We Need More Alternatives to Facebook
technologyreview.com
technologyreview.com
"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_.
We did recently, in the US, decide that ISPs are common carriers.
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.
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.
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.
But there is still no "dislike". The closest thing would be "sad" or "angry". And of course, it still has the same problem as "like": When someone presses "like" on coverage of the terrorist attack, does that mean that they liked the terrorist attack, or the particular way it was covered by the media?
This helps their automated sentiment analysis systems to classify content, and also helps surface a particular balance of content to you that Facebook deems appropriate (e.g. not posts that are likely to make you sad or angry at the top of the fold).
The reason negative reactions are absent is because they don't want to pit people against each other. Everyone can have their own corner of the sandbox, and despite the common derision of today's 'filter bubble', I don't think when they plan on serving advertisements to billions of very different people with pre-existing allegiances, opinions, and beliefs, they could realistically afford to do otherwise.
It's more about facebook collecting insight on your state of mind that they could not guess or find out otherwise than providing alternative to the like button.
Had you been part of reddit, flickr, imgur or any other community medium you could have done the same.
Photography books are great, I've read a few, but they don't give you feedback. Spending time alone in the mountains isn't a practical option for most of us.
This is a core feature of any educational system that has arisen across any culture anywhere in the world. Instant gratification does the opposite. This link might help in understanding the point I am trying to make - https://www.khanacademy.org/talks-and-interviews/conversatio...
It's really hard to take these comments seriously. Most of yall seem condescending and firmly out of touch with why people use Facebook.
Everyone on the platform doesn't need to be saved by HN just because you know a few narcissists.
The reason alternatives do gain traction is 1) because people use facebook 2) because they don't use such antipatterns.
Sharun has a valid point, instant gratification is among the mechanisms facebook exploit to keep people inside their walled prison and removing this would have a significant impact. Though I'd rather see a strong privacy law forbidding surveillance capitalism and/or removal of advertising. We may see something like if the EU suspends the privacy shield and implements their privacy measure that would force facebook to stop collecting data of all Europeans.
And they're back to save the masses!
I think the root problem is economic. There's no profit to be made in a perfectly competitive market, so companies that build barriers to entry such as closed networks and refined proprietary software have the resources to outcompete companies that don't. Slack can hire a lot more engineers than mIRC.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Yeah... you get it. (=
I don't know that it was our goal to be elitist... but certainly it helped that we knew it was a small group of people who had access to what we posted online. It felt safe.
And even after it expanded to other colleges, it still felt like a college thing. Many colleges still put out paper "face books" and so we had that connection.
But once we graduated and realized it was suddenly for everyone, and all of our posts that we made to a small group were now visible to everyone... ugh it was just such a turn off.
Seeing a parent or grandparent commenting on a status update or photo we shared from a party, "Oh shit, my mom can see this stuff?! How do I delete it?!"
I bet there's some market for a school-wide system that only lets you communicate with people who would have been on campus the same time you were... so like pick 3-4 years in either direction. Try and mimic the first Facebook rollout...
But I don't know, if anyone had the magic solution they'd have built it by now... personally -- as I said in the previous post -- this shit just all makes me cringe now. I can't even look at someone's Facebook feed without losing respect for everyone involved. It's all so smug and self-promotion of crap. "I'm going to say something, and all my friends will like it to affirm they are my friends!" Just creepy.
It's because FB rides the wave of recent narcissist epidemic, also it's good for gossips and bullying - closed groups you're not invited to can talk shit behind your back.
People should use whatever they are most comfortable with.
so that makes Slack ok to start using it outside of business?
Your use case for Slack is not what Slack exists for... their MO is to get business information
I used slack once then realised that it was just as bad, if not worse than facebook. It is worse because it lulls you into a false sense of security. Everything on Slack belongs to Slack. It is fundamentally more evil than FB because it pretends to be a 'confidential and secure' environment but the truth is they own every single byte you give them. Slack users are morons if they think that Slack has any agenda other than to parse data and exploit the connections. FB at least is "only social" whereas Slack gets company business data via the morons that use it.
Businesses use Slack because they are too lazy to deliver an in house alternative. I pity anyone who thinks Slack is any better than FB . Stand by for Slack being acquired by FB in the very near future so that FB can fill in another slice of the control pie they are trying to bake
Mastodon is just another of the alternatives that already exist and is mostly a take on twitter and microblogging.
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.
Moderation is up to the people that run the server, which allows people to find the policies/servers/communities that suit them best.
It's the least-bad solution to the moderation problem I've heard of.
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/
And a kinda soundcloud clone https://github.com/mmckegg/ferment
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.
HN is one exception to this, but has HN ever got hugely popular or is it limited to a certain category of people ?
If you're in on the trial, can you share a screenshot?
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.
Let's get rid of surveillance capitalism and tracking/targeting in advertising and this whole conundrum will solve itself.
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.
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.
Of course this isn't realistic for most young people.
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
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?
Even more? I guess the problem is somewhere else...
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.
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.
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?