Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot: Is There a Good Alternative to Facebook? (washingtonpost.com)
Long-time Slashdot reader Lauren Weinstein argues that fixing Facebook may be impossible because "Facebook's entire ecosystem is predicated on encouraging the manipulation of its users by third parties who posses the skills and financial resources to leverage Facebook's model. These are not aberrations at Facebook -- they are exactly how Facebook was designed to operate." Meanwhile one fund manager is already predicting that sooner or later every social media platform "is going to become MySpace," adding that "Nobody young uses Facebook," and that the backlash over Cambridge Analytica "quickens the demise."
But Slashdot reader silvergeek asks, "is there a safe, secure, and ethical alternative?" to which tepples suggests "the so-called IndieWeb stack using the h-entry microformat." He also suggests Diaspora, with an anonymous Diaspora user adding that "My family uses a server I put up to trade photos and posts... Ultimately more people need to start hosting family servers to help us get off the cloud craze... NethServer is a pretty decent CentOS based option."
Meanwhile Slashdot user Locke2005 shared a Washington Post profile of Mastodon, "a Twitter-like social network that has had a massive spike in sign-ups this week." Mastodon's code is open-source, meaning anybody can inspect its design. It's distributed, meaning that it doesn't run in some data center controlled by corporate executives but instead is run by its own users who set up independent servers. And its development costs are paid for by online donations, rather than through the marketing of users' personal information... Rooted in the idea that it doesn't benefit consumers to depend on centralized commercial platforms sucking up users' personal information, these entrepreneurs believe they can restore a bit of the magic from the Internet's earlier days -- back when everything was open and interoperable, not siloed and commercialized.
The article also interviews the founders of Blockstack, a blockchain-based marketplace for apps where all user data remains local and encrypted. "There's no company in the middle that's hosting all the data," they tell the Post. "We're going back to the world where it's like the old-school Microsoft Word -- where your interactions are yours, they're local and nobody's tracking them." On Medium, Mastodon founder Eugene Rochko also acknowledges Scuttlebutt and Hubzilla, ending his post with a message to all social media users: "To make an impact, we must act."
Lauren Weinstein believes Google has already created an alternative to Facebook's "sick ecosystem": Google Plus. "There are no ads on Google+. Nobody can buy their way into your feed or pay Google for priority. Google doesn't micromanage what you see. Google doesn't sell your personal information to any third parties..." And most importantly, "There's much less of an emphasis on hanging around with those high school nitwits whom you despised anyway, and much more a focus on meeting new persons from around the world for intelligent discussions... G+ posts more typically are about 'us' -- and tend to be far more interesting as a result." (Even Linus Torvalds is already reviewing gadgets there.)
Wired has also compiled their own list of alternatives to every Facebook service. But what are Slashdot's readers doing for their social media fix? Leave your own thoughts and suggestions in the comments.
Is there a good alternative to Facebook?
But Slashdot reader silvergeek asks, "is there a safe, secure, and ethical alternative?" to which tepples suggests "the so-called IndieWeb stack using the h-entry microformat." He also suggests Diaspora, with an anonymous Diaspora user adding that "My family uses a server I put up to trade photos and posts... Ultimately more people need to start hosting family servers to help us get off the cloud craze... NethServer is a pretty decent CentOS based option."
Meanwhile Slashdot user Locke2005 shared a Washington Post profile of Mastodon, "a Twitter-like social network that has had a massive spike in sign-ups this week." Mastodon's code is open-source, meaning anybody can inspect its design. It's distributed, meaning that it doesn't run in some data center controlled by corporate executives but instead is run by its own users who set up independent servers. And its development costs are paid for by online donations, rather than through the marketing of users' personal information... Rooted in the idea that it doesn't benefit consumers to depend on centralized commercial platforms sucking up users' personal information, these entrepreneurs believe they can restore a bit of the magic from the Internet's earlier days -- back when everything was open and interoperable, not siloed and commercialized.
The article also interviews the founders of Blockstack, a blockchain-based marketplace for apps where all user data remains local and encrypted. "There's no company in the middle that's hosting all the data," they tell the Post. "We're going back to the world where it's like the old-school Microsoft Word -- where your interactions are yours, they're local and nobody's tracking them." On Medium, Mastodon founder Eugene Rochko also acknowledges Scuttlebutt and Hubzilla, ending his post with a message to all social media users: "To make an impact, we must act."
Lauren Weinstein believes Google has already created an alternative to Facebook's "sick ecosystem": Google Plus. "There are no ads on Google+. Nobody can buy their way into your feed or pay Google for priority. Google doesn't micromanage what you see. Google doesn't sell your personal information to any third parties..." And most importantly, "There's much less of an emphasis on hanging around with those high school nitwits whom you despised anyway, and much more a focus on meeting new persons from around the world for intelligent discussions... G+ posts more typically are about 'us' -- and tend to be far more interesting as a result." (Even Linus Torvalds is already reviewing gadgets there.)
Wired has also compiled their own list of alternatives to every Facebook service. But what are Slashdot's readers doing for their social media fix? Leave your own thoughts and suggestions in the comments.
Is there a good alternative to Facebook?
Facebook's main staying power is that two apps handle everything. Groups, messaging, calendaring, blogs, file downloads, movies, pictures, and many other items.
None of this was invented by them. Messaging could be done by XMPP, IRC, or many other ways. Groups could be handled by a web forum. Calendaring, similar. File downloads could be done by the usual means. Movies, pictures, etc, could be done by websites, even easy to use packages like WordPress. However, what FB does is bring all that together, where it is the standard as the "watering hole" everyone goes to.
There are other social networks, be it Diaspora or MeWe. However, people don't want to have a ton of social media apps; they just want one, and someone isn't on it, that person is persona non grata.
This isn't to say Facebook isn't original. Their zstd compression algorithm is a very top notch achievement, and almost is as good as lzma, with a fraction of the CPU usage. However, were it not for the fact that even businesses depend on it for communication, it can be superseded, just like Myspace was.
I think we're beyond critical mass. Facebook is where everyone goes online to find everyone else, at least in north America and western Europe. People wanna go where their friends, family, and acquaintances are. How are we gonna convince everyone to migrate to the same service at the same time? Advertise it on Facebook?
I say it would be more practical to regulate Facebook. We could start by making their data gathering, usage, and redistribution practices transparent in ways that are meaningful to users (i.e. so as to achieve true informed consent). Then we could look at ways to hold Facebook and its clients accountable for misuses, abuses, and incompetence.
Regulate Facebook in the same way that we've decided it's a good idea to regulate government: Transparency and democratic oversight. It sounds boring and not very techie but you know, it's not really a technological problem, it's a political one.
Debate is a form of harassment. Do not question my truth.
If outside is so great, why have we spent the last 9000 years perfecting inside?
Facebook has me trapped because of the network effect. I do standup comedy as a hobby and all the shows and calls for spots are announced on Facebook. I also do some sketch and improv, and yep... all the auditions and shows are announced on Facebook.
My music teacher has a Facebook group for announcements for all her students. I need to be on Facebook to get those.
And until a critical mass of people finds something else, Facebook will continue to have its stranglehold in situations like this.
ANYTHING, other than Facebook, is an excellent alternative to Facebook.
I've always been able to sign up for facebook (since it existed anyway) - but I still haven't seen a reason to.
It was old to me when it was new - chat interfaces, friendly reminders that always tend to linger on advertisers and lingering invitations to third party fees/services. I couldn't see any difference between it and basically every thing it was imitating, And always, always demanding you provide it a method of hooking into you with what I saw as shallow database references.
It's not a matter of privacy or security paranoia - I just had no desire to play that game since I saw those same games played in the BBS era, and the early national networks. They're all the same kind of scummy, and for my tastes, I found I was better catered to as the 'odd man out' in groups than as another contestant in the facebook game.
From every video I've seen and friend-on-a-phone using time on the service I've ever seen, I've never seen a hint of anything more to it. Any examples of content on Facebook that anyone has ever seen that are actually more than promotional contest giveaways, and chat/email/scheduling analogues?
Life is about focus - Facebook always seemed the wrong thing to focus on, after seeing every other social network. I was always looking for a 'need' that justified it, just never found any - and I enjoyed every second I did not use with it.
Oddly enough, I did see the movie - and I didn't really seen to miss any reference.
Ryan Fenton
+1 for Usenet.
A good project would be to place a new GUI over a few of the more censorship resistant networks.
Bring Usenet, IRC, P2P, web cam, microphone support, crypto chat together as one GUI "app".
Each network supporting a wide range of different was of connecting with people. Person to person and for global communications.
No social media censorship and big brand politics.
Make the internet great again.
--
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
#IDeletedFB5YrsAgoWhereWereUAllThatTime?
No hashtag. I immediately recognized Facebook and (to a lesser extent) Twitter for what they are when they first came out. I never jumped on the bandwagon. I've never had an account on either site. Generally, the longer I live the more I find that when large masses of people all jump on a big bandwagon it's usually counter to my interests. Exceptions do exist but they're rare. Always it's a case-by-case basis, of course. As Edward Bernays (nephew to Sigmund Freud) recognized, it's all too easy to get people to vote against their own interests. All you have to do is avoid talking about rational pros-and-cons and go for emotional appeal. This is the guy who convinced women to smoke (because liberation! -- tobacco companies double their customers!) back when only men smoked, wrote books with names like Crystallizing Public Opinion and Propaganda, termed his work Manufactured Consent, and founded what is now called Public Relations.
People need to re-learn how to say "no, I don't need that". Always the illusion is that you are being served, as a great modern teacher once said. It looks like they're helping you, but actually they're helping themselves to you. If it appeals to a sense of vanity, a desire for attention, or any other unmet need and emotional weakness of yours, then it's feeding everything wrong with you and profiting from it. The textbook example is the drug dealer and the drug addict, it's just that often there is no physical chemical involved.
I'm glad you came to your own understanding of this. Everyone does so at their own pace. I'm fortunate to have realized this before Myspace and then Facebook came along but I assure you, I made my own mistakes before I learned by doing. However you arrived at this place, it's called personal growth and it is to be celebrated and cherished.
I long ago learned not to pity myself because it's wasted energy that should be invested in change, therefore I don't pity others (empathy and compassion are completely different things that actually can help). If I did pity myself, I would also pity those who never learn, those who jump from one bandwagon to the next saying "this time it's going to work!" They remind me of people who stay in abusive relationships, rationalizing the actions of their tormentors while remaining afraid to be on their own. Facebook and their ilk are just the modern P.T. Barnum who recognize that there is profit because a sucker is born every minute. This mentality also believes that "it is immoral to let a sucker keep his money". Today, data is money.
It's that simple once you cut through all the hype and bullshit. It helps when you understand what you are dealing with. Then you can make an informed decision and the temptations no longer seem so tempting.
For you kiddies that don't remember AOL, facebook is your generations AOL.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AOL
Before that it was Prodigy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prodigy_(online_service)
Before that it was Compuserve
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CompuServe
Look at my user name. Yes, it's my real name. And you know what? I'm certainly someone with some "very offensive" opinions. That never stopped me to express those opinions using my real name. More than that, I live in Canada. Since it's clear some people might feel "offended" for what I say, this means some of my opinions could easily be classified as "hate speech". I could end up in jail for them. But I prefer to go to jail rather than to shut up or to hide.
"Lively political debate" on the Internet between anonymous people are extremely low quality and they have very little influence in real life. They don't change anything. They are only intellectual masturbation.
In fact, it's even worse than that. By hiding, by refraining from expressing what you really think in real life, you give way to political correctness. One of the reasons political correctness took so much space in our society is because a lot of people who had an "offensive" opinion decided to hide.