Replacing functionality is the easy part. How do you replace volume of people using the system? Scandal or not - Facebook is still where "everyone is". And until "everyone" are not there, there is no "replacing" Facebook - just replacing some functional aspects of it. I use Facebook for one main purpose - to keep in touch with people around the world whom I know from different periods of my life. Unless all of them pack up and move to an alternative, leaving Facebook means leaving them.
Another _problem_ with these suggestions is that they suggest +5 services to replace one. It's difficult enough to have a coordinated migration to a single new service. This just compounds the problem.
To have a good chance at becoming a viable replacement, all of this functionality would have to be replicated in a single service. Taking on a multi-billion dollar company's cash cow product head-on is quite a difficult task.
> Replacing functionality is the easy part. How do you replace volume of people using the system? Scandal or not - Facebook is still where "everyone is".
I actually do know people who strongly prefer their friends not to have a Facebook account. So this is a feature and not a bug, since it is a strong opportunity to sort out to whom of the Facebook "friends" one really wants to stay in contact with.
Or to give another argument why this is a feature and not a bug: About everybody who has used Facebook for a long time also has collected "friends" that one would love to drop from the friends list, but has not done for politeness. This is finally an opportunity to get rid of them in a much more socially accepted way.
are you doing anything to get them off Facebook? recommending alternatives at al? I gave up fb long time ago, suggested telegram to all my friends and have looked back...
I can do just fine without "news" from newsfeed. Their alternatives don't let me see pictures of, for example, my sister and brother's families. Random thoughts of people And so on. I'm sure my family would occasionally send me pictures, but it is hard to inconvenience everyone else. Not only that, but it would be more inconvenient for me. The main reason I joined facebook was because it was a simple way to keep in touch when moving overseas, after all. I can give updates and pictures without sending to so many people.
Groups are a weird thing. I find things like Reddit to be a different sort of feel.
Lastly: I think for a lot of people, alternatives need to be able to communicate with facebook and have be compatible in some ways. Right now, facebook is more akin to a phone company that only lets folks speak with others in the same network. If they would allow "friends" outside the network, allow public posts to be viewed by anyone, messenger coordinates with other messenger services, there would be more chance for folks to actually switch. In addition, more folks would switch to other services if there were an easy way for people to port some things to a new service: Profile information, pictures, and so on.
Marketplace misses the point as well. I occasionally sell artwork, for example. I don't advertise or self promote much, but do keep up an art page. The sales I get are generally from facebook. There are a few social networks dedicated to artwork, but it definitely isn't the same.
Someone else commented that facebook is great for finding events - I, too, use this.
Sometimes the biggest problem with replacing messenger is that others still use messenger. My experience from pre-facebook times is that no, most people don't change for you. They simply talk to you less. Not having messenger on my phone (desktop only) causes some issues here and there as it is.
> Right now, facebook is more akin to a phone company that only lets folks speak with others in the same network. If they would allow "friends" outside the network, allow public posts to be viewed by anyone, messenger coordinates with other messenger services, there would be more chance for folks to actually switch. In addition, more folks would switch to other services if there were an easy way for people to port some things to a new service: Profile information, pictures, and so on.
I wonder if there is already legislation for this situation.
You're right! They did miss the larger point about centralization.
With that said, is it perhaps possible that they're writing for a more general audience that isn't particularly interested in the overhead that comes with administration and decentralized platforms? People want one, simple, clear, drop-in replacement for a given use. They want it to be one that's as easy to use as possible and trivially easy to get their friends to use.
Most of all, people want to use something their friends are already using. Isolated, un-federated systems that require some level of technical skill (i.e., my late-90s grandma can't figure out in two minutes) to use are a hard sell.
I wish there was GNUbook or something that is run by a non-profit organization like Wikipedia that provides a service that serves as a social ID(think like a portable phone number), and then let people use whichever "messaging service" they like by bringing their ID with them. This way the messaging services become replaceable and users a avoid the network lock-in.
So [matrix] seems to fit the bill: federated network, bridges to other services (like IRC), encryption, you can write your own client or run your own server...
I wish there was one good messenger. Signal can't be it, because not federated, uses phone number. Riot can't be it because network effects. Google and facebook are abominable. WhatsApp and telegram are worse versions of signal. Who will save us from this efficient market competition?
(a previous version of this comment incorrectly claimed signal was closed-source)
This isn't a reasonable rejection of Matrix / Riot. Every time you want to move a lot of people, you need to have network effects in order to make it work.
I believe that Matrix / Riot are going to be the best way going forward if you want something that is accessible, is actually privacy preserving in many ways, and doesn't require lock-in. Same goes for ActivityPub / Mastodon, which has a real possibility to replace ordinary social media with a federated system that is privacy-preserving in similar ways (with the note that we need to have some large instances people can use -- similar to how many people use the main Matrix instance).
I'm sure someone years ago said the same of facebook back when friendster was on the decline (not assuming Fb is on decline here, just sayin'). But have you really used or even seriously considered riot/matrix? There are so many vibrant communities! Do you feel that such communities are not worth your time unless they are visited by at least millions of users? Not trying to be facetious, merely a rhetorical question. I suggest you try other things, yes riot/matrix, but also other platforms...who knows, perhaps you will find satisfaction in smaller communities...then you tell YOUR friends, and then they gravitate to those other platforms, and boom you have your network effect - at least to your satisfaction. Again, not trying to be facetious...just trying to nudge you to push beyond the "normal", and hopefully find a good, satisfying alternative to the proprietary silos (like facebook, twitter, etc.).
I think this is for the best. This means you can seamlessly add contacts you already have on your phonebook to Signal. No need for emails or separate user accounts. If you're worried about this, you can buy a prepaid SIM card for pennies, or use an online service. It's not an issue.
You seem to be listing different criteria for each of the reasons you dismiss the various alternatives -- the reason against Riot / Matrix is not at all like the other (reasons), and is a bit self-defeating.
I thought signal was open source?
"Signal is developed by a software group called Open Whisper Systems.[123] The group is funded by a combination of donations and grants,[124] and all of its products are published as free and open-source software." -wiki
A service requiring a telephone number for registration verification cannot deliver on security. Spoofing 2FA is a thing. Trawling contact lists creates implication where a bad agent is one.
This is how it seems, I may be wrong.
Anonymous unfederated secure communication via email or other methods... PGP/GPG remains unfriendly.
The core of all of these recommendations is that you need an identity online. It almost seems like if you solve the identity problem (like how various blockchains deal with it with addresses and wallets) you can get all the rest as easy follow ons.
Mastodon still ties identity with a machine online much like email. Even SSB ties identity to your machine. Even what Sir T.B.L. is proposing - a "data pod" per person - seems to tie identity with a machine online.
They missed the point with the Events alternatives.
The problem isn't creating/inviting; you can do that with email. Facebook is great at finding events, and there aren't any competitors that have anything close to their reach.
Why nobody mentions the social connection functionality? To stay connected with my extended family, to be able to see their wedding pics and share my kids pics, there is no alternative to Facebook. I can not ask my elderly mom to start using something else on her precious ipad.
And RSS feeds. I have a list of people who's opinion I trust after 10+ years of reading everything they write. I value their opinion on politics and economics rather than my aunt or some co-worker from two jobs ago.
The problem with blogging in 2018 is that it can be difficult to actually draw readers to your blog unless you retain your Facebook and other social media accounts so that you can advertise your content there. The sheer amount of content out there means that even with SEO tweaks people might not find you through Google, you are simply lost in the noise. Even if people find you once through a search engine, the decline of RSS means that they are unlikely to subscribe to you and see what you write in future.
I blog myself on a niche-interest topic, and I pride myself in writing substantial, specific and useful information. Unfortunately, my blog doesn’t get read by many people. And then you see lots of successful content farms out there, whose posts are actually devoid of content, but their empty posts are just packaged neatly to serve as clickbait and get advertising revenue. It is awfully dispiriting.
Remember that handful of friends who weren't on FB and so you hassled us to join for a while and then kind of lost touch? Many of us still have the same phone numbers.
Seems like a key missing piece is the "staying in touch with people" part. That's by far the biggest feature for me, once I've added someone on facebook, I know I can message/call them forever. No lost phone numbers/email addresses.
If there was a network that automatically updated my contact for a person when they changed their phone number, I'd no longer have an excuse to stay on facebook at all.
The most insidious aspect of FB is their inference engine capability - that they can inherently track aspect of the activity of non FB users based on their relationships proximity and activity with those who do have FB accounts.
Even if you choose to actively do no fb - they can still track you to a certain degree.
I’ve created a simple app for myself that lets me keep track of all my conversations, and it encourages me to keep in touch with all my friends, family, (ex)colleagues.
If you like friendly contact reminders or like to recall what you talked about with friends whom you don’t meet every so often, give it a try. You can create your own timeline with conversations, photos, and other important things. As well as general background information. It can send you reminders to talk, and birthday reminders.
The data is in your control, stays on your phone, is not synced. An internet connection is not required.
> You can sync the app to other social networks you might use, like Twitter and LinkedIn
LinkedIn is in my experience is as bad as FB. I really can't take anyone seriously that is recommending syncing with it. It uploaded my friends contacts which I did not want.
Maybe we'd all have been better off on Google Plus.
I avoid giving Google information about myself that it doesn't need, but I do trust them more than I trust Facebook. Although maybe that's naive of me.
> Maybe we'd all have been better off on Google Plus.
Haha, probably not. G+ enforced a "real names" policy, then tried to merge accounts across search, YouTube, etc. It's the same Panopticon, though slightly less amoral.
If we want to solve this, we need to make it easier for non-tech people to decentralize their data. Distributed communication was solved long ago: email (private 1-1), mailing lists (private many-many), weblogs (public 1-many), Usenet (public many-many). All of this can be self-hosted, or hosted on a shared server for a few $/mo, i.e. less than 10% of your phone bill.
Since that will never happen, the least-bad way to do this is to silo your online activity among separate entities and identities.
The younger generation is more IM focused than social network app focused. InstaGram / SnapChat / etc are going to do to Facebook what Reddit did to Digg.
News Feed -> Nuzzel, Digg, Apple News
Messenger -> Signal
Events -> Paperless Post, Doodle
Birthday Reminders -> Google Calendar, etc...
Marketplace -> Nextdoor
Groups -> GroupMe
3rd Party Logins -> 1Password, LastPass
2) What made Facebook interesting and addictive is the "variable reward" of small information snacks. The smaller the information snack is, the easier it is to produce (and consume). And the dumber society gets as a whole (Twitter)
[+] [-] harel|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] davidgu|8 years ago|reply
To have a good chance at becoming a viable replacement, all of this functionality would have to be replicated in a single service. Taking on a multi-billion dollar company's cash cow product head-on is quite a difficult task.
[+] [-] wolfgke|8 years ago|reply
I actually do know people who strongly prefer their friends not to have a Facebook account. So this is a feature and not a bug, since it is a strong opportunity to sort out to whom of the Facebook "friends" one really wants to stay in contact with.
Or to give another argument why this is a feature and not a bug: About everybody who has used Facebook for a long time also has collected "friends" that one would love to drop from the friends list, but has not done for politeness. This is finally an opportunity to get rid of them in a much more socially accepted way.
[+] [-] ktosobcy|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Broken_Hippo|8 years ago|reply
I can do just fine without "news" from newsfeed. Their alternatives don't let me see pictures of, for example, my sister and brother's families. Random thoughts of people And so on. I'm sure my family would occasionally send me pictures, but it is hard to inconvenience everyone else. Not only that, but it would be more inconvenient for me. The main reason I joined facebook was because it was a simple way to keep in touch when moving overseas, after all. I can give updates and pictures without sending to so many people.
Groups are a weird thing. I find things like Reddit to be a different sort of feel.
Lastly: I think for a lot of people, alternatives need to be able to communicate with facebook and have be compatible in some ways. Right now, facebook is more akin to a phone company that only lets folks speak with others in the same network. If they would allow "friends" outside the network, allow public posts to be viewed by anyone, messenger coordinates with other messenger services, there would be more chance for folks to actually switch. In addition, more folks would switch to other services if there were an easy way for people to port some things to a new service: Profile information, pictures, and so on.
Marketplace misses the point as well. I occasionally sell artwork, for example. I don't advertise or self promote much, but do keep up an art page. The sales I get are generally from facebook. There are a few social networks dedicated to artwork, but it definitely isn't the same.
Someone else commented that facebook is great for finding events - I, too, use this.
Sometimes the biggest problem with replacing messenger is that others still use messenger. My experience from pre-facebook times is that no, most people don't change for you. They simply talk to you less. Not having messenger on my phone (desktop only) causes some issues here and there as it is.
[+] [-] alecco|8 years ago|reply
I wonder if there is already legislation for this situation.
[+] [-] _b8r0|8 years ago|reply
Instead of Paperless post, how about Framadate? No love for Nextcloud? Diaspora? Mastodon?
[+] [-] Kalium|8 years ago|reply
With that said, is it perhaps possible that they're writing for a more general audience that isn't particularly interested in the overhead that comes with administration and decentralized platforms? People want one, simple, clear, drop-in replacement for a given use. They want it to be one that's as easy to use as possible and trivially easy to get their friends to use.
Most of all, people want to use something their friends are already using. Isolated, un-federated systems that require some level of technical skill (i.e., my late-90s grandma can't figure out in two minutes) to use are a hard sell.
[+] [-] reacharavindh|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 0kto|8 years ago|reply
[Matrix]: https://matrix.org/
[+] [-] Y_Y|8 years ago|reply
(a previous version of this comment incorrectly claimed signal was closed-source)
[+] [-] cyphar|8 years ago|reply
This isn't a reasonable rejection of Matrix / Riot. Every time you want to move a lot of people, you need to have network effects in order to make it work.
I believe that Matrix / Riot are going to be the best way going forward if you want something that is accessible, is actually privacy preserving in many ways, and doesn't require lock-in. Same goes for ActivityPub / Mastodon, which has a real possibility to replace ordinary social media with a federated system that is privacy-preserving in similar ways (with the note that we need to have some large instances people can use -- similar to how many people use the main Matrix instance).
[+] [-] mxuribe|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] andrepd|8 years ago|reply
Wrong, both clients and server are open-source.
>not federated,
This is intentional. See https://signal.org/blog/the-ecosystem-is-moving/
>uses phone number.
I think this is for the best. This means you can seamlessly add contacts you already have on your phonebook to Signal. No need for emails or separate user accounts. If you're worried about this, you can buy a prepaid SIM card for pennies, or use an online service. It's not an issue.
[+] [-] Jedd|8 years ago|reply
You seem to be listing different criteria for each of the reasons you dismiss the various alternatives -- the reason against Riot / Matrix is not at all like the other (reasons), and is a bit self-defeating.
[+] [-] asdsa5325|8 years ago|reply
https://github.com/signalapp
[+] [-] mtreis86|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zhte415|8 years ago|reply
This is how it seems, I may be wrong.
Anonymous unfederated secure communication via email or other methods... PGP/GPG remains unfriendly.
[+] [-] unknown|8 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] sriku|8 years ago|reply
The core of all of these recommendations is that you need an identity online. It almost seems like if you solve the identity problem (like how various blockchains deal with it with addresses and wallets) you can get all the rest as easy follow ons.
Mastodon still ties identity with a machine online much like email. Even SSB ties identity to your machine. Even what Sir T.B.L. is proposing - a "data pod" per person - seems to tie identity with a machine online.
Are there no other solutions to this?
[+] [-] DuskStar|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] koboll|8 years ago|reply
The problem isn't creating/inviting; you can do that with email. Facebook is great at finding events, and there aren't any competitors that have anything close to their reach.
[+] [-] dandare|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] foxylad|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aero142|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Mediterraneo10|8 years ago|reply
I blog myself on a niche-interest topic, and I pride myself in writing substantial, specific and useful information. Unfortunately, my blog doesn’t get read by many people. And then you see lots of successful content farms out there, whose posts are actually devoid of content, but their empty posts are just packaged neatly to serve as clickbait and get advertising revenue. It is awfully dispiriting.
[+] [-] hashkb|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] superlopuh|8 years ago|reply
If there was a network that automatically updated my contact for a person when they changed their phone number, I'd no longer have an excuse to stay on facebook at all.
[+] [-] zhte415|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ohtwenty|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Sytten|8 years ago|reply
It seems to me that Facebook is the new Microsoft and we need a "GNU/Linux" to oppose it.
The best would be a decentralized system for sure, but it is hard to be as good as Facebook/other social network with full decentralization.
Food for thoughts...
[+] [-] samstave|8 years ago|reply
Even if you choose to actively do no fb - they can still track you to a certain degree.
[+] [-] wousser|8 years ago|reply
If you like friendly contact reminders or like to recall what you talked about with friends whom you don’t meet every so often, give it a try. You can create your own timeline with conversations, photos, and other important things. As well as general background information. It can send you reminders to talk, and birthday reminders.
The data is in your control, stays on your phone, is not synced. An internet connection is not required.
Currently only for iOS: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/social-contact-journal/id118...
[+] [-] limeblack|8 years ago|reply
LinkedIn is in my experience is as bad as FB. I really can't take anyone seriously that is recommending syncing with it. It uploaded my friends contacts which I did not want.
[+] [-] andrewl|8 years ago|reply
I avoid giving Google information about myself that it doesn't need, but I do trust them more than I trust Facebook. Although maybe that's naive of me.
[+] [-] username223|8 years ago|reply
Haha, probably not. G+ enforced a "real names" policy, then tried to merge accounts across search, YouTube, etc. It's the same Panopticon, though slightly less amoral.
If we want to solve this, we need to make it easier for non-tech people to decentralize their data. Distributed communication was solved long ago: email (private 1-1), mailing lists (private many-many), weblogs (public 1-many), Usenet (public many-many). All of this can be self-hosted, or hosted on a shared server for a few $/mo, i.e. less than 10% of your phone bill.
Since that will never happen, the least-bad way to do this is to silo your online activity among separate entities and identities.
[+] [-] skrowl|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] GyYZTfWBfQw|8 years ago|reply
Personally, I would use Wire. https://wire.com (https://github.com/wireapp)
[+] [-] Larrikin|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vinceleo|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] GyYZTfWBfQw|8 years ago|reply
Source code: https://github.com/Minds
[+] [-] anonu|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] newsbinator|8 years ago|reply
It's not that people use Facebook because it's better than those tools, or worse than those tools, or even because it's an aggregate of those tools.
They use it because all their friends/family/colleagues are there.
[+] [-] naskwo|8 years ago|reply
2) What made Facebook interesting and addictive is the "variable reward" of small information snacks. The smaller the information snack is, the easier it is to produce (and consume). And the dumber society gets as a whole (Twitter)
[+] [-] PrimoSync|8 years ago|reply
News Feed - Apple News, Feedly
Groups - Reddit, BAND
https://www.minicreo.com/itunes-alternative/best-facebook-al...