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What can you use instead of Google and Facebook?

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Re: What can you use instead of Google and Facebook?

#251

Post by newscracker »

senthil_rajasek wrote: post #178
sp332 wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First, I'd rather Google not have it. I consider Google having it to be a breach of my privacy. But besides that, any time someone clicks an ad, Google gives information about that person to the advertiser.

You can absolutely tell google not to store your information. When you buy a shoe with your credit card at a store you are giving your personal information, isn't clicking on an ad similar?

> You can absolutely tell google not to store your information

...except for all the times when Google did collect and store your information despite you telling it not to (look online for location tracking on Android).

Re: What can you use instead of Google and Facebook?

#252

Post by danfang »

gonehome wrote: post #232
kerkeslager wrote: post #222

Search: DDG is the obvious answer. But also reducing usage of general search is a major life improvement. Wikipedia and Stack Overflow have reasonable built-in searches, as do most sites I view as reasonable sources of information. Most discoverability comes from feeds (blogs, HN, Reddit)--searching limits you to terms you've already thought of. General search seems to lead either to the places already mentioned in g…

General search is still valuable for finding random programming examples that don't appear on Stack Overflow - there are a lot of blogs that usually have some helpful example. For FB if there was something that allowed event planning, but didn't require people to create accounts for it (basically event planning with RSVPs, but handled through email or text). It'd be nice if this extended to optional accounts that had…

The project I'm currently working on - Thread (https://get.thread-app.com) has first class support for events and RSVPs.

Let me know what you think!

Re: What can you use instead of Google and Facebook?

#253

Post by loughnane »

kodt wrote: post #129

When 90% of the people you email are on Gmail or GSuite does Proton mail really help? Yeah you get end to end encryption for other Proton mail users, but I don't know a single one. Google is going to have all of my emails anyway. As for Facebook it is best just to quit. I don't even use Facebook to keep in touch with friends anymore. The value in Facebook is some of the groups. Local neighborhood groups seem to be th…

I'm on Proton and will email you :).

Seriously though, a real benefit you get from an e2ee email when no one you communicate with uses it is that all of your receipts, memberships, newsletter, etc. correspondences are not being read/scanned by your email provider.

For Signal I asked my wife to switch and she did (just for her and I) and we've been using it for over a year. My Dad recently hopped on as well. These things go slow, but when someone close switches it feels nice knowing that all my conversations are private.

Re: What can you use instead of Google and Facebook?

#254

Post by pawelk »

monkeynotes wrote: post #183
JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #2

DuckDuckGo is really changing my world. It’s like I’m seeing a whole other internet I was missing before with Google search results. I get much more relevant answers and less SEO targeted garbage that says all the right words usually while saying nothing at all. I was skeptical, but I encourage you to give it a try if you haven’t before.

I tried DDG, I actually try it out intermittently. I ditched it again, this time because when I searched for an address it doesn't seem to scope the results to where I am located and gives me a similar address somewhere else. Small little things like that are a pain to work around and something I take for granted in Google search. It's taken a long time for Google to get so good at what it does. I notice that if I am…

To each their own. The things you have listed as advantages of Google are basically the same reasons I do my best to stay away.

Re: What can you use instead of Google and Facebook?

#255

Post by gonehome »

vinceleo wrote: post #242
reaperducer wrote: post #27

The article talks mostly about e-mail and search, but you know what's still the best social network on the interwebs? E-mail. When I dumped social media two years ago, I gave my "friends" my e-mail address. Now, instead of getting an endless stream of reposted political image captions and photos of people's lunches I get messages about the things that are actually worth seeing: news about family, friends, life events…

I'm very big fan of Elgg https://elgg.org I believe that this social networking framework has a great future. Look at these projects which created using this engine: Minds https://www.minds.com Pleio https://pleio.nl GCconnex and GCcollab https://github.com/gctools-outilsgc/gcconnex There is even a Platform that will make building apps based on Elgg easier https://wzm.me/ Right now this project needs more cotributors…

Can you give a summary of what it is for and why people use it?

I read the landing page, clicked about, looked at the first page of the API docs and it's still not really obvious to me what it is for or how it's actually used.

What problem is it solving? Standard web backend for common social media platform stuff?

Re: What can you use instead of Google and Facebook?

#256

Post by jumpman500 »

skyyler wrote: post #245
kerkeslager wrote: post #222

Search: DDG is the obvious answer. But also reducing usage of general search is a major life improvement. Wikipedia and Stack Overflow have reasonable built-in searches, as do most sites I view as reasonable sources of information. Most discoverability comes from feeds (blogs, HN, Reddit)--searching limits you to terms you've already thought of. General search seems to lead either to the places already mentioned in g…

>Facebook: Does this even need a replacement? Do you go to parties? Serious question. It's hard to discover events without Facebook these days. It's the only place some promoters advertise.

I mean all my friends contact me when they're having a party or an event... Don't most people just do group messages?

I've never really been interested in going to a random party or event I wasn't directly invited to. I mostly got spam when I was using Facebook.

Re: What can you use instead of Google and Facebook?

#257

Post by gonehome »

dwild wrote: post #239
reaperducer wrote: post #27

The article talks mostly about e-mail and search, but you know what's still the best social network on the interwebs? E-mail. When I dumped social media two years ago, I gave my "friends" my e-mail address. Now, instead of getting an endless stream of reposted political image captions and photos of people's lunches I get messages about the things that are actually worth seeing: news about family, friends, life events…

> The article talks mostly about e-mail and search, but you know what's still the best social network on the interwebs? E-mail. I'm pretty sure if you replaced "social network" by "ticket tracker", you would had made quite a bit of people laugh here, still here we are, unable to accept that some tools are just much more efficient in a task. For me Facebook is something where I can reach everyone that I need to reach…

I think there's room for a Webservice/app focused on events only that defaults to using sms for people that don't have accounts.

The idea being that people can optionally make accounts with just their contact information which they can then give people access to (this way contacts stay updated by everyone with access rather than local copies on everyone's device that goes out of date).

The app would handle basics like RSVP, sending out SMS reminders for people, tracking number of people coming etc. Right now handling this over SMS and tracking it is a pain so people default to FB, but I think there's an opportunity here to get a foothold.

Re: What can you use instead of Google and Facebook?

#258

Post by gonehome »

danfang wrote: post #252
gonehome wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

General search is still valuable for finding random programming examples that don't appear on Stack Overflow - there are a lot of blogs that usually have some helpful example. For FB if there was something that allowed event planning, but didn't require people to create accounts for it (basically event planning with RSVPs, but handled through email or text). It'd be nice if this extended to optional accounts that had…

The project I'm currently working on - Thread ( https://get.thread-app.com ) has first class support for events and RSVPs. Let me know what you think!

Nice - I’ll check it out, I agree with the goals.

Can you invite people to events that don't have an account via SMS and have it handled that way or do they need an account and the app?

I think being able to support people not on the app is the big thing I want (then the network may grow or not overtime, but at least it's immediately useful even without other people on it).

One other suggestion would be a default retention period or “fuse” people can set that something like 6 months, but can be set anywhere from 1 day to 1 year.

The other networks make it so hard to scrub old posts, I think there’s value in old stuff getting automatically dropped.

Re: What can you use instead of Google and Facebook?

#259

Post by loughnane »

gravitas wrote: post #214
viklove wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When 90% of the people you email are on Gmail or GSuite does Proton mail really help? This is such a common, but strange attitude to have in these circumstances. Think about how user migration works. It's not like it happens overnight and suddenly your 100% gmail contact list is 100% proton. No, it goes from 100% to 99%, then continues to 92%, then to 75%, and so on. Having this defeatist attitude guarantees that b…

I don't think it's necessarily a strange attitude, just more about what people might use email for versus what they might use instant messaging for - which target audience. My Signal experience mirrors yours, as I think folks really don't care too awful much which app is used, so long as everyone can use it together to chat/communicate as possible work peers, friends or family. Email, however, is the line item on eve…

I did this recently and it is daunting.

For anyone reading this I recommend using your own domain for your email (e.g. yourname@yourdomain.co). That way you own it and can change providers whenever you wish.

Re: What can you use instead of Google and Facebook?

#260

Post by arexxbifs »

skyyler wrote: post #245
kerkeslager wrote: post #222

Search: DDG is the obvious answer. But also reducing usage of general search is a major life improvement. Wikipedia and Stack Overflow have reasonable built-in searches, as do most sites I view as reasonable sources of information. Most discoverability comes from feeds (blogs, HN, Reddit)--searching limits you to terms you've already thought of. General search seems to lead either to the places already mentioned in g…

>Facebook: Does this even need a replacement? Do you go to parties? Serious question. It's hard to discover events without Facebook these days. It's the only place some promoters advertise.

I'm in a demographic that's very heavily invested in Facebook. FOMO was real when quitting, and I'm sure I've missed some event, someplace, sometime. But the neat thing is, people actually use other means of contacting me if they really want to hang out. I mean, it's not even hard: a text, a mail, whatever.

What I've noticed is that I actually meet people IRL more often now, because the events I get information about are the ones that really matter to me, and they don't get lost in a constant buzz of less important but attention-grabbing stuff.

I also realize I can miss talking to someone. It's a feeling I haven't had in a long time, because people used to show up in my feed every day and it was like they were there anyway. Now I can get a sudden urge to just shoot a few texts back and forth with someone about something that's actually meaningful and not just the usual facebook wall banter.

I'm quite introverted, so being selective is something that suits me well, but facebook also made me even more socially lazy and avoidant than I really am.

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