model is 100% progressive though unlike any normal scheme. For example a homeless guy pay basically nothing for browsing Facebook on his phone even if he lives in USA since his attention is not worth anything.