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What can you use instead of Google and Facebook?

bbc.com

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

#311

Post by arexxbifs »

claudiawerner wrote: post #308
arexxbifs wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>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. Maybe I just have friends who don't care too much, but I wouldn't expect any of my friends to notify me if they're going to a run of the mill event without me, but they would suggest it/notify on Facebook about it. It's a lot less personal, I feel, to notify s…

I'm having a hard time writing a reply to this that doesn't come off as unsolicited life advice from a stranger, so I'll just say that my positive experience with quitting Facebook is of course highly personal. We all have different life situations and, unfortunately, we have to make trade-offs accordingly.

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

#312

Post by tjchear »

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…

> You didn't found out who your actual friends were, you simply lost actual friends by making it harder to contact you and you slowly made them become acquaintances.

I reduced my social media usage because they were a huge time sink with the endless feeds, but I agree with you. It takes two to tango, so saying doing so lets one finds out who your real friends are is just condescending imo. Friendships don't start out 'real'; like any relationships, they require constant reaching out to people and be a part of their lives, and this has to work both ways.

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

#313

Post by iamdamian »

anderspitman wrote: post #42
iamdamian wrote: post #18

Here’s a question: How do we adopt a replacement and avoid creating an identical situation in 10 years? I wonder how many people donate to/pay for/enable ads on DuckDuckGo, for example.

Incentives have to be aligned. Open protocols at a minimum.

How will an open protocol help prevent this search issue in the future?

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

#314

Post by stevenicr »

anderspitman wrote: post #221
stevenicr wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So we need an easy toggle, and option to do this via email reply.. and option to change notifications from each message into twice per day or once an hour or other options.. I think that would satisfy most people. I hated emails from fbk and turned them all off long ago, but some people seem to like that kind of thing, so we might need options, and options for those who want a reminder but not a bunch of reminders ev…

I'm impressed you were able to accomplish some specific thing you wanted to do using the FB settings.

funny thing about that, some time ago I tried to figure out how to stop all messages from fbook to my email, after menu hopping for some time, I allowed my gf to go into the settings and turn it all off and turn on many privacy settings. I know fbook has changed the privacy things several times since then, but I don't use it enough to have any issues I think.. I also don't use messenger app or fbook mobile, so I've gotten lucky (and helped) to get zero messages from them for years.

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

#315

Post by Jagat »

bromuro wrote: post #194
lotsofpulp wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know they said that, but I don't know anyone who actually had to pay it.

I paid it! I hoped for that model to win :(

Everyone knew that was going away the moment they sold the app that had 1 billion users for 19 billion dollars.

The founders were being disingenuous when they said the data wouldn't be used for ads.

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

#316

Post by kerkeslager »

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.

Yes. Most promoters also have mailing lists.

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

#317

Post by kerkeslager »

claudiawerner wrote: post #308
arexxbifs wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>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. Maybe I just have friends who don't care too much, but I wouldn't expect any of my friends to notify me if they're going to a run of the mill event without me, but they would suggest it/notify on Facebook about it. It's a lot less personal, I feel, to notify s…

I would guess that the place where the Studio Ghibli film was showing, and/or the organization showing it, have mailing lists.

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

#318

Post by kerkeslager »

gonehome wrote: post #250
kerkeslager wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there are a lot of blogs that usually have some helpful example. Each with their own search, usually! I can see the downsides to this, but in trade you're getting a bubble that protects you from a lot of nonsense. > 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). That sounds like…

I'd push that the real value of Twitter is less the additional data sources and more the available discussion that's possible with smart people doing interesting things that you would not have as much access to. Only mentioning this because I personally didn't understand the value of Twitter for a long time and didn't understand why people used it, but now I think I do.

Is this really unique to Twitter, though?

I've had very little difficulty contacting, i.e. academics whose papers I've read, or programmers who have written blog posts.

You do miss some randos interjecting into the conversation, but these interjections detract from the conversation more often than they contribute. When I'm conversing with Joe Armstrong I'm not interested in the interjections of some rando who did an Erlang tutorial once and feels that qualifies him to have opinions.

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

#319

Post by monkeynotes »

pawelk wrote: post #254
monkeynotes wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I totally get that. It's a paradox that to have super useful search results you step very close to the edge of what's acceptable for the search provider to know about you. The amount of shit Google knows about me is quite honestly frightening. Google has over 10 years of my emails. That alone is more than most people know about me. Then there is years of search history, and location history (yes, I have both enabled). And finally a Google home in almost every room in the house. Oh, and a Pixel phone. And Google drive, photos... You get the idea.

I think at this point it's too late to save my privacy. I am apathetic and resigned to hoping the future isn't as dystopian as it is often feared to be.

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

#320

Post by fredley »

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 only interested in friend's parties. Most friends know I'm not on Facebook now, and invite me separately (using WhatsApp, but that's another kettle of fish...).

However it has forced me to be more engaged with my friends, since without Facebook they have to make a concious effort to invite me, rather than spot my name on a list. I've spent more time personally messaging and catching up with friends as a result.

Facebook makes keeping up with people frictionless, but relationships thrive on doing it the hard way, and giving up time for each other. Facebook makes it easy to have a thousand acquaintances regardless of how many deeper friendships you have.

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