4 ms·

Could you design a distributed Facebook? Perhaps no scale is really needed, at least in some cases.

swiley 5y ago
I haven't used Facebook in 10 years but my friends have shown me it. What's there to distribute? The chat functionality? The main feed is just a heavily curated stream of garbage that's vaguely influenced by your friend's list. It looks like there's nothing there other than this bizarre social pathology that's been continuously optimized and iterated to be as addictive as possible. For chat you have XMPP, for feeds you have RSS and webpub (mastodon.) There's ical for sharing events of course.
- kingsuper20 5y ago
  The garbage is addictive. It seems to me that a distributed (and more secure) version needs to have something in it that would cause a network effect. The idea of Facebook seems sound, it's just hard to get everyone to agree on one and when they do it's hard to break them free.
ClumsyPilot 5y ago
It doesnt need to be distributed,just needs oversight thats not commercially or politically biased
- kingsuper20 5y ago
  >oversight thats not commercially or politically biased My firm belief is that that is impossible.
  - Jcowell 5y ago
    Exactly. Unless it’s run by a state actor it has to be commercialized (or subsidized which means money has to get in anyway) but by being run by a state actor is it evidently politicized.
    - ClumsyPilot 5y ago
      We have ofcom, and theyve been doing a decent job https://www.ofcom.org.uk/home https://www.ofcom.org.uk/home
- EricE 5y ago
  Well that's the real trick now, isn't it? :p
EricE 5y ago
Sure - we had it pre-internet with BBS's. There was even a standard for sharing message forums across them - FidoNET. It may look crude from todays perspective, but there is zero reason the same concepts couldn't take root today. The big problem is friction. Just logging into to some "free" service that someone else runs for you is all most people want to think about. I think there is a huge opportunity for a modern revival of concepts like BBS's and FidoNET, but with a modern spin on UI and communications. instead of the master nodelist like FidoNET had use a distributed directory along the lines of DNS. Heck why invent a new protocol - just adopt DNS with a few tweaks.

I haven't used Facebook in 10 years but my friends have shown me it. What's there to distribute? The chat functionality? The main feed is just a heavily curated stream of garbage that's vaguely influenced by your friend's list. It looks like there's nothing there other than this bizarre social pathology that's been continuously optimized and iterated to be as addictive as possible. For chat you have XMPP, for feeds you have RSS and webpub (mastodon.) There's ical for sharing events of course.

kingsuper20 5y ago
The garbage is addictive. It seems to me that a distributed (and more secure) version needs to have something in it that would cause a network effect. The idea of Facebook seems sound, it's just hard to get everyone to agree on one and when they do it's hard to break them free.

ClumsyPilot 5y ago

It doesnt need to be distributed,just needs oversight thats not commercially or politically biased

kingsuper20 5y ago
>oversight thats not commercially or politically biased My firm belief is that that is impossible.
- Jcowell 5y ago
  Exactly. Unless it’s run by a state actor it has to be commercialized (or subsidized which means money has to get in anyway) but by being run by a state actor is it evidently politicized.
  - ClumsyPilot 5y ago
    We have ofcom, and theyve been doing a decent job https://www.ofcom.org.uk/home https://www.ofcom.org.uk/home
EricE 5y ago
Well that's the real trick now, isn't it? :p

EricE 5y ago

Sure - we had it pre-internet with BBS's. There was even a standard for sharing message forums across them - FidoNET. It may look crude from todays perspective, but there is zero reason the same concepts couldn't take root today. The big problem is friction. Just logging into to some "free" service that someone else runs for you is all most people want to think about. I think there is a huge opportunity for a modern revival of concepts like BBS's and FidoNET, but with a modern spin on UI and communications. instead of the master nodelist like FidoNET had use a distributed directory along the lines of DNS. Heck why invent a new protocol - just adopt DNS with a few tweaks.