Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

What can you use instead of Google and Facebook?

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 324 posts

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

#151

Post by abdullahkhalids »

bobbylarrybobby wrote: post #136
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.

DuckDuckGo can't even answer simple queries like "how old is Donald Trump", "president of France", "how tall is the Eiffel Tower", "distance from earth to Moon", and "distance from earth to sun"; it forces you to search its results for the answer. For all of queries, Google and Bing give you the answer front and center without making you click links or read the result snippets. Bing even has an interactive solar syst…

Neither did Google back in the early 2000s. But people still used it and loved it. I would say DDG2019=Google2007 or better in terms of search quality.

Instead of thinking that I must use the best search engine, regardless of the ethics of its business model; think that I will use the good enough search engine from among those with ethical business models.

Edit: I would additionally like to add that Google's search quality peaked early to mid 2010s, so DDG is not far from peak known search engine quality.

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

#152

Post by have_faith »

choward wrote: post #134
have_faith wrote: post #24

I'm actually building an alternative to Facebook for people fed up with Facebook and just want to stay in touch with people and not much more. I would go as far as calling it a glorified address book with some extra features for having up-to-date contact details for everyone that has granted you the privilege of having them and a very cut down version of the feed. Which brings me to the question of monetisation. I do…

So you want me to switch from one platform I have no control over to another? The whole reason Facebook is evil is they can be since they have full control of the software and your data. What would your goal be? To grow like Facebook, go public, and maximize profit? I have no reason that your product/company wouldn't just turn into another Facebook.

> What would your goal be?

Essentially to provide a service similar to Facebook's core offering with a focus on maximising how useful the service is to you instead of how valuable your data is to me. This is why I'd prefer for users to pay a small flat fee and I can just focus on making features people want.

> I have no reason that your product/compny wouldn't just turn into another Facebook.

This is true for now. I have been exploring ideas of setting up the site as a non-profit of some kind or a foundation etc. At the moment this area needs exploring in more detail.

> The whole reason Facebook is evil is they can be since they have full control of the software and your data

Sort of yes. Lot's of companies have (comparable) positions of power while being subjectively less or not evil at all. But the question of becoming evil over time still stands. I'm not of the opinion that software that users run themselves will have any of the adoption required to dislodge something like Facebook and so is mostly a distraction I think. I do think these kind of federated networks will do well mind you, just not for what people use Facebook for. I'm happy to be proven wrong on this front though.

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

#153

Post by anderspitman »

stevenicr wrote: post #135
anderspitman wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried, I really did. Got my close group of ~8 friends on the public Matrix server. People would miss messages because they only use Matrix for that one thing, and would forget to login/check/etc. That and a few choice little bugs pushed them back to FB messenger. That said, I'm hopeful for the future of the protocol.

Interesting point, I am going to assume there is an option or bridge or plugin or something that can send an email notification that you or your group / chat room has new messages(?) - and this may be an important, perhaps default selected, option for new users trying out a matrix flavor(?) I remember when fbk would send messages to everyone, some of my clients had a hundred emails a day from fbk in their inbox, and…

Getting emails likely would have pissed them off.

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

#154

Post by hollander »

TheRealDunkirk wrote: post #87
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'm consistently surprised that this comment comes up here so often. I've tried DDG at length, many times, and I always go back to Google because I find it SO much better for programming-related questions. Maybe the denizens of HN are accustomed to using SO's built-in search? But that's still only a piece of the larger puzzle. I get a lot of mileage from blog posts as well.

Google is better. Bug DDG is good enough for 98% of what I need. Searching is mostly finding the right website, or an explanation of a specific problem. Sometimes I have a search query that doesn't give any usable results with DDG, and then Google comes to rescue. That happens about once a month.

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

#155

Post by have_faith »

ori_b wrote: post #49
have_faith wrote: post #24

I'm actually building an alternative to Facebook for people fed up with Facebook and just want to stay in touch with people and not much more. I would go as far as calling it a glorified address book with some extra features for having up-to-date contact details for everyone that has granted you the privilege of having them and a very cut down version of the feed. Which brings me to the question of monetisation. I do…

Monetization is a perverse incentive. I'm willing to run my own services, maybe pay someone to host for me, but I don't want a company with an incentive to maximize eyeball time.

Having every single user run and manage their own software or pay another service to run it for them doesn't seem practical or efficient to me but I would be interested in ideas to the contrary.

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

#156

Post by noncoml »

annadane wrote: post #36

It's not fair to the public that FB bought up Insta/Whatsapp. That is a true lack of choice. If it were just FB, fine, ignore it, don't use it, use Whatsapp. But no, they get to buy up competition whilst telling us how much our privacy and integrity is taken seriously

We brought it to ourselves by not being willing to pay for WhatsApp.

WhatsApp before getting bought by FB was begging for money and is my understanding that it was on the verge of bankruptcy.

Public had a choice of free(as in beer) products vs privacy. We chose the former.

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

#157

Post by chipperyman573 »

noncoml wrote: post #156
annadane wrote: post #36

It's not fair to the public that FB bought up Insta/Whatsapp. That is a true lack of choice. If it were just FB, fine, ignore it, don't use it, use Whatsapp. But no, they get to buy up competition whilst telling us how much our privacy and integrity is taken seriously

We brought it to ourselves by not being willing to pay for WhatsApp. WhatsApp before getting bought by FB was begging for money and is my understanding that it was on the verge of bankruptcy. Public had a choice of free(as in beer) products vs privacy. We chose the former.

Whatsapp used to cost $1/year which covered operating costs (first year free).

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

#158

Post by haolez »

thiagoharry wrote: post #149
haolez wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Free market socialism? How would information about value be propagated? That's usually done via prices and money.

Some options: a) Also using competition, prices and money, but with factories, companies and lands organized by worker's cooperatives, with the profit shared according with some logic not based in mere property. b) Using only prices and money while keeping updated data about production and consumption, and updating prices based in these data. Perhaps easier with modern technology than in the past. The information abo…

I think that a) already happens when a company shares its profits with the workforce. Mere competition will force the competitors of such a company to do that as well to attract talent.

Item b) sounds like capitalism and blockchain to me :)

About item c), heuristics and politics don't go well together, according to my intuition.

But these are just my opinions. This is a fascinating topic.

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

#159

Post by lotsofpulp »

Jagat wrote: post #116
pjc50 wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WhatsApp was monetized before it was bought, although I can't remember exactly how.

They used to charge $1 per year after the first year

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

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

#160

Post by reaperducer »

type-2 wrote: post #92
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…

What email provider do you use? Do you host your own?

FastMail with my own domain.

I tried hosting on my own server, but it's just too much of a time investment for one person.

Post reply on HN