5 ms·

One thing that I don't understand is why all these people that complain about Facebook don't just switch to an open source, distributed Social Network platform.

by kinkdr 10y ago

One thing that I don't understand is why all these people that complain about Facebook don't just switch to an open source, distributed Social Network platform. It's not like anybody is forcing them to use FB or that there are no alternatives.

untog 10y ago
Quite literally, network effects. There is no point using an open source, distributed social network if you have no friends on it. In many ways you don't really have a choice about what social network you use, just whether you use one at all.
- tbirdz 10y ago
  On the positive side, if you don't know anyone on the network, then it's a great opportunity to make some new friends!
  - NotOscarWilde 10y ago
    Making new acquaintances is useless if nobody from your 30km radius is on the network or if it is hard to meet people inside this radius. Friendships decay really fast with distance, especially when there is no real strong bond. As much as I am disgusted by Facebook right now, they do one thing right -- they make it fairly easy to connect to friends of friends and people that are in your social circles but you don't know them yet. (A large part is the amount of data they have, along with a good friend suggestion system.) I'm pretty much invisible on Diaspora -- there is no way I can meet new friends from my area unless I start posting a lot with tags like #cityname and #countryname, and even then it all hinges on at least somebody being on the same server -- if they are on a different one, the tagged posts will not get there.
    - tbirdz 10y ago
      >Making new acquaintances is useless if nobody from your 30km radius is on the network or if it is hard to meet people inside this radius. Friendships decay really fast with distance, especially when there is no real strong bond. I disagree, local proximity is not critical to maintaining a friendship. I have friends I talk with daily who live much further than 30km away, even some in other countries. A great thing about the internet is it allows people to connect over other similarities than physical location. I have some friends who I've never even met in person before, for example. On the other hand, I've never really found facebook style physical "friend-of-a-friend" type connections to be that useful to me. Most all of my friends in meatspace are part of the same group, ie all our "friend-of-friends" are each other. The rest are people who aren't interested in introducing me to the rest of their social circle. Now I don't think this proves anything, or even if there is any way of measuring the ease/quality of friends made on vs off line, but it's just an example from my own life. How well making friends with strangers online, strangers offline, or friends-of-friends depends heavily on your personality and current social group. The situation is a lot more variable than how you present it.
- pdkl95 10y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalfe%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalfe%27s_law It's hard to get your n(n − 1)/2 friends and family to also switch.
lutorm 10y ago
One thing that I don't understand is why all these people that complain about Facebook don't just ... stop using it. Just seems like a gigantic waste of time to me... ;-)
- NotOscarWilde 10y ago
  Here are two examples: * My group of friends and acquaintances who play badminton coordinate on Facebook; we do not work at the same place or have each other's phone numbers. People use the number of "Going" people to figure out whether there are still slots to play or not. * The local university feminist organization is organized 100% through Facebook. We send one email a month or so to our mailing list, but if you want to participate (help out, for instance), you do this through the closed Facebook group. It may be easy to leave Facebook and stay in contact with your closest friends; it's hard to replace larger social groups like those above.
  - lutorm 10y ago
    I'm a member of plenty of discussion groups that run on a VBulletin board or something where you can register and start posting. Why doesn't the local university feminist organization do that, why do I have to give give up my private info to Zuckerberg et al just to be part of it? Maybe I'm weird but my larger social groups are usually focused on specific things and I'm happy to interact with them in a forum designed specifically for that purpose, not owned by a huge information-sucking company. In fact, I find the requirement to be a member of Facebook as a condition of productively working with that feminist org to be really exclusionary.
  - throwanem 10y ago
    > It may be easy to leave Facebook and stay in contact with your closest friends Often it is not, because Facebook has so successfully inveigled itself into and through people's social interactions that a lot of folks just don't think about keeping in touch any other way.
    - kinkdr 10y ago
vacri 10y ago
One of the several things that bothers me about Twitter is that news agencies now use it as a source of react quotes. A private company showing the opinions of people unrelated to the event is now a 'news source'.
- gwright 10y ago
  News agencies are generally private companies and often mix 'news' with punditry which often includes opinions of people unrelated to the event.
  - vacri 10y ago
    Yeah, I know the wire services are private companies, but news shows don't advertise "And now we turn to Reuters" as part of their show, and the wire service articles go through an editorial process. I'd disagree with the amount of unrelated opinion on the wire services, though - new shows never did anything like Twitter-level opinion with their Associated Press feed, for example.

by kinkdr 10y ago

untog 10y ago

Quite literally, network effects. There is no point using an open source, distributed social network if you have no friends on it. In many ways you don't really have a choice about what social network you use, just whether you use one at all.

tbirdz 10y ago
On the positive side, if you don't know anyone on the network, then it's a great opportunity to make some new friends!
- NotOscarWilde 10y ago
  Making new acquaintances is useless if nobody from your 30km radius is on the network or if it is hard to meet people inside this radius. Friendships decay really fast with distance, especially when there is no real strong bond. As much as I am disgusted by Facebook right now, they do one thing right -- they make it fairly easy to connect to friends of friends and people that are in your social circles but you don't know them yet. (A large part is the amount of data they have, along with a good friend suggestion system.) I'm pretty much invisible on Diaspora -- there is no way I can meet new friends from my area unless I start posting a lot with tags like #cityname and #countryname, and even then it all hinges on at least somebody being on the same server -- if they are on a different one, the tagged posts will not get there.
  - tbirdz 10y ago
    >Making new acquaintances is useless if nobody from your 30km radius is on the network or if it is hard to meet people inside this radius. Friendships decay really fast with distance, especially when there is no real strong bond. I disagree, local proximity is not critical to maintaining a friendship. I have friends I talk with daily who live much further than 30km away, even some in other countries. A great thing about the internet is it allows people to connect over other similarities than physical location. I have some friends who I've never even met in person before, for example. On the other hand, I've never really found facebook style physical "friend-of-a-friend" type connections to be that useful to me. Most all of my friends in meatspace are part of the same group, ie all our "friend-of-friends" are each other. The rest are people who aren't interested in introducing me to the rest of their social circle. Now I don't think this proves anything, or even if there is any way of measuring the ease/quality of friends made on vs off line, but it's just an example from my own life. How well making friends with strangers online, strangers offline, or friends-of-friends depends heavily on your personality and current social group. The situation is a lot more variable than how you present it.
pdkl95 10y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalfe%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalfe%27s_law It's hard to get your n(n − 1)/2 friends and family to also switch.

lutorm 10y ago

One thing that I don't understand is why all these people that complain about Facebook don't just ... stop using it. Just seems like a gigantic waste of time to me... ;-)

NotOscarWilde 10y ago
Here are two examples: * My group of friends and acquaintances who play badminton coordinate on Facebook; we do not work at the same place or have each other's phone numbers. People use the number of "Going" people to figure out whether there are still slots to play or not. * The local university feminist organization is organized 100% through Facebook. We send one email a month or so to our mailing list, but if you want to participate (help out, for instance), you do this through the closed Facebook group. It may be easy to leave Facebook and stay in contact with your closest friends; it's hard to replace larger social groups like those above.
- lutorm 10y ago
  I'm a member of plenty of discussion groups that run on a VBulletin board or something where you can register and start posting. Why doesn't the local university feminist organization do that, why do I have to give give up my private info to Zuckerberg et al just to be part of it? Maybe I'm weird but my larger social groups are usually focused on specific things and I'm happy to interact with them in a forum designed specifically for that purpose, not owned by a huge information-sucking company. In fact, I find the requirement to be a member of Facebook as a condition of productively working with that feminist org to be really exclusionary.
- throwanem 10y ago
  > It may be easy to leave Facebook and stay in contact with your closest friends Often it is not, because Facebook has so successfully inveigled itself into and through people's social interactions that a lot of folks just don't think about keeping in touch any other way.
  - kinkdr 10y ago

vacri 10y ago

One of the several things that bothers me about Twitter is that news agencies now use it as a source of react quotes. A private company showing the opinions of people unrelated to the event is now a 'news source'.

gwright 10y ago
News agencies are generally private companies and often mix 'news' with punditry which often includes opinions of people unrelated to the event.
- vacri 10y ago
  Yeah, I know the wire services are private companies, but news shows don't advertise "And now we turn to Reuters" as part of their show, and the wire service articles go through an editorial process. I'd disagree with the amount of unrelated opinion on the wire services, though - new shows never did anything like Twitter-level opinion with their Associated Press feed, for example.