10 ms·

We Need More Alternatives to Facebook

155 points by mathattack 9y ago

pyrophane 9y ago
We need interconnected networks to succeed again. Remember when the internet was all about services based on open protocols that could talk to one another? I do. We've moved away from that in no small part to the fact that it isn't in the interest of the Facebooks and Googles of the world, who want to BE the internet rather than just a part of it. Everyone has a closed off messaging system. Platforms are working harder to bring content into their wall so you don't ever have to leave to get it. I'm not sure how to fix this now, as the answers (xmpp, openid, diaspora, matrix) don't seem to be gaining a huge amount of traction, either because they are too difficult to use, lack important features, or because most users don't care. Either way if we can't figure out a way to bring that spirit of interconnectedness and decentralization back to the internet I'm afraid that the situation will continue to deteriorate.
- sharun 9y ago
  The fix is easy. The root cause is the like/retweet/upvote/view count and the instant gratification it produces. The social networks like FB/Twitter/Youtube benefit greatly from all their users being addicted to these counts. They know this. Its like a drug they peddle that produces a false high. So whats the fix? Rather than giving their users instant feedback and gratification if they just delay it for a bit or change the signaling(ie replace the numbers with color gradients,number less charts etc), most of unintended consequences we see of social networks (like fake news, celeb-worship, attention harvesting, mob rule, re-enforcing echo chambers of hate/rascism etc) will not disappear but get more controllable. Expecting Google and Facebook to do this by themselves is like expecting Wall Street to self regulate and the NSA to come out with a road map to ending secret data collection. Its not going to happen. They have to be strong armed, forced and publicly shamed into it. And that is going to happen sooner or later whether they like it or not. Because the consequences are pilling up.
  - woah 9y ago
    The fact that people like to get approval from their peers is a sinister conspiracy? I think it's important for alternative decentralized networks to incorporate these mechanisms that people enjoy.
    - csydas 9y ago
      I think you're somewhat understating the effect of the voting/like feedback. Even on HN which is fairly neutral to the whole social aspect of a message board, it's very clear that people take their karma seriously, even with rules specifically forbidding the meta-comments on down votes/up votes. The praise system works, it's addictive, and the biggest and largest source of the feedback is already set up, available, and provides exactly what people need. They know how to get what they want from it. To me, it doesn't seem that people are using Facebook for anything but the feedback loop; for every business, self employed person, or personality using Facebook to connect to fans, there are dozens of people just looking to get in on the feed to get a taste of that feedback. Look at announcement posts from any entity with a large following; the comments on it will get into the tens of thousands in an hour or two. The comments aren't discussing it, it's people seeing a vein open up for the feedback, and trying to tap it to get some likes or feedback. Reddit seems to have the same issue with the top rated posts on more populated subreddits being nothing but dumb puns that people rush out to be first with; scroll down far enough, and you'll see the exact same pun repeated by others who were too slow to post and missed their chance. Facebook isn't a communication platform really, it's a steady drip of endorphins as you can repeatedly live out your 15 minutes of fame over and over again, all while advertisers throw ads at you. Messenger is just a means to keep you in the platform. The point of my banal rant is that the idea of alternative networks has been bandied around since everyone's mom and dad got a facebook account, but every time it's addressed, it's always about feature parity and improvements instead of acknowledging that Facebook currently is best situated to feed that need for acknowledgement. Trying to fight on features, on policy, and so on is pointless because that's not why people are using Facebook. We saw how Twitter and Instagram started to steal Facebook users because of a more efficient means of providing the same feedback for users. Wider audience, less effort, and Facebook took notice, copying features directly from both platforms. It won't be just incorporating it, it will be ensuring that it's a better, faster, more efficient system for giving that gratification.
- newsat13 9y ago
  It's really "because most users don't care". When go out to buy a TV or a car or a fridge, I just get the best one out there. I don't do research on whether they are based on open specifications/protocols. I don't even do research on if most of the product is made in my home country (instead of China). And I say this as a free software developer. I imagine this is the same flow of purchase that non-techies are making. They don't know, understand or care. They just want to use the best product. Unless these interconnected networks provide a benefit (UX or some feature) to the common non-techie, they won't succeed.
  - bigbugbag 9y ago
    Most user do care, but they lack time as they have to work constantly to pay rent, school, food and repay debt, or study. If you bought a TV/car/fridge that is not compatible with your electricity source suddenly you'd notice how it was nice that they followed the open specifications and protocols and that you had no idea the reason they work was because they did.
    - newsat13 9y ago
      Isn't this exactly what the case is with Apple products? They make adapters and software not compatible with anything else. People don't seem to care and just pay up and buy Macs even.. (all huge investments)
- lowglow 9y ago
  Reminds me of what https://indieweb.org/ https://indieweb.org/ is pushing as well
- lj3 9y ago
  > they are too difficult to use, lack important features That would be the two reasons nobody messes with XMPP anymore. The reason most of those protocols wound up on the trash heap is a lack of competent stewardship. Too much design by committee, not enough benevolent dictators. The solution? Create better protocols with better communities surrounding them. They have to be head and shoulders better than rolling your own, though, and it will be harder this time around to convince people to use your stuff. Too many people got burned the last time around.
- bigbugbag 9y ago
  The situation has already deteriorated to the point that we have talk warning us of a possible upcoming death of transit[1]. [1]: https://labs.ripe.net/Members/gih/the-death-of-transit https://labs.ripe.net/Members/gih/the-death-of-transit
dbg31415 9y ago
To me, Facebook was cool when I was in college... when it first came out. Was nice to link up with people I had classes with the previous semester but didn't see much any more, look up cute girls from lectures, and learn stupid details like my friend Joe was into the same bands I was. But... it instantly lost all appeal once my parents and grandparents joined. I used it for a bit to keep up with friends after college, but then I decided I would de-friend anyone I hadn't actually spoken with in the last year... or didn't expect to ever really talk with again in the future. I did that every year for a few years... and eventually just shut down my account. For me, noise exceeded signal. Every time I got an alert it was some fake friend wanting to connect or share something I didn't care about. I keep in touch with friends I care about with text messages, and we have our own Slack channels... and that's good. The absolute last thing any of us want is this super-public, broadcasted-bullshit, boast-fest full of people we don't really care about. Some girl I thought was cute when I was in college... there's no reason I need to know when she has kids or what she is up to 15 years later... superficial friendships are just a time sink that take away from real friendships. Anyway yeah, 5+ years Facebook-free and no regrets on that. I like Snapchat (saying this as a nearly-40-year-old) because, like natural conversation, it's not some crapy thing that comes back to haunt you. Say what you want, and it's gone. (But... yeah, I HATE that it's stored on some server somewhere for the government or advertisers to use to track me.) Slack groups work really well for me and a few of my groups of friends. Because we know they are exclusive, and won't spam us, we actually value them. When someone has a message for the entire group... "I got engaged / married / had a kid / new job / moving to Singapore..." whatever... it's just information, not someone trying to milk fake internet points from strangers. Focus on real friends, focus on communication that mimics real life... you say things... and they're gone. Imagine if some asshole was walking around with a tape recorder and recording every conversation you had... that's how I see Facebook / Google+... The whole concept of these networks just makes me cringe.
- ErikAugust 9y ago
  Agreed. People that were in college in the 00s and used Facebook totally understand that the original value proposition. Facebook was actually an elitist social network - an experience not only devoid of parents, grandparents, but people who didn't go to college. And early on, people who didn't go to moderately "important" colleges. No "importantcollegehere.edu" email address - no Facebook account. You could use MySpace. Facebook kept people out - it's mission was definitely not to "connect everyone in the world" (or whatever). And there wasn't a news feed. An obvious use case was gathering intel on classmates you found attractive. Through thousands of small mutations, Facebook has evolved into what it is today. And people that think Facebook is true to its roots are wrong. Completely wrong.
davesque 9y ago
Whatever we need, I've come to feel that Facebook is broken on a fundamental level in that it does not accomplish its implicit goal of connecting people. Interactions between Facebook users are comically if not dangerously (as we've now seen) vacuous.
peterwwillis 9y ago
This isn't an argument for social media alternatives, this is an argument for ethical journalism to become popular again. We need non-social media.
- isostatic 9y ago
  We do. But that costs money, and the only things that seem to be working are clickbait, fake news, and government sponsored outlets. A future of RT, Press TV, infowars, taboos, and if we're lucky al-jazzera
  - bigbugbag 9y ago
    That's because those media are engaged in fast competition race towards the bottom. Let's get rid of surveillance capitalism and tracking/targeting in advertising and this whole conundrum will solve itself.
Nomentatus 9y ago
Obviously we don't need an alternative very much since we aren't enforcing the laws about interoperability that have always applied to every other sort of monopoly, such as railroads - you aren't allowed to have your own rail gauge, by law, for a reason; others have to be able to take those railcars on their line, too. Similarly, back in the day Bell was forced to interoperate with other telephone networks, that wasn't a choice. If other networks could interoperate transparently with Facebook there would be no shortage of alternatives. When things get really, really desperate... maybe at long last, despite our captured legislatures, it's time to apply the normal legal remedies that were good enough for our great-grandfathers.
- rexpop 9y ago
  Who, if not our "captured legislatures" is to act? "We don't need an alternative very much" today, perhaps, but I fear this may be like saying the Titanic had little need for life rafts _when in dry dock_.
  - bigbugbag 9y ago
    There are many alternatives around already. The issue is not alternatives, it is people not using and staying facebook's used.
    - rexpop 9y ago
      If the issue is users' behavior, then the fault lies with the designers.
    - Nomentatus 9y ago
      There are always alternatives to networks with monopoly power from the network effect. Which is why our Great-Grandfathers (the Great-Grandmothers weren't able to vote, then) passed those laws.
  - Nomentatus 9y ago
    I was being ironic - I forget that Americans still don't look for irony energetically. But it's still a good question, whether we have functioning democracies, or not.
kolinko 9y ago
Worth noting that Reddit might become a competition to Facebook in a year or so. They recently introduced a trial of followable users, that you can subscribe to, just like you subscribe to subreddits. It's de facto the same mechanism that Facebook has with user walls. Once they roll it out to everyone, Reddit will be quite similar, sans the real name policy.
- throwaway91111 9y ago
  Reddit and facebook are both inherently echo chambers.
- bigbugbag 9y ago
  Reddit is still alive ? And they plan to kill it faster by adding facebook-like features. Well too bad but it seems that every time a quality website gets too popular the quality goes down the drain and the people who made the website great in the first place move away to greener pastures then the website gets sold, sells out or evolves into something else in a desperate attempt to recapture its now gone past. HN is one exception to this, but has HN ever got hugely popular or is it limited to a certain category of people ?
- rayalez 9y ago
  Wasn't it always possible with friending and https://www.reddit.com/r/friends/ https://www.reddit.com/r/friends/? If you're in on the trial, can you share a screenshot?
- dehue 9y ago
  I can't see how reddit can possibly become competition for Facebook, they work on two completely different levels and cater to different circles of people. Facebook is about following your real life friends, local events, brands and interacting with people that you know. Reddit is a pseudo anonymous forum where people interact within communities based on interests and topics and reach out to as many people as possible. Even with the introduction of profiles, reddit can't exactly replace Facebook since Facebook is tied to your real life identity, your actual friends and family rather than random Internet people and that aspect of it is what makes it popular and hard to get away from. Even if some functions of them overlap, I just don't see how they could directly compete with one another. You are likely not going to post photos of your family dinner to Reddit because that would be extremely boring to anyone not within your family or friends circle. On the other hand, it wouldn't make much sense to post a link to a blog post on a complicated programming or science topic to Facebook and expect to get much discussion on it unless you happen to be friends with lots of people knowledgeable on that topic. They are two different platforms with different purposes. Unless one or the other drastically changes their entire interface and function, I doubt one will compete with the other any time soon.
paulcole 9y ago
The alternative is to not use Facebook.
- colmvp 9y ago
  I think the problem is that it's becoming harder and hard not to use a Facebook related product. Along with the social network, you have the IM app, Instagram, Whatsapp, and potentially VR. As much as I dislike FB (I uninstalled it from my app and have used the social network in many months), it's much harder for me to convince friends to switch over to another chat program, or to publish my shitty photos on another another platform with an actual audience of friends.
  - ymse 9y ago
    It's easier to convince them if you don't have Facebook to begin with. Then it can't be used as an excuse. Nearly all my close friends and family have Signal. As for shitty photos... they can see them on the TV when they visit :) I have considered making a pseudonym account just for Tinder though (hi ladies!)...but greeting people with "my name isn't actually Johnny Depp" does not sound like the best opener either.
    - Markoff 9y ago
      i use only signal and Skype lite, sharing photos with family in Google photos, not sure why would i need social network for that
  - throwaway91111 9y ago
    Ehh, most people still respond to SMS faster than anything. If you make an effort to socialize in the real world INSTEAD of via apps, the apps are much more obviously about interacting with brands that pay to get your eyes. I don't use any facebook product; most things have a decent fallback for auth. Of course this isn't realistic for most young people.
  - Markoff 9y ago
    dunno about us, but in Europe everyone has either WhatsApp, Viber or Skype, so even if you leave Facebook there is always alternative to reach someone, if it's really extreme email or SMS work i am in my 30s, not on any social network (well LinkedIn passively, thinking about closing account after changing job), no Facebook, no Twitter, no Instagram, no Snapchat, etc. and have no problem to communicate with people without Facebook, though since i don't wanna have anything to do with Facebook i am ignoring also WhatsApp, if someone wanna contact me they can use SMS, email, normal call, signal and Skype, this require only two apps installed on my phone i think many people in Europe share same sentiment especially in world after Snowden, i am just always surprised they are still willing to use WhatsApp owned by Facebook such will soon sharing data, can only hope this will push more people to Signal or back to email or SMS, Skype would be alternative but it's still American company mining data
exabrial 9y ago
"need" is a strong word, but variety and choice would be nice.
- bigbugbag 9y ago
  Variety and choice we already have and it is useless unless each component of this variety can communicate with the others. A multitude of walled gardens is no solution, it's just spreading the problem on a larger surface. What we need is to tear down the walls and build bridges instead.
satai 9y ago
We need more alternatives to FB but be hardly can get more relevant alternatives to FB...
- bigbugbag 9y ago
  We already have plenty of alternatives, what we need is all those to be interoperable between them.
  - satai 9y ago
    Emphasis on the word "relevant".
rdxm 9y ago
the best thing that could happen for us as a culture and really as a species, is for FB to disappear off the planet. does little beyond lowering IQ's of broader society.
memracom 9y ago
The thing about all these scoring systems like FAcebook "likes" is that there is no way to know that they mean what they say. People do not click "like" because they like your post or they like you. It means a lot of different things to different people so when you add them all up it is like adding apples to oranges to grapes to footballs to dustmites. Plus there are hordes of people trying to game the system and millions of dollars being spent on that. How can anyone take this thing seriously?
grewil2 9y ago
Mastodon seems like a promising alternative. From the description: "Mastodon is a free, open-source social network. A decentralized alternative to commercial platforms, it avoids the risks of a single company monopolizing your communication. Pick a server that you trust — whichever you choose, you can interact with everyone else. Anyone can run their own Mastodon instance and participate in the social network seamlessly." https://mastodon.social/about https://mastodon.social/about
- jug 9y ago
  I tried to sign up using both a hotmail.com and gmail.com mail address but it's saying both are invalid and turning the text field to red. shrug I've confirmed I'm actually on the sign up page and not the login page.
  - novia 9y ago
    "Due to exceptionally high traffic, registrations on this instance are closed until quality of service can be assured for existing users." Maybe try again later?
- bigbugbag 9y ago
  With all the buzz around mastodon lately, several of its claims and people expectation have been debunked. Mastodon is just another of the alternatives that already exist and is mostly a take on twitter and microblogging.
  - novia 9y ago
    This is a little off topic but, I'm curious, does Mastodon have policies regarding what sorts of photos can be shared on their site? If so, do they have admins that review reported photos to make sure they should be removed? I'm a little confused about how this decentralized thing works. A problem I have with Facebook and other social media sites is that they define topless photos of women to be lewd and therefore not allowed, but allow topless photos of men. If Mastodon explicitly allows their users to post those sorts of photos without censorship, them I will definitely be signing up. > Mastodon [...] is mostly a take on twitter Oddly enough, twitter is just about the only social media site that does not remove topless photos of women. So, if it is essentially just a twitter clone, I am slightly less interested.
davidg11 9y ago
Part of why Facebook paid such eye-popping sums for Instagram and Whatsapp is any network that gains critical mass poses a real threat, that monopoly is not as ironclad as it seems.
- bigbugbag 9y ago
  Isn't that business as usual ? microsoft, google, etc. have been doing this for decades. Either they buy before it gets popular and they kill it or they buy it once popular and they exploit it. Some of those are even made for the sole purpose of being bought by a big player with lots of money, youtube comes to mind. But not everybody is a sellout and when snapchat refused to be bought, facebook tried to pull a google and release a similar service/software to compete and starve the insolent, but they failed hard and nobody knows what facebook poke is. Though facebook still has its monopoly and snapchat is not really threatening that. But table turns, and they turn fast. For facebook who has no inherent value other that a lot of registered useds locked in, if those people started migrating to the new thing in town, facebook could be the new myspace in no time. This could not happen to apple or amazon who have inherent value, to google who sells ads outside its own websites, and microsoft well I don't understand how they made it so far, probably because they could bleed money by millions for years without even noticing it.
ThomPete 9y ago
There are literally thousands of alternatives to Facebook so that's hardly the problem.
XJOKOLAT 9y ago
No, we need 1) transferable data and history. 2) user accounts/networks/friends which can interface Then social networks become actual utilities instead of the branded "utility" walled-garden bullshit Facebook is currently branded as. Sure, that's their strength. But unless they give that up, we'll continue down this stagnant, monopolist path. Time to break Facebook up or open it to the web ... remember that? The open web?
dandelion_lover 9y ago
https://prism-break.org/en/all/#social-networks https://prism-break.org/en/all/#social-networks Even more? I guess the problem is somewhere else...
- bigbugbag 9y ago
  Now we have a new kind of those that uses blockchain technology and cryptocurrency such as steemit.
dangerousbeans 9y ago
https://www.scuttlebutt.nz/ https://www.scuttlebutt.nz/ is worth having a look at Built on a secure peer to peer replicating database which doesn't mind being incomplete - you just get the bit of it you need from your friends + their friends Has a version of github running on it: https://git.scuttlebot.io/ https://git.scuttlebot.io/ And a kinda soundcloud clone https://github.com/mmckegg/ferment https://github.com/mmckegg/ferment
norea-armozel 9y ago
In a way, I think social networks as currently designed as a mistake since it requires a centralized authority to share the content and verify our identities. Compare that to hosting your own content on a VPS where you're in charge of what you do and share on it. The problem comes from how do you connect people to together? How do you build a social search that links people based on what they share? In a way, I've always hoped Google would've been the one to get clued in and realize that they didn't need to make a social network but a social search index which would connect people based on that active sharing on websites. Obviously, there's no money to be had in such a search index so I have to wonder if it has to be something done on a voluntary basis like Debian or any other FOSS project.

155 points by mathattack 9y ago

We need interconnected networks to succeed again. Remember when the internet was all about services based on open protocols that could talk to one another? I do. We've moved away from that in no small part to the fact that it isn't in the interest of the Facebooks and Googles of the world, who want to BE the internet rather than just a part of it. Everyone has a closed off messaging system. Platforms are working harder to bring content into their wall so you don't ever have to leave to get it. I'm not sure how to fix this now, as the answers (xmpp, openid, diaspora, matrix) don't seem to be gaining a huge amount of traction, either because they are too difficult to use, lack important features, or because most users don't care. Either way if we can't figure out a way to bring that spirit of interconnectedness and decentralization back to the internet I'm afraid that the situation will continue to deteriorate.

sharun 9y ago
The fix is easy. The root cause is the like/retweet/upvote/view count and the instant gratification it produces. The social networks like FB/Twitter/Youtube benefit greatly from all their users being addicted to these counts. They know this. Its like a drug they peddle that produces a false high. So whats the fix? Rather than giving their users instant feedback and gratification if they just delay it for a bit or change the signaling(ie replace the numbers with color gradients,number less charts etc), most of unintended consequences we see of social networks (like fake news, celeb-worship, attention harvesting, mob rule, re-enforcing echo chambers of hate/rascism etc) will not disappear but get more controllable. Expecting Google and Facebook to do this by themselves is like expecting Wall Street to self regulate and the NSA to come out with a road map to ending secret data collection. Its not going to happen. They have to be strong armed, forced and publicly shamed into it. And that is going to happen sooner or later whether they like it or not. Because the consequences are pilling up.
- woah 9y ago
  The fact that people like to get approval from their peers is a sinister conspiracy? I think it's important for alternative decentralized networks to incorporate these mechanisms that people enjoy.
  - csydas 9y ago
    I think you're somewhat understating the effect of the voting/like feedback. Even on HN which is fairly neutral to the whole social aspect of a message board, it's very clear that people take their karma seriously, even with rules specifically forbidding the meta-comments on down votes/up votes. The praise system works, it's addictive, and the biggest and largest source of the feedback is already set up, available, and provides exactly what people need. They know how to get what they want from it. To me, it doesn't seem that people are using Facebook for anything but the feedback loop; for every business, self employed person, or personality using Facebook to connect to fans, there are dozens of people just looking to get in on the feed to get a taste of that feedback. Look at announcement posts from any entity with a large following; the comments on it will get into the tens of thousands in an hour or two. The comments aren't discussing it, it's people seeing a vein open up for the feedback, and trying to tap it to get some likes or feedback. Reddit seems to have the same issue with the top rated posts on more populated subreddits being nothing but dumb puns that people rush out to be first with; scroll down far enough, and you'll see the exact same pun repeated by others who were too slow to post and missed their chance. Facebook isn't a communication platform really, it's a steady drip of endorphins as you can repeatedly live out your 15 minutes of fame over and over again, all while advertisers throw ads at you. Messenger is just a means to keep you in the platform. The point of my banal rant is that the idea of alternative networks has been bandied around since everyone's mom and dad got a facebook account, but every time it's addressed, it's always about feature parity and improvements instead of acknowledging that Facebook currently is best situated to feed that need for acknowledgement. Trying to fight on features, on policy, and so on is pointless because that's not why people are using Facebook. We saw how Twitter and Instagram started to steal Facebook users because of a more efficient means of providing the same feedback for users. Wider audience, less effort, and Facebook took notice, copying features directly from both platforms. It won't be just incorporating it, it will be ensuring that it's a better, faster, more efficient system for giving that gratification.
newsat13 9y ago
It's really "because most users don't care". When go out to buy a TV or a car or a fridge, I just get the best one out there. I don't do research on whether they are based on open specifications/protocols. I don't even do research on if most of the product is made in my home country (instead of China). And I say this as a free software developer. I imagine this is the same flow of purchase that non-techies are making. They don't know, understand or care. They just want to use the best product. Unless these interconnected networks provide a benefit (UX or some feature) to the common non-techie, they won't succeed.
- bigbugbag 9y ago
  Most user do care, but they lack time as they have to work constantly to pay rent, school, food and repay debt, or study. If you bought a TV/car/fridge that is not compatible with your electricity source suddenly you'd notice how it was nice that they followed the open specifications and protocols and that you had no idea the reason they work was because they did.
  - newsat13 9y ago
    Isn't this exactly what the case is with Apple products? They make adapters and software not compatible with anything else. People don't seem to care and just pay up and buy Macs even.. (all huge investments)
lowglow 9y ago
Reminds me of what https://indieweb.org/ https://indieweb.org/ is pushing as well
lj3 9y ago
> they are too difficult to use, lack important features That would be the two reasons nobody messes with XMPP anymore. The reason most of those protocols wound up on the trash heap is a lack of competent stewardship. Too much design by committee, not enough benevolent dictators. The solution? Create better protocols with better communities surrounding them. They have to be head and shoulders better than rolling your own, though, and it will be harder this time around to convince people to use your stuff. Too many people got burned the last time around.
bigbugbag 9y ago
The situation has already deteriorated to the point that we have talk warning us of a possible upcoming death of transit[1]. [1]: https://labs.ripe.net/Members/gih/the-death-of-transit https://labs.ripe.net/Members/gih/the-death-of-transit

dbg31415 9y ago

To me, Facebook was cool when I was in college... when it first came out. Was nice to link up with people I had classes with the previous semester but didn't see much any more, look up cute girls from lectures, and learn stupid details like my friend Joe was into the same bands I was. But... it instantly lost all appeal once my parents and grandparents joined. I used it for a bit to keep up with friends after college, but then I decided I would de-friend anyone I hadn't actually spoken with in the last year... or didn't expect to ever really talk with again in the future. I did that every year for a few years... and eventually just shut down my account. For me, noise exceeded signal. Every time I got an alert it was some fake friend wanting to connect or share something I didn't care about. I keep in touch with friends I care about with text messages, and we have our own Slack channels... and that's good. The absolute last thing any of us want is this super-public, broadcasted-bullshit, boast-fest full of people we don't really care about. Some girl I thought was cute when I was in college... there's no reason I need to know when she has kids or what she is up to 15 years later... superficial friendships are just a time sink that take away from real friendships. Anyway yeah, 5+ years Facebook-free and no regrets on that. I like Snapchat (saying this as a nearly-40-year-old) because, like natural conversation, it's not some crapy thing that comes back to haunt you. Say what you want, and it's gone. (But... yeah, I HATE that it's stored on some server somewhere for the government or advertisers to use to track me.) Slack groups work really well for me and a few of my groups of friends. Because we know they are exclusive, and won't spam us, we actually value them. When someone has a message for the entire group... "I got engaged / married / had a kid / new job / moving to Singapore..." whatever... it's just information, not someone trying to milk fake internet points from strangers. Focus on real friends, focus on communication that mimics real life... you say things... and they're gone. Imagine if some asshole was walking around with a tape recorder and recording every conversation you had... that's how I see Facebook / Google+... The whole concept of these networks just makes me cringe.

ErikAugust 9y ago
Agreed. People that were in college in the 00s and used Facebook totally understand that the original value proposition. Facebook was actually an elitist social network - an experience not only devoid of parents, grandparents, but people who didn't go to college. And early on, people who didn't go to moderately "important" colleges. No "importantcollegehere.edu" email address - no Facebook account. You could use MySpace. Facebook kept people out - it's mission was definitely not to "connect everyone in the world" (or whatever). And there wasn't a news feed. An obvious use case was gathering intel on classmates you found attractive. Through thousands of small mutations, Facebook has evolved into what it is today. And people that think Facebook is true to its roots are wrong. Completely wrong.

davesque 9y ago

Whatever we need, I've come to feel that Facebook is broken on a fundamental level in that it does not accomplish its implicit goal of connecting people. Interactions between Facebook users are comically if not dangerously (as we've now seen) vacuous.

peterwwillis 9y ago

This isn't an argument for social media alternatives, this is an argument for ethical journalism to become popular again. We need non-social media.

isostatic 9y ago
We do. But that costs money, and the only things that seem to be working are clickbait, fake news, and government sponsored outlets. A future of RT, Press TV, infowars, taboos, and if we're lucky al-jazzera
- bigbugbag 9y ago
  That's because those media are engaged in fast competition race towards the bottom. Let's get rid of surveillance capitalism and tracking/targeting in advertising and this whole conundrum will solve itself.

Nomentatus 9y ago

Obviously we don't need an alternative very much since we aren't enforcing the laws about interoperability that have always applied to every other sort of monopoly, such as railroads - you aren't allowed to have your own rail gauge, by law, for a reason; others have to be able to take those railcars on their line, too. Similarly, back in the day Bell was forced to interoperate with other telephone networks, that wasn't a choice. If other networks could interoperate transparently with Facebook there would be no shortage of alternatives. When things get really, really desperate... maybe at long last, despite our captured legislatures, it's time to apply the normal legal remedies that were good enough for our great-grandfathers.

rexpop 9y ago
Who, if not our "captured legislatures" is to act? "We don't need an alternative very much" today, perhaps, but I fear this may be like saying the Titanic had little need for life rafts _when in dry dock_.
- bigbugbag 9y ago
  There are many alternatives around already. The issue is not alternatives, it is people not using and staying facebook's used.
  - rexpop 9y ago
    If the issue is users' behavior, then the fault lies with the designers.
  - Nomentatus 9y ago
    There are always alternatives to networks with monopoly power from the network effect. Which is why our Great-Grandfathers (the Great-Grandmothers weren't able to vote, then) passed those laws.
- Nomentatus 9y ago
  I was being ironic - I forget that Americans still don't look for irony energetically. But it's still a good question, whether we have functioning democracies, or not.

kolinko 9y ago

Worth noting that Reddit might become a competition to Facebook in a year or so. They recently introduced a trial of followable users, that you can subscribe to, just like you subscribe to subreddits. It's de facto the same mechanism that Facebook has with user walls. Once they roll it out to everyone, Reddit will be quite similar, sans the real name policy.

throwaway91111 9y ago
Reddit and facebook are both inherently echo chambers.
bigbugbag 9y ago
Reddit is still alive ? And they plan to kill it faster by adding facebook-like features. Well too bad but it seems that every time a quality website gets too popular the quality goes down the drain and the people who made the website great in the first place move away to greener pastures then the website gets sold, sells out or evolves into something else in a desperate attempt to recapture its now gone past. HN is one exception to this, but has HN ever got hugely popular or is it limited to a certain category of people ?
rayalez 9y ago
Wasn't it always possible with friending and https://www.reddit.com/r/friends/ https://www.reddit.com/r/friends/? If you're in on the trial, can you share a screenshot?
dehue 9y ago
I can't see how reddit can possibly become competition for Facebook, they work on two completely different levels and cater to different circles of people. Facebook is about following your real life friends, local events, brands and interacting with people that you know. Reddit is a pseudo anonymous forum where people interact within communities based on interests and topics and reach out to as many people as possible. Even with the introduction of profiles, reddit can't exactly replace Facebook since Facebook is tied to your real life identity, your actual friends and family rather than random Internet people and that aspect of it is what makes it popular and hard to get away from. Even if some functions of them overlap, I just don't see how they could directly compete with one another. You are likely not going to post photos of your family dinner to Reddit because that would be extremely boring to anyone not within your family or friends circle. On the other hand, it wouldn't make much sense to post a link to a blog post on a complicated programming or science topic to Facebook and expect to get much discussion on it unless you happen to be friends with lots of people knowledgeable on that topic. They are two different platforms with different purposes. Unless one or the other drastically changes their entire interface and function, I doubt one will compete with the other any time soon.

paulcole 9y ago

The alternative is to not use Facebook.

colmvp 9y ago
I think the problem is that it's becoming harder and hard not to use a Facebook related product. Along with the social network, you have the IM app, Instagram, Whatsapp, and potentially VR. As much as I dislike FB (I uninstalled it from my app and have used the social network in many months), it's much harder for me to convince friends to switch over to another chat program, or to publish my shitty photos on another another platform with an actual audience of friends.
- ymse 9y ago
  It's easier to convince them if you don't have Facebook to begin with. Then it can't be used as an excuse. Nearly all my close friends and family have Signal. As for shitty photos... they can see them on the TV when they visit :) I have considered making a pseudonym account just for Tinder though (hi ladies!)...but greeting people with "my name isn't actually Johnny Depp" does not sound like the best opener either.
  - Markoff 9y ago
    i use only signal and Skype lite, sharing photos with family in Google photos, not sure why would i need social network for that
- throwaway91111 9y ago
  Ehh, most people still respond to SMS faster than anything. If you make an effort to socialize in the real world INSTEAD of via apps, the apps are much more obviously about interacting with brands that pay to get your eyes. I don't use any facebook product; most things have a decent fallback for auth. Of course this isn't realistic for most young people.
- Markoff 9y ago
  dunno about us, but in Europe everyone has either WhatsApp, Viber or Skype, so even if you leave Facebook there is always alternative to reach someone, if it's really extreme email or SMS work i am in my 30s, not on any social network (well LinkedIn passively, thinking about closing account after changing job), no Facebook, no Twitter, no Instagram, no Snapchat, etc. and have no problem to communicate with people without Facebook, though since i don't wanna have anything to do with Facebook i am ignoring also WhatsApp, if someone wanna contact me they can use SMS, email, normal call, signal and Skype, this require only two apps installed on my phone i think many people in Europe share same sentiment especially in world after Snowden, i am just always surprised they are still willing to use WhatsApp owned by Facebook such will soon sharing data, can only hope this will push more people to Signal or back to email or SMS, Skype would be alternative but it's still American company mining data

exabrial 9y ago

"need" is a strong word, but variety and choice would be nice.

bigbugbag 9y ago
Variety and choice we already have and it is useless unless each component of this variety can communicate with the others. A multitude of walled gardens is no solution, it's just spreading the problem on a larger surface. What we need is to tear down the walls and build bridges instead.

satai 9y ago

We need more alternatives to FB but be hardly can get more relevant alternatives to FB...

bigbugbag 9y ago
We already have plenty of alternatives, what we need is all those to be interoperable between them.
- satai 9y ago
  Emphasis on the word "relevant".

rdxm 9y ago

the best thing that could happen for us as a culture and really as a species, is for FB to disappear off the planet. does little beyond lowering IQ's of broader society.

memracom 9y ago

The thing about all these scoring systems like FAcebook "likes" is that there is no way to know that they mean what they say. People do not click "like" because they like your post or they like you. It means a lot of different things to different people so when you add them all up it is like adding apples to oranges to grapes to footballs to dustmites. Plus there are hordes of people trying to game the system and millions of dollars being spent on that. How can anyone take this thing seriously?

grewil2 9y ago

Mastodon seems like a promising alternative. From the description: "Mastodon is a free, open-source social network. A decentralized alternative to commercial platforms, it avoids the risks of a single company monopolizing your communication. Pick a server that you trust — whichever you choose, you can interact with everyone else. Anyone can run their own Mastodon instance and participate in the social network seamlessly." https://mastodon.social/about https://mastodon.social/about

jug 9y ago
I tried to sign up using both a hotmail.com and gmail.com mail address but it's saying both are invalid and turning the text field to red. shrug I've confirmed I'm actually on the sign up page and not the login page.
- novia 9y ago
  "Due to exceptionally high traffic, registrations on this instance are closed until quality of service can be assured for existing users." Maybe try again later?
bigbugbag 9y ago
With all the buzz around mastodon lately, several of its claims and people expectation have been debunked. Mastodon is just another of the alternatives that already exist and is mostly a take on twitter and microblogging.
- novia 9y ago
  This is a little off topic but, I'm curious, does Mastodon have policies regarding what sorts of photos can be shared on their site? If so, do they have admins that review reported photos to make sure they should be removed? I'm a little confused about how this decentralized thing works. A problem I have with Facebook and other social media sites is that they define topless photos of women to be lewd and therefore not allowed, but allow topless photos of men. If Mastodon explicitly allows their users to post those sorts of photos without censorship, them I will definitely be signing up. > Mastodon [...] is mostly a take on twitter Oddly enough, twitter is just about the only social media site that does not remove topless photos of women. So, if it is essentially just a twitter clone, I am slightly less interested.

davidg11 9y ago

Part of why Facebook paid such eye-popping sums for Instagram and Whatsapp is any network that gains critical mass poses a real threat, that monopoly is not as ironclad as it seems.

bigbugbag 9y ago
Isn't that business as usual ? microsoft, google, etc. have been doing this for decades. Either they buy before it gets popular and they kill it or they buy it once popular and they exploit it. Some of those are even made for the sole purpose of being bought by a big player with lots of money, youtube comes to mind. But not everybody is a sellout and when snapchat refused to be bought, facebook tried to pull a google and release a similar service/software to compete and starve the insolent, but they failed hard and nobody knows what facebook poke is. Though facebook still has its monopoly and snapchat is not really threatening that. But table turns, and they turn fast. For facebook who has no inherent value other that a lot of registered useds locked in, if those people started migrating to the new thing in town, facebook could be the new myspace in no time. This could not happen to apple or amazon who have inherent value, to google who sells ads outside its own websites, and microsoft well I don't understand how they made it so far, probably because they could bleed money by millions for years without even noticing it.

ThomPete 9y ago

There are literally thousands of alternatives to Facebook so that's hardly the problem.

XJOKOLAT 9y ago

No, we need 1) transferable data and history. 2) user accounts/networks/friends which can interface Then social networks become actual utilities instead of the branded "utility" walled-garden bullshit Facebook is currently branded as. Sure, that's their strength. But unless they give that up, we'll continue down this stagnant, monopolist path. Time to break Facebook up or open it to the web ... remember that? The open web?

dandelion_lover 9y ago

https://prism-break.org/en/all/#social-networks https://prism-break.org/en/all/#social-networks Even more? I guess the problem is somewhere else...

bigbugbag 9y ago
Now we have a new kind of those that uses blockchain technology and cryptocurrency such as steemit.

dangerousbeans 9y ago

https://www.scuttlebutt.nz/ https://www.scuttlebutt.nz/ is worth having a look at Built on a secure peer to peer replicating database which doesn't mind being incomplete - you just get the bit of it you need from your friends + their friends Has a version of github running on it: https://git.scuttlebot.io/ https://git.scuttlebot.io/ And a kinda soundcloud clone https://github.com/mmckegg/ferment https://github.com/mmckegg/ferment

norea-armozel 9y ago

In a way, I think social networks as currently designed as a mistake since it requires a centralized authority to share the content and verify our identities. Compare that to hosting your own content on a VPS where you're in charge of what you do and share on it. The problem comes from how do you connect people to together? How do you build a social search that links people based on what they share? In a way, I've always hoped Google would've been the one to get clued in and realize that they didn't need to make a social network but a social search index which would connect people based on that active sharing on websites. Obviously, there's no money to be had in such a search index so I have to wonder if it has to be something done on a voluntary basis like Debian or any other FOSS project.