We did replace it, almost 10 years ago. It was called Diaspora[1], no one cared about privacy then. No one really cares about privacy now, at least not enough to do anything about it.
Diaspora is actually worse for privacy, because of its distributed nature. Diaspora is about distributed ownership. If you value privacy in a social network, check out https://github.com/ssbc/patchwork
Man I remember the enthusiasm behind Diaspora like it was yesterday. I can still see in my minds eye that NYTimes article photo of the creators sitting around like they just invented cold fusion or something.
I get flashbacks to scrolling error messages whenever someone mentions Diaspora. Just horrible software to use if it ever had an issue. Great when starting but the maintenance time costs were too high
Nothing to do with not caring about privacy, I really did try to use it. Even had 100 users or so on my open instance.
It was on par with running a public email service. Not my circus.
Really? I don't think so, it would be good if someone did a study on this though. Most people I know think privacy is important.
I do think people are communicating via other mediums more than before though. It's anecdotal but most of my family and friends just gravitate towards iMessage , Facetime and Telegram to communicate by default now.
Could it be that people don't care about this issue because they care about Facebook anymore? There are alternatives now, people will just use them more and more over time.
Similar story as app.net, the paid twitter replacement that was cool for 33 seconds, arguably poor naming though on both counts given one suggests something else and the second I have no idea how to pronounce.
It will take some time to wind it up. Even fb took a long time to build before it was relavant.
Nobody cared back then bc they hadn't felt they burn of foreign influence on our election.
And diaspora will have to grow. Even some basic things can improve the on boarding process. For example, uploading my profile was diverted due to a cap on picture upload size of 4.2 MB.
They were "selected" because they were likely to fail, gave pithy interviews, and were young and hopeful. Facebook even gave them $50K - that is not competition, that is coddling a child.
I tried explaining my 20 year old cousin about FB. Her constant argument was "I don't share anything private on FB". She checks in on FB everywhere she goes. Posts her pics all the time. I could not instill any sense of concern for privacy.
What I could conclude is that the appeal of social is too great to have any caution. Call me a pessimist, but I don't think FB is going anywhere. People will keep using it inspite of the risks. It's like a smoking addiction. It's bad but very difficult to give up.
> I tried explaining my 20 year old cousin about FB. Her constant argument was "I don't share anything private on FB". She checks in on FB everywhere she goes. Posts her pics all the time. I could not instill any sense of concern for privacy.
If she's happy with this level of privacy though, what's the problem? Maybe she does fully understand the implications but has a different value system to you?
I feel that when people on this site are talking about Facebook, there's this assumption their friends using Facebook are failing to understand what Facebook does in the background and if they could somehow get them to understand their friends would all leave. People can be fully aware of what Facebook is and simply choose a different balance between privacy and convenience to what you prefer.
It's awesome to watch massive shifts in values and priorities.
Smoking used to be seen as cool, sexy, even healthy. Now it's widely seen as unhealthy and disgusting.
Same thing with high-fructose carbonated beverages.
I remember people using terms like "retarded" and "gyp" without hesitation. Today even people who hate political correctness don't talk like that in public.
It wasn't long ago that men abusing women in the workplace was routine and unremarkable. Now it's outrageous and shameful.
Things change, slowly at first, and then all at once. People are waking up and it will never be the same for Facebook.
> Her constant argument was "I don't share anything private on FB"
I've heard worse. Plain "I don't care" and "I like that people know what I do all the time".
> It's like a smoking addiction
I'd say that tt's more like a drug. Most people seem to seek for an attention (in a comments/likes form).
I know few people who use even PhotoShop-like software to make themselves "more beautiful" to gather more attention; however they don't look even similiar to their pictures.
(it's like drug addicts do weird shit to get their dose of their favourite drug)
People will use it but only for the necessary stuff, like birthdays and condolences. Facebook as a time wasting medium is dying. And dying spectacularly. In fact the same network effect that made Facebook what it is will work it's way in reverse order.
It's interesting that Tim Wu discussed the cycle of technology starting amongst outsiders and then becoming monopolized in his (phenomenal) book The Master Switch. The cycle always repeats itself by the next new technology coming along, making the prior one less significant.
We seem to have accepted that the internet is essentially the final communication tech. Maybe that's true, but it seems improbable. Simply based on his past writing, I'm surprised he isn't advocating for a solution based on the blockchain.
I'm not suggesting that's the right answer; I merely find it curious that he didn't apply the same assumptions to the future as he did to his historical analysis.
Blockchain technology isn't really a viable option for something like social media any more. With the new GDPR rules in Europe and the right to be forgotten, using blockchain just isn't an option, because you can't delete specific parts.
I think in the long run we will use a decentralised/federated system. Privacy concerns aside, it just doesn't make sense to rely on one service or expect one social network to meet everyone's needs/desires.
I think this is exactly how health/medical data should exist. My family should have their own health/medical network node and only my direct healthcare providers should be able to access the data from it and only after I authorize them with a digital signature. Whatever data they generate about my person (or persons in my family) should be owned by me, stored in my family network, and only available to others after I explicitly authorize it.
The massive collections of monolith data sets for financials, health/medical, credit history, employment records, taxes, census, etc are far too valuable to not be highly valuable to criminal orgs and/or government entities. Centralization into monolithic organizations will lead to irreversible issues of data non-privacy for a generation or more..
What's stopping this is Facebook's illegal interference with interoperability. Once upon a time railroads and telephone companies had to be forced to allow traffic to cross networks, now it's time for Facebook, etc, to do this. Well past time.
So, email then? It's decentralized, federated, and only sends data to the people you address it to (gmail excepted, I guess, at least in the free tier).
I keep seeing the suggestion of 'federation' for soc.media and am not sure understand the use of this word. What are the characteristics of a 'federated system' and how is it immune to the problem of centralization? What are some successful examples?
Has anyone seen a product that was functional, polished, and enjoyable to use that would be capable of replacing Facebook? I haven't. Diaspora, Mastodon, Ello are the only things that I can think of, and none of them come close to matching the basic functionality and the "it just works" factor of Facebook.
Maybe someone should put in some resources to create a polished product and see what happens? It doesn't even have to be some idealistic p2p distributed system or anything like that, just a company who actively works to minimize the data they store and to allow users to control and manage their data effectively.
I'm planning to setup Hubzilla as a forum/wiki for my local radio group and local tech community. Hubzilla might not have everything right (I would prefer the scuttlebut/patchwork approach), but it definitely checks most boxes for me. The key one being Nomadic identity - they can export everything they've ever posted and upload it to another server. This is really crucial (not for my club, but for other groups). Hubzilla also federates with ostatus, diospara, gnusoc, frendica, mastadon, and others.
Hubzilla only has a few thousand users. In a social media world, that's a rounding error. So my thought is that people should setup Hubzilla for a targeted group. Get an active community of dozens or possibly hundreds of people, and if they like the platform, encourage them to invite other people and start additional communities. Or find communities through the federation.
True, I haven't seen another product "match" Facebook.
But I also don't see much need for it (entirely), or at the very least for most of its features.
The Facebook of ~2007 was about as good as it ever needed to be (minus the pokes). It served its purpose well. It could have used some of the UI polish it got afterwards, but no new feature addition has made any significant change to end users in my view, apart from pushing them towards more extreme sharing.
It's a super cool app, and a super cool platform, with unfortunately little actual value to its end users (except if you consider advertisers and users of the tech platform the end users, not the actual Facebook users).
Not that I think it's all Facebook's fault: you build something for a certain purpose, and it naturally evolves, and you adapt to what people want, or what you think they want based on some metrics or "need" for growth. And then you get... this.
Of course, there is room for improvement in the Friendica UX, but it still seems like a viable option for federated social network. The Friendica devs seem to strive for interoperability with other networks and support open standards for the social Internet.
Young people are already tired of old Facebook. The problem is Facebook keeps acquiring the competitors gaining ground (WhatsApp/Instagram), and if not possible just ripping off the features. It's grown too big to be upended easily. And they are not stupid. They see the writing on the wall.
"Another “alt-Facebook” could be a nonprofit that uses that status to signal its dedication to better practices, much as nonprofit hospitals and universities do" -> Honestly, I don't think this would be sustainable to function as a social network. At least I don't think it would work in a capitalist society.
I've had the same thought. Charge a small monthly fee in lieu of running ads or selling user data. Might cut down on fake/spam accounts as well.
But I don't think it would work (and I'd totally work on something like this if I thought it would). People say they care about privacy, but when you present them with the option of paying $5/mo for a service that respects their privacy or using a "free" service that tracks everything they do and sells that data to anyone who'll pay, they'll almost always opt for the latter.
Now, I would certainly pay a monthly fee for a non-user-hostile social network experience. And I would consider the smaller user base a feature, so long as it wasn't too small.
I think some sort of freemium would be the way to go.
Photos/videos expire unless you pay, limited space for photos/videos unless you pay, limited group size, limited amount of events/month, integrated ticket sales, branding oppts. for business pages.
The only possible thing for which I might need Facebook would be for groups, as some hobbies seem to have almost entirely moved there for event organisation and general discussion.
Previously we used to use forums such as phpBB, but setting up one of these involved finding someone able to host the forum software on their server. Tapatalk could be set up to improve the mobile experience, but most users seemed to find that somehow difficult. There was also a constant battle with spam and malware.
I'm not sure what would suit - Mastodon and Diaspora don't seem to me to be the right solutions here. Currently, I am making do with being out of the loop and missing things.
Text can work OK between people who know each other well and are familiar with each other's patterns of speech and sense of humor. Not perfect, but generally OK.
Much worse between people who aren't so well acquainted. I'm actually in the middle of trying to mediate a disagreement based mainly on two entirely different perceptions of intent in some stuff that was written in an email.
I definitely agree with this, however, most people moved away from verbal communication because it's an async process, and it removes any awkwardness from the interaction. Video conferencing is used occasionally. I think text-based communication is here to stay.
I wonder what is the penetration of these kind of news outside our bubble here at HN, reddit and the like. I'm wondering the rest 2 billion people (which to a first approximation is probably just about everybody) care about this or are willing to care if few of their techie friends leave facebook. Is there some mathematical model + social science that could estimate the network effects of say, every techie person does leave facebook for good - what would happen to the rest?
Most of my non-techie friends have heard briefly about "some kind of scandal with facebook" but I cannot possibly appeal to them talking about "privacy" or they are stealing and selling your data - "Oh, everybody does that, you can't not use the Internet".
I find Zuckerberg's argument that Facebook needs to be the way it is so that "people who can't afford it can have access" pretty repulsive and incredibly sleazy.
If people can't afford a few dollars a month, why in the fuck would it be acceptable to expose them to manipulative ads that encourage them to hand over money that Zuckerberg claims they don't have? He tries to paint himself and his company as altruistic, while simultaneously exploiting the hell out of the people he claims to be "helping".
1) Hard to price discriminate. Some people are worth almost nothing to FB, others are worth a lot. The price would either have to be absurdly high (e.g. $500+/y) or they might leave a lot on the table from that very profitable minority.
2) PR hit. People more easily accept that a frivolous luxury is only available to the wealthy, whereas even many people who use FB see privacy as more of a basic need. See: response to "price gougers" selling stuff like ice or water at a premium in disaster areas.
3) Hard to cleaning delineate. It's a social graph, your data is useful to generate data on your friends. Could they use it in that case or not? If they do, will that expose them to a lawsuit?
A usual CPC (cost per click) that an advertiser is willing to pay is somewhere between 50 to 150 cents. Let's say it is 100, and you clicked on 10 ads in a month. So, Facebook earned $10 off you. Now, you should be willing to pay more than that for Facebook to prefer the model you are suggesting.
My math above is highly simplistic. For e.g., you'd say you aggressively use an ad blocker and never click on ads. Fair enough, but what about non - tech people unlike us? For e.g., when my dad starting using Facebook at an age of 50+ couple of years, he just tried an unknown plumber through a Facebook ad. Moreover, you'd be willing to pay a monthly subscription, but would all of your friends?
So, what I am getting at is that at Facebook scale they'll earn more though ads than through a subscription model.
Even a paid-for walled garden is likely not sufficient. Plenty of services you pay for and/or are the customer of still resell your data (see: banks & credit card companies).
Better will be hard. If you want people to come, you need to build something that Facebook doesn't provide. I have no idea what that will be but I do not think just privacy protection would be enough. By far.
A quick research job has revealed that most of the interesting features of facebook, in particular "liking" posts and friend suggestion, are patented by facebook. It would be difficult therefore for a new entrant to copy its features.
> A quick research job has revealed that most of the interesting features of facebook, in particular "liking" posts ... are patented by facebook.
I find find this hard to believe. Don't competing networks have similar functionality (e.g. "hearting")? What exactly about "liking" has Facebook patented?
I'm much more ready to believe "liking" is trademarked, though I'm still skeptical of it, given that it's an everyday word used with its everyday meaning.
If privacy is really a concern, one should live like Jack Reacher, even not use credit card.
Current situation is that, we want to happy share and attract attention on facebook. If it did something wrong, let the court sues it.
NY Times was among the numerous media companies that slobbered over Facebook for years and gave them free publicity. And now I'm supposed to listen to them when they say to replace Facebook.
I don't want my stuff in the "cloud", I want it shared from my lawn. My own personal space to where people can access my stuff, that I share, and we can converse over whatever that is ... my own GDPR rules.
Have you seen Beaker [0]? It doesn't require you to setup a complex web server and configure a bunch of stuff, you just run the browser and it'll start sharing your website. It's a move back to a truly decentralized web.
Prof. Wu makes a couple of assumptions when he gives suggestions for Facebook alternatives or successors. I dont see those suggestions as the most important point of his argument however. I believe the most important point is that there must be competition, that trying to "fix" Facebook will not suffice.
Nonetheless, these are the assumptions I see:
1. The software alternatives or successors must be commercial.
2. The software must attract a certain quantity of users to be viable.
3. The software must enable networks comprising large numbers of people, perhaps in the millions or billions.
This scale is far greater than the average size of any Facebook users group of friends.
Over the years Facebook may have morphed into a "public square" for exercising "Free Speech" but in the beginning as I recall it was not a means to broadcast to other users outside of ones social circle.
Its primary utility is arguably still in enabling communication within small groups, not enabling broadcasting to the general public.
Wu's assumptions point toward a Zuckerberg-like centrally-managed approach to what I see as historically a locally-managed activity: the human tendency to form small groups.
For many years, gamers and others have been writing software to enable small groups to communicate over peer-to-peer networking, without any funding from advertisers.
Wu writes, "So what stands in the way of a genuine Facebook alternative? It isn't the technology."
> This scale is far greater than the average size of any Facebook users group of friends.
Yes, but only an individual Facebook user. The problem is that my friends' friends' friends' friends' friends' friends encompass the entire human race: at some point, as I invite people who invite people who invite people, the underlying technology has to be able to support all mankind.
Indeed, I suspect that this — not some momentary privacy-failure flash-in-the-pan will be what leads to Facebook's actual downfall. It's ultimately building a proprietary Internet (in the sense of a fabric which connects people), and that's extraordinarily expensive. At the end of the day, the actual Internet is able to do that far more cheaply.
I imagine that the replacement for Facebook will be something like email: something under the control of its users, something anyone will be able to add himself to and anyone will be able to block.
The useful feature that's missing if the network isn't large is being able to easily friend a new person. The extra friction of convincing a new acquaintance to join your social network means that it doesn't happen in a lot of situations.
THIS MORNING, IT emerged that nearly 45,000 Irish Facebook profiles may have been affected by the giant data breach involving as many as 87 million accounts harvested by UK data intelligence firm Cambridge Analytica.
Those 45,000 accounts could have been breached due to just 15 Irish people accessing a questionnaire app, thisisyourdigitallife, which included in its permissions the granting of access to all an individual's friends' profiles."
"These days, you might get more applause for not being on social media than for reaching a follower milestone in Europe's liberal hubs such as Berlin or Paris.
...
The mechanisms used by Cambridge Analytica and the "malicious actors" cited by Facebook appear to have been legal and do not constitute a data hack, but rather a deliberate exploitation of information through tools or loopholes Facebook itself provided in the past.
...
At least two foreign governments, Australia and Germany, threatened or launched investigations into the practices on Thursday.
...
Meanwhile, in India, where more than a half-million users are estimated to be affected, the allegations have resulted in a governmental request to Facebook and Cambridge Analytica for more detailed information, with a Saturday deadline.
Even though India is now Facebook's biggest market - ahead of the United States - no Indian media outlets were able to ask questions in a conference call with CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Wednesday.
The heavy U.S. focus immediately triggered criticism because privacy advocates are still looking into reports that Cambridge Analytica may have used Facebook data to influence Indian politics, as well.
...
German justice minister Katarina Barley already called for an E.U.-wide investigation into the misuse of Facebook's data by Cambridge Analytica and other companies on Thursday.
"Facebook has gambled away people's trust," Barley said.
...
But in Europe, Germany's justice minister and others already fear that the latest regulations aren't enough."
"Do these hundreds of millions of people who cannot wait to tell the world what they are doing practically minute by minute not realise that anyone with an ounce of brain can find out everything about them just by reading their posts?
As the FBI admitted a while back, Facebook was the best thing that happened to collecting intelligence and saving money (because everything is in the open).
By having "free" access and use of Facebook, these people have made Mark Zuckerberg a multibillionaire."
"Australia's privacy commissioner has launched an investigation to determine whether Facebook breached the Australian privacy act.
...
Facebook has admitted 311,127 Australian users are likely among the up to 87 million users worldwide whose data was unknowingly and "improperly" shared with the British political consultancy agency."
It's too messed up now anyways. The privacy settings sucked right from the beginning of Facebook. And it just kept getting worse. Guess people are just used to it now just like slaves get used to slavery and can't get out of it.
"In 2013, Brandon Copley, the CEO of Giftnix, was threatened with legal action after using the technique to demonstrate how personal information could be easily gathered at scale.
"Multiple Facebook profiles were extremely easy to scrape," he explains. In a series of conversations with Facebook security developers Copley explained the issue and was told there was "no security vuln here, even though it does seem like one on first glance."
The method of scraping can work in multiple ways but largely relies on feeding Facebook's API a list of phone numbers or email addresses that have been automatically generated. These could also have been obtained from data breaches or leaks of information online.
"Just query Facebook as often as possible until they ban your IP for querying too fast, and at that point you just slow down until the queries stop," Copley explained in an email. "I was doing my work purely for research and exposing the vulnerability for Facebook".
...
The issue was again raised by researchers in 2015.
Reza Moaiandin, who founded cybersecurity company CyberScanner, published a blogpost about the "loophole". he said he was able to gather thousands of users personal information by guessing their mobile numbers. Within this information were details of names, locations, and profile pictures.
In response Facebook told him it didn't "consider it a security vulnerability" but had controls in place to stop it being abused. Zuckerberg's most recent statement goes against this, admitting Facebook's efforts to stop malicious actors hadn't worked."
"A few months ago, I discovered a security loophole in Facebook that allows hackers to decrypt and sniff out Facebook user IDs using one of Facebook's APIs in bulk - therefore allowing them to gather millions of users' personal data (name, telephone number, location, images, and more). This post is an attempt to catch Facebook's attention to get this issue fixed.
By using a script, an entire country's (I tested with the US, the UK and Canada) possible number combinations can be run through these URLs, and if a number is associated with a Facebook account, it can then be associated with a name and further details (images, and so on).
...
For those of you who are wondering why I haven't notified Facebook about the issue, the truth is that I have - back in April (2015).
Although I did receive a reply, initially the engineer I was in contact with was unable to reproduce the issue himself, and therefore failed to understand the technical details of how it should be fixed.
...
After a couple of months of waiting, I initially thought someone else will look into it and fix it but I heard nothing, so I raised the flag with them again. They finally came back to me and told me that this is not a big issue - they have set limits and I should not worry about this problem. But frankly, I am very worried.
...
Comment from reader:
Great blog post. I reported an almost identical issue (albeit a different API) to Facebook in January 2014 but faced similar difficulties getting them to recognise the scope for abuse. I was able to lookup contiguous blocks of mobile numbers (in blocks of 5,000 at a time) with no discernible rate-limiting - I could pull them down as fast as my connection could handle (maybe ~50k numbers/min).
If you make any headway with Facebook let us know and I will try pinging them again. It was especially worrisome as the number range I tried (NYC) had a hit-rate of about 20%."
vinniejames|8 years ago
1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaspora_(social_network)
Jean-Philipe|8 years ago
verylittlemeat|8 years ago
tomcooks|8 years ago
It's about usability, and the flocking to Mastodon when there are better options around is the proof of this theory of mine.
Sir_Substance|8 years ago
1. Chat (It could just integrate a javascript XMPP client and let people use whatever chat server they liked)
2. Event management and invites
When I suggest people leave Facebook, these are the things people complain there are no alternatives to.
corobo|8 years ago
Nothing to do with not caring about privacy, I really did try to use it. Even had 100 users or so on my open instance.
It was on par with running a public email service. Not my circus.
bamboozled|8 years ago
I do think people are communicating via other mediums more than before though. It's anecdotal but most of my family and friends just gravitate towards iMessage , Facetime and Telegram to communicate by default now.
Could it be that people don't care about this issue because they care about Facebook anymore? There are alternatives now, people will just use them more and more over time.
sitepodmatt|8 years ago
chillingeffect|8 years ago
It will take some time to wind it up. Even fb took a long time to build before it was relavant.
Nobody cared back then bc they hadn't felt they burn of foreign influence on our election.
And diaspora will have to grow. Even some basic things can improve the on boarding process. For example, uploading my profile was diverted due to a cap on picture upload size of 4.2 MB.
on_and_off|8 years ago
I spoke with several non-tech people about the facebook fiasco.
The issue is that even a brilliant neurosurgeon does not understand the TOS he has signed with Facebook and what they entail.
Surely, there is some naïveté from people that don't expect facebook to do much with their data, but tech has also failed to teach users about this.
Even self proclaimed privacy champions routinely make you sign dozen of pages of ToS that are updated on a whim.
wink|8 years ago
Not speaking for everyone, of course - but I know a lot of people who didn't like it for one reason or another.
unknown|8 years ago
[deleted]
bsenftner|8 years ago
noobermin|8 years ago
wdr1|8 years ago
In reality, people aren't upset about privacy. They're upset Trump won.
heedlessly3|8 years ago
[deleted]
md2be|8 years ago
sidcool|8 years ago
What I could conclude is that the appeal of social is too great to have any caution. Call me a pessimist, but I don't think FB is going anywhere. People will keep using it inspite of the risks. It's like a smoking addiction. It's bad but very difficult to give up.
seanwilson|8 years ago
If she's happy with this level of privacy though, what's the problem? Maybe she does fully understand the implications but has a different value system to you?
I feel that when people on this site are talking about Facebook, there's this assumption their friends using Facebook are failing to understand what Facebook does in the background and if they could somehow get them to understand their friends would all leave. People can be fully aware of what Facebook is and simply choose a different balance between privacy and convenience to what you prefer.
panarky|8 years ago
It's awesome to watch massive shifts in values and priorities.
Smoking used to be seen as cool, sexy, even healthy. Now it's widely seen as unhealthy and disgusting.
Same thing with high-fructose carbonated beverages.
I remember people using terms like "retarded" and "gyp" without hesitation. Today even people who hate political correctness don't talk like that in public.
It wasn't long ago that men abusing women in the workplace was routine and unremarkable. Now it's outrageous and shameful.
Things change, slowly at first, and then all at once. People are waking up and it will never be the same for Facebook.
brandonmenc|8 years ago
Social media is socializing now, whether you like it or not, and whether you're along for the ride or not.
In that light, it's strange when people say it's "addicting," like that's a bad thing. It's supposed to be - we're social creatures.
Sharing things about your life with friends and family is not some horrible drug we need to curb.
mikroskeem|8 years ago
I've heard worse. Plain "I don't care" and "I like that people know what I do all the time".
> It's like a smoking addiction
I'd say that tt's more like a drug. Most people seem to seek for an attention (in a comments/likes form).
I know few people who use even PhotoShop-like software to make themselves "more beautiful" to gather more attention; however they don't look even similiar to their pictures.
(it's like drug addicts do weird shit to get their dose of their favourite drug)
tomcooks|8 years ago
egfx|8 years ago
JasonFruit|8 years ago
jamestimmins|8 years ago
We seem to have accepted that the internet is essentially the final communication tech. Maybe that's true, but it seems improbable. Simply based on his past writing, I'm surprised he isn't advocating for a solution based on the blockchain.
I'm not suggesting that's the right answer; I merely find it curious that he didn't apply the same assumptions to the future as he did to his historical analysis.
jgh|8 years ago
michaelmrose|8 years ago
The successor to the internet will be called the internet.
mrweasel|8 years ago
jjrh|8 years ago
thephyber|8 years ago
The massive collections of monolith data sets for financials, health/medical, credit history, employment records, taxes, census, etc are far too valuable to not be highly valuable to criminal orgs and/or government entities. Centralization into monolithic organizations will lead to irreversible issues of data non-privacy for a generation or more..
Nomentatus|8 years ago
ams6110|8 years ago
It's what has always worked for me.
8bitsrule|8 years ago
p49k|8 years ago
Maybe someone should put in some resources to create a polished product and see what happens? It doesn't even have to be some idealistic p2p distributed system or anything like that, just a company who actively works to minimize the data they store and to allow users to control and manage their data effectively.
ytjohn|8 years ago
Hubzilla only has a few thousand users. In a social media world, that's a rounding error. So my thought is that people should setup Hubzilla for a targeted group. Get an active community of dozens or possibly hundreds of people, and if they like the platform, encourage them to invite other people and start additional communities. Or find communities through the federation.
https://project.hubzilla.org/page/hubzilla/hubzilla-project
https://medium.com/we-distribute/the-do-everything-system-an...
pnutjam|8 years ago
haylem|8 years ago
But I also don't see much need for it (entirely), or at the very least for most of its features.
The Facebook of ~2007 was about as good as it ever needed to be (minus the pokes). It served its purpose well. It could have used some of the UI polish it got afterwards, but no new feature addition has made any significant change to end users in my view, apart from pushing them towards more extreme sharing.
It's a super cool app, and a super cool platform, with unfortunately little actual value to its end users (except if you consider advertisers and users of the tech platform the end users, not the actual Facebook users).
Not that I think it's all Facebook's fault: you build something for a certain purpose, and it naturally evolves, and you adapt to what people want, or what you think they want based on some metrics or "need" for growth. And then you get... this.
brylie|8 years ago
https://friendi.ca/
Of course, there is room for improvement in the Friendica UX, but it still seems like a viable option for federated social network. The Friendica devs seem to strive for interoperability with other networks and support open standards for the social Internet.
alecco|8 years ago
Young people are already tired of old Facebook. The problem is Facebook keeps acquiring the competitors gaining ground (WhatsApp/Instagram), and if not possible just ripping off the features. It's grown too big to be upended easily. And they are not stupid. They see the writing on the wall.
vijaybritto|8 years ago
jcadam|8 years ago
But I don't think it would work (and I'd totally work on something like this if I thought it would). People say they care about privacy, but when you present them with the option of paying $5/mo for a service that respects their privacy or using a "free" service that tracks everything they do and sells that data to anyone who'll pay, they'll almost always opt for the latter.
Now, I would certainly pay a monthly fee for a non-user-hostile social network experience. And I would consider the smaller user base a feature, so long as it wasn't too small.
gnud|8 years ago
gvurrdon|8 years ago
Previously we used to use forums such as phpBB, but setting up one of these involved finding someone able to host the forum software on their server. Tapatalk could be set up to improve the mobile experience, but most users seemed to find that somehow difficult. There was also a constant battle with spam and malware.
I'm not sure what would suit - Mastodon and Diaspora don't seem to me to be the right solutions here. Currently, I am making do with being out of the loop and missing things.
ohiovr|8 years ago
ams6110|8 years ago
Much worse between people who aren't so well acquainted. I'm actually in the middle of trying to mediate a disagreement based mainly on two entirely different perceptions of intent in some stuff that was written in an email.
ssalazars|8 years ago
pi-squared|8 years ago
Most of my non-techie friends have heard briefly about "some kind of scandal with facebook" but I cannot possibly appeal to them talking about "privacy" or they are stealing and selling your data - "Oh, everybody does that, you can't not use the Internet".
keybits|8 years ago
908087|8 years ago
If people can't afford a few dollars a month, why in the fuck would it be acceptable to expose them to manipulative ads that encourage them to hand over money that Zuckerberg claims they don't have? He tries to paint himself and his company as altruistic, while simultaneously exploiting the hell out of the people he claims to be "helping".
jenkinsj|8 years ago
heisnotanalien|8 years ago
icebraining|8 years ago
1) Hard to price discriminate. Some people are worth almost nothing to FB, others are worth a lot. The price would either have to be absurdly high (e.g. $500+/y) or they might leave a lot on the table from that very profitable minority.
2) PR hit. People more easily accept that a frivolous luxury is only available to the wealthy, whereas even many people who use FB see privacy as more of a basic need. See: response to "price gougers" selling stuff like ice or water at a premium in disaster areas.
3) Hard to cleaning delineate. It's a social graph, your data is useful to generate data on your friends. Could they use it in that case or not? If they do, will that expose them to a lawsuit?
6ak74rfy|8 years ago
My math above is highly simplistic. For e.g., you'd say you aggressively use an ad blocker and never click on ads. Fair enough, but what about non - tech people unlike us? For e.g., when my dad starting using Facebook at an age of 50+ couple of years, he just tried an unknown plumber through a Facebook ad. Moreover, you'd be willing to pay a monthly subscription, but would all of your friends?
So, what I am getting at is that at Facebook scale they'll earn more though ads than through a subscription model.
IshKebab|8 years ago
ntnsndr|8 years ago
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/qvxbgq/its-time-for-mark-...
supermatt|8 years ago
The reality is that we can either have a paid-for walled garden so that bad actors cant leach data, or a decentralised and trust-driven network.
It only takes a "friend" using a nefarious client/implementation to send all your data to a 3rd party.
sgk284|8 years ago
chx|8 years ago
narven|8 years ago
herbst|8 years ago
Not to mention, which crazy brain even proposed to fix it?
jenkinsj|8 years ago
jacinabox|8 years ago
Slansitartop|8 years ago
I find find this hard to believe. Don't competing networks have similar functionality (e.g. "hearting")? What exactly about "liking" has Facebook patented?
I'm much more ready to believe "liking" is trademarked, though I'm still skeptical of it, given that it's an everyday word used with its everyday meaning.
yy77|8 years ago
ravenstine|8 years ago
billconan|8 years ago
and it will be for expanding my social network and finding people alike, not for watching daily bullshit from existing friends.
jyriand|8 years ago
nso95|8 years ago
gaius|8 years ago
pcunite|8 years ago
TheAceOfHearts|8 years ago
[0] https://beakerbrowser.com/
naskwo|8 years ago
feelin_googley|8 years ago
Nonetheless, these are the assumptions I see:
1. The software alternatives or successors must be commercial.
2. The software must attract a certain quantity of users to be viable.
3. The software must enable networks comprising large numbers of people, perhaps in the millions or billions.
This scale is far greater than the average size of any Facebook users group of friends.
Over the years Facebook may have morphed into a "public square" for exercising "Free Speech" but in the beginning as I recall it was not a means to broadcast to other users outside of ones social circle.
Its primary utility is arguably still in enabling communication within small groups, not enabling broadcasting to the general public.
Wu's assumptions point toward a Zuckerberg-like centrally-managed approach to what I see as historically a locally-managed activity: the human tendency to form small groups.
For many years, gamers and others have been writing software to enable small groups to communicate over peer-to-peer networking, without any funding from advertisers.
Wu writes, "So what stands in the way of a genuine Facebook alternative? It isn't the technology."
Thats exactly right. IMHO.
eadmund|8 years ago
Yes, but only an individual Facebook user. The problem is that my friends' friends' friends' friends' friends' friends encompass the entire human race: at some point, as I invite people who invite people who invite people, the underlying technology has to be able to support all mankind.
Indeed, I suspect that this — not some momentary privacy-failure flash-in-the-pan will be what leads to Facebook's actual downfall. It's ultimately building a proprietary Internet (in the sense of a fabric which connects people), and that's extraordinarily expensive. At the end of the day, the actual Internet is able to do that far more cheaply.
I imagine that the replacement for Facebook will be something like email: something under the control of its users, something anyone will be able to add himself to and anyone will be able to block.
guelo|8 years ago
feelin_googley|8 years ago
...
THIS MORNING, IT emerged that nearly 45,000 Irish Facebook profiles may have been affected by the giant data breach involving as many as 87 million accounts harvested by UK data intelligence firm Cambridge Analytica.
Those 45,000 accounts could have been breached due to just 15 Irish people accessing a questionnaire app, thisisyourdigitallife, which included in its permissions the granting of access to all an individual's friends' profiles."
Source:
http://www.thejournal.ie/poll-do-you-trust-facebook-3941194-...
feelin_googley|8 years ago
...
The mechanisms used by Cambridge Analytica and the "malicious actors" cited by Facebook appear to have been legal and do not constitute a data hack, but rather a deliberate exploitation of information through tools or loopholes Facebook itself provided in the past.
...
At least two foreign governments, Australia and Germany, threatened or launched investigations into the practices on Thursday.
...
Meanwhile, in India, where more than a half-million users are estimated to be affected, the allegations have resulted in a governmental request to Facebook and Cambridge Analytica for more detailed information, with a Saturday deadline.
Even though India is now Facebook's biggest market - ahead of the United States - no Indian media outlets were able to ask questions in a conference call with CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Wednesday.
The heavy U.S. focus immediately triggered criticism because privacy advocates are still looking into reports that Cambridge Analytica may have used Facebook data to influence Indian politics, as well.
...
German justice minister Katarina Barley already called for an E.U.-wide investigation into the misuse of Facebook's data by Cambridge Analytica and other companies on Thursday.
"Facebook has gambled away people's trust," Barley said.
...
But in Europe, Germany's justice minister and others already fear that the latest regulations aren't enough."
Source:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2018/04/05...
feelin_googley|8 years ago
As the FBI admitted a while back, Facebook was the best thing that happened to collecting intelligence and saving money (because everything is in the open).
By having "free" access and use of Facebook, these people have made Mark Zuckerberg a multibillionaire."
Source:
https://www.businesslive.co.za/bd/opinion/letters/2018-04-04...
feelin_googley|8 years ago
...
Facebook has admitted 311,127 Australian users are likely among the up to 87 million users worldwide whose data was unknowingly and "improperly" shared with the British political consultancy agency."
Source:
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/apr/05/facebook-...
dreamygeek|8 years ago
feelin_googley|8 years ago
"Multiple Facebook profiles were extremely easy to scrape," he explains. In a series of conversations with Facebook security developers Copley explained the issue and was told there was "no security vuln here, even though it does seem like one on first glance."
The method of scraping can work in multiple ways but largely relies on feeding Facebook's API a list of phone numbers or email addresses that have been automatically generated. These could also have been obtained from data breaches or leaks of information online.
"Just query Facebook as often as possible until they ban your IP for querying too fast, and at that point you just slow down until the queries stop," Copley explained in an email. "I was doing my work purely for research and exposing the vulnerability for Facebook".
...
The issue was again raised by researchers in 2015.
Reza Moaiandin, who founded cybersecurity company CyberScanner, published a blogpost about the "loophole". he said he was able to gather thousands of users personal information by guessing their mobile numbers. Within this information were details of names, locations, and profile pictures.
In response Facebook told him it didn't "consider it a security vulnerability" but had controls in place to stop it being abused. Zuckerberg's most recent statement goes against this, admitting Facebook's efforts to stop malicious actors hadn't worked."
Source:
http://www.wired.co.uk/article/facebook-news-data-scraping-m...
"A few months ago, I discovered a security loophole in Facebook that allows hackers to decrypt and sniff out Facebook user IDs using one of Facebook's APIs in bulk - therefore allowing them to gather millions of users' personal data (name, telephone number, location, images, and more). This post is an attempt to catch Facebook's attention to get this issue fixed.
By using a script, an entire country's (I tested with the US, the UK and Canada) possible number combinations can be run through these URLs, and if a number is associated with a Facebook account, it can then be associated with a name and further details (images, and so on).
...
For those of you who are wondering why I haven't notified Facebook about the issue, the truth is that I have - back in April (2015).
Although I did receive a reply, initially the engineer I was in contact with was unable to reproduce the issue himself, and therefore failed to understand the technical details of how it should be fixed.
...
After a couple of months of waiting, I initially thought someone else will look into it and fix it but I heard nothing, so I raised the flag with them again. They finally came back to me and told me that this is not a big issue - they have set limits and I should not worry about this problem. But frankly, I am very worried.
...
Comment from reader:
Great blog post. I reported an almost identical issue (albeit a different API) to Facebook in January 2014 but faced similar difficulties getting them to recognise the scope for abuse. I was able to lookup contiguous blocks of mobile numbers (in blocks of 5,000 at a time) with no discernible rate-limiting - I could pull them down as fast as my connection could handle (maybe ~50k numbers/min).
If you make any headway with Facebook let us know and I will try pinging them again. It was especially worrisome as the number range I tried (NYC) had a hit-rate of about 20%."
Source:
https://salt.agency/blog/facebook-security-loophole/
x0x|8 years ago
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Antifragile1|8 years ago
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exolymph|8 years ago