Hell for that if they gave me an ad free experience I would pay it.
2 Likes
ORLY?
5 Likes
Facebook’s main strength is that virtually everyone is on it. If you want to find some long-lost relative or stalk an ex, that’s the place to go. Could the post office give everyone a contact page (with all details hidden by default) that people could populate with the information they want? That doesn’t seem like a terrible idea to me. As long as they don’t just hire Facebook to do it.
5 Likes
Given that the USPS (assuming you’re US based) profits on junk mail, I’m not sure I’d put a lot of trust in this.
3 Likes
Yes, in addition to nonprofit and public-spirited we also need intuitive and easy-to-use. Diaspora, as much as I like it from a techie POV, is currently a non-starter for the average user.
Diaspora, though, is an opportunity for existing media and content sites: collaborate on development (esp. for ease of use); set up “pods” and invite existing users to join (after giving a layman’s explanation of how it replaces FB); perhaps charge a small fee ($1-10/month) so that portion of the federated social network and the content site itself don’t have to be supported by the current borked ads and privacy-invasion model.
2 Likes
The USPS does a good job of delivering mail, in my experience.
Sadly, it has a sorry history of letting Federal agencies secretly read mail.
“Between 1940 and 1973, two agencies of the federal government – the CIA and the FBI – covertly and illegally opened and photographed first class letter mail within the United States. These agencies conducted a total of twelve mail opening programs for lengths of time varying from three weeks to twenty-six years. In a single program alone, more than 215,000 communications were intercepted, opened, and photographed; the photographic copies of these letters, some dated as early as 1955, were indexed, filed, and are retained even today. Information from this and other mail opening programs – “sanitized” to disguise its true source – was disseminated within the federal establishment to other members of the intelligence community, the Attorney General, and to the President of the United States.”
6 Likes
Well, shit. That’s even more depressing than I originally thought. Your privacy is worth less than $2 per year to Facebook.
5 Likes
2 Likes
Unfortunately the idea is unfixable. There is too much power concentrated in all those users. Any system of that scale will attract people wanting to monetize or abuse that power. It’ll start off quietly, but you’ll quickly get people figuring out how to spam it, how to disguise paid shills, corporations wanting to advertise on it, and all manner of trolls, foreign governments, law enforcement, intelligence agencies, private investigators, insurers, and employers.
It’ll devolve over a year or so and become exactly what Facebook already is today.
You can say words about how it could be regulated, but any governing body is going to be subject to corruption on a massive scale, and it will eventually be gamed by someone like the Cheeto-head anyway. We’ve already seen this play out on a minor scale with Wikipedia, which is being held up as a shining model. This won’t be any different.
I wish I could say this is pessimism, but it’s the nature of sociopaths to be attracted to that power. They prove it daily.
4 Likes
This is actually a very clever idea!
If the major CMSs each had an add-on module that supported a decentralized system then the existing web folks could simply install it anywhere and everywhere. It would be of benefit to the hosts as well since they could have a small icon (gosh, just like FBook!) showing that they supported the system.
3 Likes
I think that is what this is supposed to do:
I honestly have a bit of a hard time parsing that website, but I think it is along the lines of what you are suggesting, web wide, independent way to distribute and concentrate content from individuals.
I’ve been thinking about this. Shares from our actual site are kind of rare—I generally use them myself, for convenience, but I don’t put any of the share buttons on the main page. (I dislike the clutter, and I prefer our logo is the only one on the front page, but you have to click twice to use a share icon.) But maybe this isn’t the best approach.
Oh, quick question: does this mean Mastodon isn’t likely a viable approach? I looked at it, but it didn’t rise above “incoherent mess” for me.
1 Like
Monica Hesse at The Washington Post had this to say:
It can be really hard to get people to pay for things they’re used to having for free (see: online news articles). Especially when, “pay us money and we won’t let hackers and spammers and Russian bots steal all your identity” is likely to be met with, “we thought you were already doing that, jerks.”
I think you are right, @Headache, that they’d lose a lot (most?) users, but not because people don’t value privacy. Online privacy just isn’t salient enough for most people. I think they wouldn’t pay because they don’t actually value Facebook that much. And after the first round of cheapskates dropped off, FB would be less attractive to those people’s circles, so some more would drop off, etc.
Oddly enough, I think if they wanted to do it, now’s the time. A lot of people, me included, would be like:
But,
Right. This is FB were talking about. They may stop showing ads on FB, so you don’t feel duped, but their promises not to give away all your info would have a nice big asterisks: We’ll never sell or give access to your data, ever.* * We’ll license it!
6 Likes
Appears to be missing most of the features people like about FB though.
The Borg is starting to push back. I got an hysterical call from my mother a few days ago demanding to know why my wife had unfriended my sister on FB. I tried to explain but I think its beyond them to be honest.
5 Likes
I think Mastodon is a good start in the “alternative social space”, uh, space, and it might be possible to create a CMS plugin for hosting it. As long as the plugin was primarily about decentralized hosting then the UX could continue to evolve. One could even posit a case for decentralized hosting in general, regardless of the application. I.e. a “commons” plugin, with just a few knobs for CMS admins to twiddle for disk space and bandwidth. Of course there’s still the problem of illegal content, would need some kind of encryption and content dispersal scheme such that admins couldn’t be held accountable. Would be like running a TOR exit node, really, except hopefully with a large volunteer force (a la Wikipedia) to monitor and flag the bad stuff.
So, did your wife deactivate her account, and then your sister get a notification that she was gone?
Because that is the next thing I expect them to do to try and suck these users back in.
2 Likes
Pretty sure that wouldn’t apply to us. Or at least I’d hope not.
I don’t do facebook. As an aside I would point out that in the early nineties lots was written about public space on the internet, real fear that it would all be enclosed. Beloved figures like Barlow don’t seem to have given it much thought. The contrast is that there used to be Request for Comments, RFCs, where standards were defined. It released the standards to everyone, so email and IRC and Usenet and ftp and surely even the Web became standards for all to use. But then facebook and the like came long, closed spaces to make profit and beat the competition. “Everyone” wants to come up with the “new facebook”, but they aren’t talking about using facebook software for something else, they are talking about a competitive product to make money.
As for needing facebook to find people, the one person from high school I’ve ever had any interest in knowing about, I can find lots about her, without facebook. Actually, there was a story last year about someone, and I realized I was glad to hear about him.
I keep finding relatives with the web. Yes, one time I realized people might be named “Timentwa” like my great, great, great grandmother Sarah, and did a search on her last name, and found a lot on and around the Colville reservation, where they would be, and yes, lots of facebook accounts. But a websearch found the stepsister I’d never realized had qualified as a stepsister had died a few months ago, shortly after she died. That’s the fourth relative in a few years I’ve found, without facebook. I even found where one relative had found a Timentwa who definitely is related.
When I temporarily lost usenet a couple of years ago, someone found me via my webpage, even though there’s no connection between the page and the email address I was posting with.
Facebook thrives because people gave it power. No need to configure things like that messy Usenet, even if facebook probably derives from decades of networking on things like usenet, a “Disneyfied” experience. People were happy to get something from companies in exchange for “liking” them, helping facebook to get further penetration. Nobody balks at having to sign up to facebook in order to comment at the local newspaper or whatever, which is another way facebook improved penetration. I’ve seen people who complain about too many ads “in real life” accept facebook, probably because they don’t realize alternatives. People often don’t question what they perceive as “technology”.
I may look at facebook to find upcoming events, the lazy like the ease of using facebook, but I won’t link to it, or acknowledge that I got the date for some event from facebook.
It can go away right now and it won’t impact me one but.
3 Likes
I saw one asking whether I thought they care about their users. If “Lol no” had been an option I would have taken it.
3 Likes
