Really, asking "what should replace Facebook" is putting things the wrong way around.
A more interesting way to ask the question is, "what did Facebook replace."
People used to build their own websites. People used to have blogs. People used USENET which was truly distributed and un-censorable.
Facebook and Google took the open internet and open standards and monetized and made everything crappy. Enough of that. Nothing should replace Facebook, it's done, stick a fork in it.
@hhardy01 Let's not be reductive.
Facebook works, regardless of whether you have tech abilities or disposable income.
Facebook centralises and logs communication in a way that IRC never did.
Facebook is accessible and convenient af. Any competitor has to match that.
As a sysadmin I know everything gets logged, question is who can see it.
IRC has always used a server. And there's been bots such as eggdrop since forever. Try freenode and irissi client now.
@hhardy01 I'm sure it's doable in some form. The problem is, it's not accessible enough for someone to go from ignorant of the technology to fully integrated, without substantive research. If I say 'join Facebook' to people, they can can find Facebook, and from there the onboarding process takes them through to completion. (Even then, the grossly tech illiterate can struggle.)
That's the barrier we need to surpass.
Well back in the freenode days, I thought meetbot did a better job of logging and summarizing meetings than FB. We'd meet, everyone could usefully talk, and we'd get immediate minutes and action items.
I think FB has done a lot to lock people in. The interface is usable but it hasn't improved save incrementally.
@hhardy01 I think it's only the wrong question because the answer, broadly at least, is kind of obvious: pretty much anything that isn't centrally owned or operated.
(There are multiple reasons why we wouldn't want to go back to what came before.)
The real questions are:
1. What should it be about? (What's the concept?)
2. How can we get people to use it?
I have some fairly detailed ideas about #1.
@hhardy01 I think this is a bit optimistic though - while people did do those things, far more people were able to communicate with people because Facebook made it easy.... while also siphonining their data, slinging ads, and violating their privacy.
The things and protocls you mention had a lot of freedom, but fraught with problems. Usenet became a hive of spam. Most people couldn't make a web page.
The problem is how can we make it easy *and* liberating?
@hhardy01 People used to build and run phpBB and vBulletin discussion boards. And try and control the spam.
Let them use reddit.
I think the real question is what should replace reddit.
Reddit works in many ways because you have a consolidated forum with voting.
Couldn't each subreddit become its own server instance and decentralized? And then your user becomes federated only to the subreddits to which it subscribes?
@mysteriam Cool!
Me too, https://scanlyze.org
@hhardy01 yes! it’s funny because i remember facebook starting to become a thing, and it felt like the most pointless platform to launch.
there already were forums for every community imaginable, and they were geared to their respective community’s needs, and filled with community people. many of them not appreciably more tech savvy than today’s facebook user, either.
facebook wasn’t inventing or revolutionising anything. it was bland and uninteresting from the beginning.
@tw How google made things crappy. Example: monetizing USENET and rebranding it as "google groups" now its a source of business intelligence to them for their mindfuck adware campaigns. Who even knows this is USENET and you don't need google to access it or use it?
Embrace, extend, privatize, make propritary extensions, claim legal IP., sow FUD about the community you stripmined. the google/FB/Microsoft way. They all suck and need to go away.
@hhardy01 Actually, that's not quite correct. people still use their own website, these still use decentralized services.
Facebook and Google just lowered the bar, giving publishing access to people who aren't technical. the problem was usability, and the Internet Moguls solved it for the vast majority until they became the de facto standard.
if we want a free internet for the masses, using it needs to be user friendly.
Yes but we only became technically savvy by using the net and building things. Not by studying computer science in school.
@hhardy01 both are good and necessary questions - the technology facebook replaced will never be competitive unless we stop and figure out why facebook replaced them and solve those issues
Personally my guesses would be a combination of branding, convenience and timing with critical mass being a secondary factor but I’m no expert so
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