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Don’t Fix Facebook, Replace It

nytimes.com

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Re: Don’t Fix Facebook, Replace It

#111

Post by keybits »

pi-squared wrote: post #102

I wonder what is the penetration of these kind of news outside our bubble here at HN, reddit and the like. I'm wondering the rest 2 billion people (which to a first approximation is probably just about everybody) care about this or are willing to care if few of their techie friends leave facebook. Is there some mathematical model + social science that could estimate the network effects of say, every techie person doe…

DuckDuckGo did a survey of just over 1,000 random US adults after the Cambridge Analytica story: https://spreadprivacy.com/cambridge-analytica/

Re: Don’t Fix Facebook, Replace It

#112

Post by haylem »

p49k wrote: post #104

Has anyone seen a product that was functional, polished, and enjoyable to use that would be capable of replacing Facebook? I haven't. Diaspora, Mastodon, Ello are the only things that I can think of, and none of them come close to matching the basic functionality and the "it just works" factor of Facebook. Maybe someone should put in some resources to create a polished product and see what happens? It doesn't even ha…

True, I haven't seen another product "match" Facebook.

But I also don't see much need for it (entirely), or at the very least for most of its features.

The Facebook of ~2007 was about as good as it ever needed to be (minus the pokes). It served its purpose well. It could have used some of the UI polish it got afterwards, but no new feature addition has made any significant change to end users in my view, apart from pushing them towards more extreme sharing.

It's a super cool app, and a super cool platform, with unfortunately little actual value to its end users (except if you consider advertisers and users of the tech platform the end users, not the actual Facebook users).

Not that I think it's all Facebook's fault: you build something for a certain purpose, and it naturally evolves, and you adapt to what people want, or what you think they want based on some metrics or "need" for growth. And then you get... this.

Re: Don’t Fix Facebook, Replace It

#114

Post by davnicwil »

seanwilson wrote: post #96
quanticle wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If she's happy with this level of privacy though, what's the problem? The problem is that it's not just her privacy she's violating, but the privacy of everyone else, including OP, whose photos get shared by said cousin. When I got back from a trip I took abroad with my family earlier this year, my friends mentioned that they'd seen the photos that "I" had posted to Facebook. Except... I hadn't posted any photos to…

Turn on the feature to hide photos you're tagged in and tell people you know they're not to show photos of you to other people then? Or tell people not to take photos of you? If Facebook didn't exist, people would still show photos to people in other ways. If someone takes your photo they're more than likely going to show it to somebody so I would assume a low level of privacy by default.

> People would still show photos to people in other ways.

I suspect this is not the issue or what the parent means by privacy.

Rather, they probably mean specifically that they don't want their metadata enriched photos being made available, without their explicit knowledge or consent, to Facebook the company (and therefore also indirectly to any number of other companies / advertisers).

If Facebook didn't exist, people certainly wouldn't do that! That's purely an unavoidable side effect of Facebook's current business model.

Re: Don’t Fix Facebook, Replace It

#115

Post by oblio »

mpweiher wrote: post #58
panarky wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's like a smoking addiction It's awesome to watch massive shifts in values and priorities. Smoking used to be seen as cool, sexy, even healthy. Now it's widely seen as unhealthy and disgusting. Same thing with high-fructose carbonated beverages. I remember people using terms like "retarded" and "gyp" without hesitation. Today even people who hate political correctness don't talk like that in public. It wasn't lon…

> men abusing women in the workplace was routine and unremarkable When was this?

Fully out in the open? Never, really. Even religion looks down on it.

But covertly? It’s happening even now, all over the world.

Re: Don’t Fix Facebook, Replace It

#116

Post by 8bitsrule »

jjrh wrote: post #4

I think in the long run we will use a decentralised/federated system. Privacy concerns aside, it just doesn't make sense to rely on one service or expect one social network to meet everyone's needs/desires.

I keep seeing the suggestion of 'federation' for soc.media and am not sure understand the use of this word. What are the characteristics of a 'federated system' and how is it immune to the problem of centralization? What are some successful examples?

Re: Don’t Fix Facebook, Replace It

#117

Post by im_dario »

fabianhjr wrote: post #42
indigodaddy wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could a viable Facebook competitor be built on a distributed/p2p type network, perhaps something like ipfs and/or mesh networking?

Yes, scuttlebutt even works great over mesh networks and intermittent internet. http://scuttlebutt.nz/ https://ssbc.github.io/scuttlebutt-protocol-guide/

Although Scuttlebutt is a nice solution, I think it fails to replace Facebook because:

1. Different use case: trying it out it reminded me more of a Slack/IRC/bulletin board than anything else.

2. Different framing: it uses a public square (Twitter) framing (follow, follower, channel) instead of a personal relationships framing (friends, groups, etc).

3. Too complex for casual users: this is kind of ironic because Scuttlebutt is modeled after real life interactions but in a way it ends being too complex with pubs (public and private), long and cryptic user IDs, etc.

These are some reasons but there are more. Happy to discuss them.

Re: Don’t Fix Facebook, Replace It

#118

Post by alecco »

p49k wrote: post #104

Has anyone seen a product that was functional, polished, and enjoyable to use that would be capable of replacing Facebook? I haven't. Diaspora, Mastodon, Ello are the only things that I can think of, and none of them come close to matching the basic functionality and the "it just works" factor of Facebook. Maybe someone should put in some resources to create a polished product and see what happens? It doesn't even ha…

An even bigger problem is making critical mass.

Young people are already tired of old Facebook. The problem is Facebook keeps acquiring the competitors gaining ground (WhatsApp/Instagram), and if not possible just ripping off the features. It's grown too big to be upended easily. And they are not stupid. They see the writing on the wall.

Re: Don’t Fix Facebook, Replace It

#119

Post by im_dario »

BadassFractal wrote: post #44
newscracker wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't Mastodon more of a Twitter replacement than a replacement for Facebook (which has time line, groups, pages, etc.)? I'm curious to know what's closer to what Facebook provides and is decentralized.

Diaspora?

I think no ActivityPub support should be an instant "nope" nowadays for any project willing to be considered as Facebook replacement/alternative: [0]

0: https://github.com/diaspora/diaspora/issues/7422

Re: Don’t Fix Facebook, Replace It

#120

Post by Sir_Substance »

vinniejames wrote: post #46

We did replace it, almost 10 years ago. It was called Diaspora[1], no one cared about privacy then. No one really cares about privacy now, at least not enough to do anything about it. 1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaspora_(social_network)

Diaspora (still!) doesn't do:

1. Chat (It could just integrate a javascript XMPP client and let people use whatever chat server they liked)

2. Event management and invites

When I suggest people leave Facebook, these are the things people complain there are no alternatives to.

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