4 ms·

It's not a platform issue, it's a monetization issue. Somehow social networks have to make money, and that either involves charging users which pisses people of

It's not a platform issue, it's a monetization issue. Somehow social networks have to make money, and that either involves charging users which pisses people off, or relying on the fact that people don't properly value their time and / or information and selling them ads. Selling ads incentivizes aggressive data mining, and then you're right back to the situation we have now.

microwavecamera 9y ago
I think the best solution would be to create an open, non-profit, publicly funded platform similar to Wikipedia. Besides I believe it's possible to have advertising on commercial sites and still be ethical.
- em3rgent0rdr 9y ago
  ActivityPub [1] is a W3 recommendation for protocol for social networks communicating a federated p2p manner. It is used by open source social networks like Mastedon and PeerTube to interact with eachother. https://www.w3.org/TR/activitypub https://www.w3.org/TR/activitypub
  - 18pfsmt 9y ago
    Practically speaking, all of us that care about these sorts of things already know about Mastodon, if not ActivityPub and GnuSocial, etc. We have lots of potential FB competitors to root for right now.
    - microwavecamera 9y ago
      There's a few other good ones too: https://www.opensource-socialnetwork.org https://www.opensource-socialnetwork.org https://www.humhub.org/en https://www.humhub.org/en https://www.oxwall.com https://www.oxwall.com https://elgg.org https://elgg.org - site seems to be having issues right now https://friendi.ca https://friendi.ca
cirgue 9y ago
> It's not a platform issue, it's a monetization issue. This is kind of what I was getting at. I agree, the business model of the platform is the defining variable in how it will develop and how it treats users. Unfortunately there is no general willingness to pay for a social network. Facebook's ARPU in the US is something like $100/year. I would be willing to pay that for a social media platform that did zero business with advertisers. I don't think most people would though.

microwavecamera 9y ago

I think the best solution would be to create an open, non-profit, publicly funded platform similar to Wikipedia. Besides I believe it's possible to have advertising on commercial sites and still be ethical.

em3rgent0rdr 9y ago
ActivityPub [1] is a W3 recommendation for protocol for social networks communicating a federated p2p manner. It is used by open source social networks like Mastedon and PeerTube to interact with eachother. https://www.w3.org/TR/activitypub https://www.w3.org/TR/activitypub
- 18pfsmt 9y ago
  Practically speaking, all of us that care about these sorts of things already know about Mastodon, if not ActivityPub and GnuSocial, etc. We have lots of potential FB competitors to root for right now.
  - microwavecamera 9y ago
    There's a few other good ones too: https://www.opensource-socialnetwork.org https://www.opensource-socialnetwork.org https://www.humhub.org/en https://www.humhub.org/en https://www.oxwall.com https://www.oxwall.com https://elgg.org https://elgg.org - site seems to be having issues right now https://friendi.ca https://friendi.ca

cirgue 9y ago

> It's not a platform issue, it's a monetization issue. This is kind of what I was getting at. I agree, the business model of the platform is the defining variable in how it will develop and how it treats users. Unfortunately there is no general willingness to pay for a social network. Facebook's ARPU in the US is something like $100/year. I would be willing to pay that for a social media platform that did zero business with advertisers. I don't think most people would though.