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Where are you getting this idea of "Facebook replacement"? You introduce your own idea, then shoot it down. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man https://en

Where are you getting this idea of "Facebook replacement"? You introduce your own idea, then shoot it down. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man Facebook does not provide software to set up small overlay networks. Nor is the business of Facebook to provide messaging or free web pages. That is just bait. The business of Facebook is providing a way to advertise to targeted audiences within the billions of people who visit Facebook. That is what people pay for. It is a website with billions of daily visitors. Unless you have a webite with billions of visitors then you are not competing with Facebook. A small overlay network is not a website, it is a computer network. It does not have a large audience because the number of nodes is small. It is an interface you see when you type ifconfig or ip addr, not an email server, a blog website or an SMS provider. You could could use it for those things or you could use it for other things, anything you can do on a LAN. It makes zero difference what you think people want. This is not a popularity contest of any sort. If you want to argue against the premise of my comment then you need to argue that small, personally-managed overlay networks and peer to peer connections are less efficient for sharing content with friends and family than using a public website, subject to "curation" and "censorship".

bobthepanda 6y ago
> In 2020, it is still too difficult for everyone to set up their own website, so they settle for a page on someone else's [for] exchanging content with friends and family This is patently not true. People were using email for this prior to Facebook's existence, which worked well enough ("Share photos via email! Share videos via email! Here's a funny story from grandma! RSVP to my birthday!") and was painless to set up; in fact, all the people who have Facebooks also have emails! But very few people are doing this anymore as their main mode of communication with friends and family; this kind of activity is now happening on Facebook, where people are happy with the ease that it facilitates. Small networks works fine, but nobody's interested, hence why Facebook is worth billions and billions of dollars and is a large website.
- pwdisswordfish2 6y ago
  You say "nobody's interested". That of course is "patently false". For one, pwdisswordfish2 is apparently interested. The author and other users of the software he/she says she uses are obviously interested. There are numerous projects that aim to use overlays. The overlay idea was used by one company that sold multiple times, ultimately to Microsoft for billions of dollars. The HN readers who upvoted the comment describing small overlays are presumably interested in seeing the idea presented in a comment. The stated purpose of this forum is intellectual curiosity. There is nothing in bobthepanda's comments that is directed at that stated purpose. Why is he/she arguing about email usage when the quoted sentence refers to setting up websites? This looks like more of the "straw man" argument technique. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man

bobthepanda 6y ago

> In 2020, it is still too difficult for everyone to set up their own website, so they settle for a page on someone else's [for] exchanging content with friends and family This is patently not true. People were using email for this prior to Facebook's existence, which worked well enough ("Share photos via email! Share videos via email! Here's a funny story from grandma! RSVP to my birthday!") and was painless to set up; in fact, all the people who have Facebooks also have emails! But very few people are doing this anymore as their main mode of communication with friends and family; this kind of activity is now happening on Facebook, where people are happy with the ease that it facilitates. Small networks works fine, but nobody's interested, hence why Facebook is worth billions and billions of dollars and is a large website.

pwdisswordfish2 6y ago
You say "nobody's interested". That of course is "patently false". For one, pwdisswordfish2 is apparently interested. The author and other users of the software he/she says she uses are obviously interested. There are numerous projects that aim to use overlays. The overlay idea was used by one company that sold multiple times, ultimately to Microsoft for billions of dollars. The HN readers who upvoted the comment describing small overlays are presumably interested in seeing the idea presented in a comment. The stated purpose of this forum is intellectual curiosity. There is nothing in bobthepanda's comments that is directed at that stated purpose. Why is he/she arguing about email usage when the quoted sentence refers to setting up websites? This looks like more of the "straw man" argument technique. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man