Mastodawn

Henry Edward Hardy Mar 24, 2018

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.

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Hascobe Mar 24, 2018

@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.

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Agentfoo

@Hascobe @hhardy01 Exactly this. I have a blog. I'm never going to convince everyone I interact with on Facebook to join me there. I'm never gonna convince my mum that she needs to make an account to talk to me there and then get her childhood friends she's reconnected with to contact her there, too. Why would they?

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Dan York Dec 30, 2018

@Agentfoo @Hascobe @hhardy01 This is a big part of the challenge. Facebook has become the place where people have reconnected. Now they are there and have built a mesh of connections. It is hard to move from that well-connected space to a place where all those connections have to be rebuilt. There is a “switching cost” - and most people don’t (yet) feel the need/urgency to switch. It’s a great bit of work.