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Facebook Alternatives
- Jaruzel 8y agoMay I suggest that you add the opengraph and twitter meta tags to your page code[1], that way sharing your site via existing social media channels will result in a much nicer preview 'card' as opposed to just the text 'DELETE FACEBOOK' --- [1] Yes, I know that doing this is somewhat ironic, but it will help your engagement if people know what the site is before they click on it.
- darkblackcorner 8y agoNo Mastodon? https://mastodon.social https://mastodon.social
- Jaruzel 8y agoLooks like you can add it yourself - it's a 'wiki' type list.
- 0xmohit 8y agoCurious to know why do you need Google Analytics on the page.
- soared 8y agoNot op but an example is to see what links people are clicking, so op can move popular alternatives to the top of the list. Or identify if a lot of users from (ex. India) are visiting and can provide local options for them.
- danmg 8y agoYou can do all that from log files.
- stupidbird 8y agoIt's easier to do with GA
- amelius 8y agoThe problem is that these alternatives only tackle one part of Facebook, and are basically silos themselves. PS: In what way are these alternatives "crowdsourced" and why is it in the HN title and not the article title?
- wccrawford 8y agoIt's a wiki. The list is crowdsourced, not the sites that it lists.
- danso 8y agoI thought HN had a feature that automatically stripped sentence-ending exclamation points from submission titles? Similar to the feature it has that turns "1 million" to "1M"
- robertsd247 8y agoWhat?
- ilovecaching 8y agoMy wife makes all of her income through Facebook products. She's tried other platforms, and none of them were sustainable over Facebook and Instagram, partly because of the difficulty of building a following like the one she has on Instagram, partly because they market isn't using other products. For her, people walking away from Facebook or Instagram means losing her livelihood and giving up her dream job. Facebook is also the place where we keep in touch with relatives living thousands of miles away from us, who are just technologically literate enough to get on Facebook and post, but not much else. We also met on Facebook, so we owe our entire relationship to the platform. So for us, Facebook has done a lot of good, we rely on it for the nice life we have together, and it provides something that can't currently be replaced by other platforms.
- fastball 8y agoWhat does your wife sell?
- ilovecaching 8y agoHandmade clothing. She runs the entire operation by herself. She also does sponsored health and beauty products.
- giancarlostoro 8y agoDoes she use Etsy by chance? Seems like the big place for that kind of thing.
- ilovecaching 8y agoShe actually started on Etsy, but it basically paid nothing. Perhaps, the markets are just extremely fickle, but he following is primarily on Instagram and Facebook. She's trying to break into Youtube just to increase exposure, which I think is going reasonably well.
- 8y ago
- danso 8y agoThis list could use substantially better editing. "Google Allo" should not be one of the alternatives for messaging, given that Google has announced its shutdown. eBay should be on the list of Marketplaces. And how are Digg and Tumblr alternatives to Facebook? Ultimately, I don't think it's helpful to most users to throw a smorgasbord of possible vaguely-related alternatives at them. A more useful resource would be to take up the strategy of Wirecutter, in which the best and second-best options are highlighted, with actual explanations and thoughts. I think if you had to sit down and try to explain how Digg is a good alternative to Facebook to the average user, you'd realize how annoyed those users would be when they find that Digg is no such thing.
- porpoisely 8y agoAlmost every post about facebook has been marginally informative or complete nonsense. And yet, I see them here everyday. I keep wondering why? "deletefacebook" is just so blinded by agenda that they can't see the list they provide actually makes facebook look good in comparison to everything they listed. Rather than getting facebook users to leave, it'll make them value facebook even more since there aren't any better alternatives - according to "deletefacebook". They might as well create "QuitYourProgrammingJob.wiki" and then offer the following alternatives - coal miner, septic tank cleaner, bedpan replacer.
- zeroego 8y agoSpeaking of Facebook alternatives, I discovered a neat app not too long ago called Aether. It's like a decentralized P2P reddit. The community is fairly small but the app itself is really amazing, and I think was made entirely by one person. I'm not associated with the creator at all, and it doesn't necessarily fill the same niche as Facebook, but I think it is worth sharing nonetheless. https://getaether.net/ https://getaether.net/
- PavlovsCat 8y agoI enjoyed Aether, until I noticed my backup job was very busy with a few directories, and saw that Aether created a bazillion tiny files, even just deleting them all took a while on a SSD. If that ever changes, I might try it again, but since I never saw it mentioned as an issue that will be done properly later, I'm not holding my breath.
- zeroego 8y agoHuh I haven't noticed that myself. I'm using it on OSX. The dude who runs it is pretty personable. You should mention it to him if you find the time.
- PavlovsCat 8y agoI know, he's really great, and I've been meaning to say something on the forums about this.. I'll make the time.
- mp3il 8y agoWeird. Why would I delete Facebook when its 10x better than all the listed alternatives?
- the_other_guy 8y agoYeah, I should definitely trust your broken website that can be made in 30 minutes with 24 blocked ad and tracking scripts and promoted on the fakest online community aka ProductHunt. Sounds very legit to me. This is exactly the type of bullshit that shouldn't be promoted on SHOW HN
- wodenokoto 8y agoI think that list really shows how strong Facebook is. Twitter? That's even less private than fb. Reddit? Seriously, you want me to post my wedding pictures on Reddit? And for events, who is going to invite friends and family to their birthday via Eventbrite? Doodle? It's not like we need to settle on a date for my birthday.
- ribble 8y agoyeah... it's like, "does facebook smell bad? try this other shit."
- stupidbird 8y agoI guess you could start your own private subreddit and invite all your friends? Though of course, I'd imagine all your friends would tell you to fuck right off.
- solarkraft 8y agoDiaspora is a great platform. (Mastodon also replaces Twitter very well) From what I've experienced so far the federated platforms are very, very strong.
- butterfi 8y agoWhat problem are these "alternatives" addressing? If I'm concerned about privacy and data sharing, Twitter, Snapchat, and Tumblr don't seem like good candidates.
- echevil 8y agoAgree.. Are there any major social app that you can absotely trust your private data with?
- Barrin92 8y agoDiaspora and Mastodon are good alternatives (but are ironically not on this list). Both are federated solutions that let you set up your own instances, or use public ones. https://diasporafoundation.org/ https://diasporafoundation.org/ https://joinmastodon.org/ https://joinmastodon.org/
- echevil 8y agoIt’s hard to see if any of these self-hosted or decentralized solution would ever take off. For a social app, you need to get your friends and also public figures to use the same thing for it to be worth using at all. If it is more complicated to use than Facebook or similar, it will probably never be adopted by general public. And if the general public actually got into the same app, it would then become a new target for attacks.
- Barrin92 8y agothey're not decentralised in the sense that you seem to be implying. They're all federated, meaning that your data is situated on your own or a server of your choice, while the posts and users are still visible globally. You are not limited to only interact with people on your own instance, this is very much the point. Diaspora allows for quite easy interaction with the mainstream social media apps as well. Also I haven't used diaspora much so I can't speak from experience there, but creating a mastodon account is no more complicated than signing up for twitter.
- echevil 8y agoWhere you go largely depends on where most of your friends are. I spend more time on WeChat as most of my friends are there. After I installed SnapChat, I don’t think I ever come back because nobody I know is on it.
- giancarlostoro 8y agoI still wish Signal would allow you to register with just a username or email. One thing I liked about Wire more than Signal, but even less people I'm likely to meet will be using Wire vs Signal, which is already rare enough.
- rabidrat 8y agoYes! I have an older iPhone which can't be upgraded, so it can't install new apps...so I can't use Signal.
- parliament32 8y agoThis is pretty bad -- clicking thumbs up on an alternative has no feedback/doesn't do anything, submitting a new alternative also doesn't do anything, and the lists aren't curated at all (is Reddit really an FB substitute? Google Allo is dead, why is it on the list?).
- schnable 8y ago#1 alternative is Twitter, the only mainstream social network more toxic than Facebook.
- keb_ 8y agoI also found this site recently: https://switching.social/ https://switching.social/ Similar in concept, although probably more critical and privacy-focused. Not perfect, but I think it's an admirable idea.
- libraryatnight 8y agoI haven't had a facebook account in many years and I don't miss it, but holy shit does this list just show how badly facebook needs an actual competitor. Isn't there a happy medium somewhere? Where someone could use a facebook like model with ads to let users in for "free," but also accept payment for absolute privacy and content control. Part of me thinks even if you made the best, most amazing platform it'd still be a gamble if you'd get the user adoption momentum necessary to be a serious competitor. Google couldn't do it.
- a13n 8y agoI also wonder, if you got any traction whatsoever building a Facebook competitor, would they sue you for some kind of patent infringement? They'd definitely try to acquire you, and likely make it difficult to be successful if you didn't sell. I guess Snap is an interesting case study here, but we can all read the writing on the wall.
- solarkraft 8y agoMastodon is doing very well in getting adoption - mostly from tech folks, but maybe/probably they'll pull people with them. Facebook users in general seem a lot less tech oriented, so the initial push could be less. Diaspora seems like a very well built-out alternative to Facebook in terms of features and speed (speed&cleanliness are much better). However the network effect is of course a thing. Maybe when Diaspora gets connected to the Fediverse via ActivityPub the Fediverse enthusiasts will tell their parents and grandparents to move over.
- chillacy 8y agoMainland China gets along fine without Facebook and has a strong offering in WeChat, but then again maybe Facebook is the lesser of two evils here...
- libraryatnight 8y agoI think Facebook would love to be the WeChat for the rest of the world.
- PascLeRasc 8y agoWell Nextdoor is a perfect alternative for all your racist relatives who just want to rant about poor people moving into their neighborhood. My whole family has accounts in several different areas of Pittsburgh and most of the posts are people taking pictures of someone walking past their house or parking on their street and asking "Does anyone know this guy? Does he even live here? I think they're planning on breaking into my house!!"
- aglavine 8y agoIt is quite different being racist and being concerned about safety.
- skrebbel 8y agoI strongly suspect that the vast majority of racists, deep deep inside, are just worried about safety.
- bdcravens 8y agoYes but on Ring neighbors for example, it seems most of the “concerns” are just people walking up to the door while having pigment in their skin. Usually it’s obvious they’re doing door to door sales or the like, but the comments imply something is amiss.
- aglavine 8y agoI don't know. I tend to avoid such generalizations. I lived in an unsafe neighborhood and saw people do what they can to improve their situation, with poor if any help from government. Call them racist seems unfair and totally misunderstanding their problem.
- ryanmercer 8y ago>Usually it’s obvious they’re doing door to door sales or This is a common tactic to identify if someone is home or not and to look for packages to grab, if not an attempt to social engineering credit card or checking info.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- raintrees 8y agoI would find it helpful to also have listed the sites' revenue models. Advertising-based funding is an Achilles' heel apparently easily exploited by groups with coherent goals... Those sites that use donation models (especially anonymous sourced) seem to be more healthy, especially if said sites suddenly come under the glare of the latest "unacceptable of the moment" meme. De-platforming seems to be a powerful tool for censorship.
- simplecomplex 8y agoAlternative to what, exactly? I can email updates of my life to family pretty easily. No ads, totally free, private, supports replies, images, whatever really. This is what my family who never joined Facebook did. We all just send everybody email updates once a month. No need to see ads or Grandma's racist reposts every day!
- tinfoilboy 8y agoYou can always list alternatives for Facebook, but the problem comes in actually replacing it. Facebook isn't popular for being a well designed website, if you think about it, Facebook is a very bloated and clunky experience. Facebook is popular because that's what everyone uses. I think the issue isn't about finding alternatives to it, it's convincing the people completely entangled in the Facebook ecosystem why they should jump ship. Another issue comes with, a number of people don't use Facebook, but they use Instagram, which is just a rebranding of the same evil at this point. Getting people to switch from that would prove tough.
- echevil 8y agoExactly! It makes no sense to switch to something else if all your friends are still on Facebook. Also, who knows if the app you switch to will have less problems in future than Facebook does now.
- chillacy 8y agoWasn’t that what people said about MySpace? And business analysts see weakness in fb for that reason too, they’re vulnerable. Just look at snap’s users leaving to see, stickiness works both ways: as soon as something better exists, people switch quickly
- jinglebells 8y agoDigg?
- mayurbhattit 8y agoWhat about vk.com, plus google ?