My next big fantasy project is the Facebook killer. Facebook brings so many wonderful things to the world: connection to long-unseen acquaintances; community organizing; updates from friends and family. The cost, of course, is placing our thoughts, ideas, memories, pictures, opinions and habits into a closed, for-profit ecosystem with dubious ethics and the tendency to meddle with the presentation of that content (and the content itself) like a scolding, self-serving parent.
Attempts to remake Facebook as another website will fail. Logging into a website held on private servers, in order to see / share / participate replicates the issues that Facebook has (e.g. 'Ello), no matter how ethically its owners would promise to behave, will have the same problems.
The only way to solve the problems of Facebook is to give every individual total control over their own content, and over the content feed they see. I'm talking about a paradigm shift in social media. I'm not talking website, I'm talking protocol.
So, my pitch is: Existing technologies such as RSS, open IDs and authentication, blogging software, etc, can, glued together the right protocol TBD, will allow individuals to have more control over their own data and identity, while still allowing all of the good that Facebook and social media actually brings to the world. Individuals host their own equivalent of the "Facebook wall" (or hire a host), and can subscribe to other "walls". Posting on your "wall" can have different levels of security - available to trusted audience or public, rather like Facebook is. Only, you own it.
If I were going to try and build a Facebook killer, which is an incredibly difficult task, obviously, I'd try and somehow do it without the "screen". I don't know what the answer is, but I feel like the web/mobile app you scroll through model is something we can avoid in the future. If I want to keep in touch with those close to me, I can do it without all the damn screen time.
Ironically this is sort of what we built here with dev.to, but I do think it's the right "first version" of the community thing and is the right approach for less competitive territory, but the moonshot future (and in order to "kill Facebook", you have to think moonshots) is connectivity minus scrolling through a screen.
At least that's what I hope for. I also don't think VR (Another market Facebook will try to corner) is the right alternative, just the most potentially addictive one. The right solution has way fewer screens.
A free, open-source protocol that emphasizes interoperability and user control would allow devs to create any kind of client that suits them. Competing clients, and competing hosts, with competing revenue models, will lead to all kinds of UX solutions, not just the one handed to you by the hegemony. Those who hate scrolling such as yourself will create and gravitate towards clients that solve that.
I actually see this future - of a distributed social media - as rather inevitable, whether or not I work on it. The more that social media becomes essential to our lives, the less willing we will be to settle for our social networks and identities to be controlled by others.
My next big fantasy project is the Facebook killer. Facebook brings so many wonderful things to the world: connection to long-unseen acquaintances; community organizing; updates from friends and family. The cost, of course, is placing our thoughts, ideas, memories, pictures, opinions and habits into a closed, for-profit ecosystem with dubious ethics and the tendency to meddle with the presentation of that content (and the content itself) like a scolding, self-serving parent.
Attempts to remake Facebook as another website will fail. Logging into a website held on private servers, in order to see / share / participate replicates the issues that Facebook has (e.g. 'Ello), no matter how ethically its owners would promise to behave, will have the same problems.
The only way to solve the problems of Facebook is to give every individual total control over their own content, and over the content feed they see. I'm talking about a paradigm shift in social media. I'm not talking website, I'm talking protocol.
So, my pitch is: Existing technologies such as RSS, open IDs and authentication, blogging software, etc, can, glued together the right protocol TBD, will allow individuals to have more control over their own data and identity, while still allowing all of the good that Facebook and social media actually brings to the world. Individuals host their own equivalent of the "Facebook wall" (or hire a host), and can subscribe to other "walls". Posting on your "wall" can have different levels of security - available to trusted audience or public, rather like Facebook is. Only, you own it.
If I were going to try and build a Facebook killer, which is an incredibly difficult task, obviously, I'd try and somehow do it without the "screen". I don't know what the answer is, but I feel like the web/mobile app you scroll through model is something we can avoid in the future. If I want to keep in touch with those close to me, I can do it without all the damn screen time.
Ironically this is sort of what we built here with dev.to, but I do think it's the right "first version" of the community thing and is the right approach for less competitive territory, but the moonshot future (and in order to "kill Facebook", you have to think moonshots) is connectivity minus scrolling through a screen.
At least that's what I hope for. I also don't think VR (Another market Facebook will try to corner) is the right alternative, just the most potentially addictive one. The right solution has way fewer screens.
Agreed!
A free, open-source protocol that emphasizes interoperability and user control would allow devs to create any kind of client that suits them. Competing clients, and competing hosts, with competing revenue models, will lead to all kinds of UX solutions, not just the one handed to you by the hegemony. Those who hate scrolling such as yourself will create and gravitate towards clients that solve that.
I actually see this future - of a distributed social media - as rather inevitable, whether or not I work on it. The more that social media becomes essential to our lives, the less willing we will be to settle for our social networks and identities to be controlled by others.
Hi, sure it's an ambitious side project ! Here is an open source alternative to Tweeter that could inspire you: Mastodon
Yes! Amazing. Thanks!