4 ms·

Solution: Stop using Facebook

by reitoei 10y ago

cooper12 10y ago
This is at the bottom of the thread right now so I'm going to assume people don't agree with this. However, you're completely right, by continuing to use Facebook you validate their platform and keep feeding them your data. The solution is to seek alternative platforms that respect your freedoms or to abstain from social networks. (<smug>personally I find them to only suffice for navel-gazing and status signaling</smug>) I understand that due to network effects it will be really difficult to make friends follow you elsewhere or to find others, but the alternative is continuing to let Facebook dictate what you see and feel. For many people, Facebook is "the real world": it's how they get all their news and find out what's going on with people. We shouldn't underestimate the power Facebook holds to affect people and the importance of considering not participating.
- reitoei 10y ago
  > For many people, Facebook is "the real world": it's how they get all their news This is such an enormous, fundamentally dreadful problem and nobody seems to care. Edit: Some people seem to care, but not enough.
- eli_gottlieb 10y ago
  There are three things I want from an alternative: 1) Decentralized, preferably democratic-by-the-users, control. No centralized server where everything is kept in plaintext. 2) Privacy. I share what I want, and only that. People with whom I don't connect don't know I exist. 3) Authentication. My online identity is unique to something about me that exists in meatspace. Whom I connect with can be restricted to people I know in meatspace. Note that this is the opposite of our normal standard of anonymity: 4chan can be as anonymous as it likes, but a social network for groups of friends ought to prevent anonymous trolls or ads from flooding into my feed. Basically, I want a social network on which I own and control my own info, and on which I keep my IRL identity strictly separated from, for instance, the anime avatar I pretended to be on various bulletin boards. Do any existing alternative social networks meet these criteria?

Solution: Stop using Facebook

by reitoei 10y ago

Solution: Stop using Facebook

This is at the bottom of the thread right now so I'm going to assume people don't agree with this. However, you're completely right, by continuing to use Facebook you validate their platform and keep feeding them your data. The solution is to seek alternative platforms that respect your freedoms or to abstain from social networks. (<smug>personally I find them to only suffice for navel-gazing and status signaling</smug>) I understand that due to network effects it will be really difficult to make friends follow you elsewhere or to find others, but the alternative is continuing to let Facebook dictate what you see and feel. For many people, Facebook is "the real world": it's how they get all their news and find out what's going on with people. We shouldn't underestimate the power Facebook holds to affect people and the importance of considering not participating.

reitoei 10y ago
> For many people, Facebook is "the real world": it's how they get all their news This is such an enormous, fundamentally dreadful problem and nobody seems to care. Edit: Some people seem to care, but not enough.
eli_gottlieb 10y ago
There are three things I want from an alternative: 1) Decentralized, preferably democratic-by-the-users, control. No centralized server where everything is kept in plaintext. 2) Privacy. I share what I want, and only that. People with whom I don't connect don't know I exist. 3) Authentication. My online identity is unique to something about me that exists in meatspace. Whom I connect with can be restricted to people I know in meatspace. Note that this is the opposite of our normal standard of anonymity: 4chan can be as anonymous as it likes, but a social network for groups of friends ought to prevent anonymous trolls or ads from flooding into my feed. Basically, I want a social network on which I own and control my own info, and on which I keep my IRL identity strictly separated from, for instance, the anime avatar I pretended to be on various bulletin boards. Do any existing alternative social networks meet these criteria?