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Don’t Fix Facebook, Replace It

nytimes.com

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Re: Don’t Fix Facebook, Replace It

#181

Post by dhimes »

pnutjam wrote: post #153
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…

Try this one. It's the most user friendly I've seen: https://mewe.com

OK- just signed up

Re: Don’t Fix Facebook, Replace It

#182

Post by arisAlexis »

jgh wrote: post #12
jamestimmins wrote: post #8

It's interesting that Tim Wu discussed the cycle of technology starting amongst outsiders and then becoming monopolized in his (phenomenal) book The Master Switch. The cycle always repeats itself by the next new technology coming along, making the prior one less significant. We seem to have accepted that the internet is essentially the final communication tech. Maybe that's true, but it seems improbable. Simply based…

I'm not really sure how blockchain is related to a potential "next" communication technology. Why not AR? Why not lasers n shit?

Talking about a blockchain based social network. a laser based social network doesn't make much sense

Re: Don’t Fix Facebook, Replace It

#183

Post by dhimes »

johnchristopher wrote: post #100
6ak74rfy wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A usual CPC (cost per click) that an advertiser is willing to pay is somewhere between 50 to 150 cents. Let's say it is 100, and you clicked on 10 ads in a month. So, Facebook earned $10 off you. Now, you should be willing to pay more than that for Facebook to prefer the model you are suggesting. My math above is highly simplistic. For e.g., you'd say you aggressively use an ad blocker and never click on ads. Fair en…

Not so fast: > https://www.buzzfeed.com/alexkantrowitz/heres-how-much-youre... > Here's how much Facebook makes per person in each region, extrapolated annually based on the network's third-quarter numbers: > Worldwide: $16.04 > US $62.60 > Europe: $18.88 > Asia-Pacific: $7.56 > Rest of World: $4.84 Another metric: > The social network giant, Facebook has a market cap of $227 billion and 1.4 billion users—which makes…

And if they didn't have to support and innovate the tracking stuff think how much simpler the company could be.

Re: Don’t Fix Facebook, Replace It

#185

Post by hvidgaard »

marcinzm wrote: post #168
hvidgaard wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The average Joe will never manage to do that. So unless the state develop, maintain, and make available free of charge, such a service, it will never happen.

In which case you've now built a centralized medical record storage system. And since people lose their keys all the time and you don't want that to cause them to lose all their medical records you also now have access to their medical records in plain text.

I completely agree, and I'd rather that it's done this way, I believe the benefits far out weight the risk of abuse.

On the other hand, with old fashioned paper journals, you could get all copies and store them yourself. If you lose them they're gone too. If there was a cryptographic construct where the access of data would require a public action, i.e. "to assemble the key to decrypt this data, I need to broadcast this to the world", then I can think of a number of good ways to store things with a robust accountability feature.

Re: Don’t Fix Facebook, Replace It

#186

Post by TheAceOfHearts »

newscracker wrote: post #41
TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you seen Beaker [0]? It doesn't require you to setup a complex web server and configure a bunch of stuff, you just run the browser and it'll start sharing your website. It's a move back to a truly decentralized web. [0] https://beakerbrowser.com/

I actually tried this a while ago, and found that the audience also had to use Beaker to access the content. That's a huge barrier if current browsers don't support this.

One must start somewhere. You can use DatHTTPD [0] to mirror your site on HTTPS. There's also additional tools available on the project website [1].

They're also writing specs and working on adding support to Brave [2], or so says the third footnote on that article. Brave also has ongoing work to support IPFS [3].

Long-term, I'm hoping browsers will improve support for registering new protocols through extensions.

[0] https://pfrazee.hashbase.io/blog/announcing-dathttpd

[1] https://datproject.org

[2] https://pfrazee.hashbase.io/blog/universal-publishing-and-th...

[3] https://github.com/brave/browser-laptop/issues/9556

Re: Don’t Fix Facebook, Replace It

#187

Post by ivansavz »

ams6110 wrote: post #16
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.

So, email then? It's decentralized, federated, and only sends data to the people you address it to (gmail excepted, I guess, at least in the free tier). It's what has always worked for me.

Yes! Email has the best chance to take over.

Links to photos, events, and group chat can all happen using email as transport. Like @esfandia suggested, the social-emails could be tagged as hidden so they are not displayed by your regular email reader.

Here is a old write up of how "events" could work over email: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12671812

Does anyone know if something like this has been tried before? Surely someone has thought of this before...

Re: Don’t Fix Facebook, Replace It

#188

Post by barrkel »

seanwilson wrote: post #106
mulander wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Turn on the feature to hide photos you're tagged in And how should I do that if I don't have a Facebook account? How do I tell Facebook to not steal my phone number and texts from phones of my friends?

> How do I tell Facebook to not steal my phone number and texts from phones of my friends? https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2018/03/fact-check-your-call-an... "Call and text history logging is part of an opt-in feature for people using Messenger or Facebook Lite on Android. ... This feature does not collect the content of your calls or text messages"

So, to reiterate, how to stop Facebook from stealing your phone number from your friend's phones? Phone numbers aren't content - FB is still stealing it.

Re: Don’t Fix Facebook, Replace It

#189

Post by criley2 »

catach wrote: post #170
jug wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. It's absolutely about four simple steps: 1. Going to a mobile-first website or app. 2. Clicking a link. 3. Typing in your new e-mail and password. 4. Being able to add anyone in the world as friends. It cannot be about local "hubs" vs the global "public" / federation, being forced to make that distinction would feel like a step backwards for the users. It can be distributed in the back end, but not in the front…

I'd say Reddit is good evidence that the beauty element is optional, for the goal of Many Users.

Reddit is a perfect example of a tech-focused product for a minority of young, white, tech-oriented men (and a minority of others) that while it influences the outside world, is mainly invisible to it.

If you want to build a reddit, you'll never end up with a facebook, that's just reality, the target demo is completely different.

Re: Don’t Fix Facebook, Replace It

#190

Post by wilsonnb »

mulander wrote: post #98
seanwilson wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Turn on the feature to hide photos you're tagged in And how should I do that if I don't have a Facebook account? How do I tell Facebook to not steal my phone number and texts from phones of my friends?

You can't tell Facebook not to do that because your phone number and texts are no longer just yours at that point.

Your friend has a copy and can do whatever they want with them, including share them with Facebook, the NSA/FBI/police, their friends, or anyone else they want to.

If you don't want them shared with Facebook, don't give the people who are sharing them with Facebook a copy.

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