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.
Go OUTSIDE and give it a try. Did you know the sky is still blue?
And be sure to take pictures and post them. Sunrise/sunset pictures get the most likes, after dogs.
Have you read my blog lately?
Does anyone actually believe that?
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
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.
Here's how it's been explained to me: Google and Facebook generally do not make a habit of selling members' personally identifying information (PII) to third parties. Instead, they safeguard members' PII and offer services, such as Google's AdWords and DoubleClick, that use members' PII and click stream as an input.
As for the Cambridge Analytica/SCL incident: Facebook sold nothing. Cambridge Analytica collected Facebook members' PII through Facebook's API and then disclosed (i.e. sold) the PII in violation of Facebook's terms of service.
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
will turn into Facebook eventually. Only non-profit, decentralized social networks will prioritize privacy and security. However these will be likely gain market share on par with linux desktop.
Jeez, I really don't understand comments like this. It's perfectly obvious what people use FB for. Literally billions of people use it to share and receive updates from friends and family without having to initiate a direct interchange with a specific subset of people from among their contacts. It's a simple and effective way to keep up to date with contacts around the world, and email just doesn't work in the same way, otherwise those billions of people would use email instead. You may not see the need for such a service yourself, but self-evidently that is not true for many other people.
No. Just no. Absolutely not. Because “being held acccountable for what you post” in some countries means jail time or torture. And even if it isn’t the government, in many countries including my own, the wrong opninion or party affiliation can result in bricks through your windows. In these times, when it’s not hardened activists but ordinary people feel they have a right and duty to silence undesirable opinions by any means at their disposal, I prefer to stay anonymous, thanks.
There’s some good lively political debate on a couple of blogs I frequent. As well as trolls, nut jobs and the occasional spammer. But we all understand that without anonymity, these sites would be dead. Most people would justly be afraid to posit anything remotely controversial under their real name.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Go OUTSIDE and give it a try.
Go where? Oooh there's an open air free concert in my city this afternoon. It was advertised on Facebook.
Wait you didn't think Facebook was used just to stare at posts from people you don't like did you?
If step one of your plan to replace Facebook is everyone running family servers, your plan is doomed from the start. Most families don't have anyone capable of doing that, and hardly any families have anyone capable of doing it well -- keeping the machine running, updated, and properly secured.
There's a remote chance that it could work if there were a competitive network of service providers who ran the servers. For example, if ISPs did it, the way they all used to run email servers. It might also be somewhat possible if cloud providers operated and maintained the servers. In both cases, though, I think it would just lead the cloud providers to exploit economies of scale by putting up one big infrastructure for all of their users, and to compete by offering features that others don't have... then network effects would kick in and one of them would become dominant and you'd just have a new Facebook.
I think the bottom line is that widely-used services that are subject to intense network effects are natural monopolies. And natural monopolies require regulation.
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