Many friends of mine have recently announced they’re leaving Facebook, mostly for some other social network. So far, every such recent announcement has indicated a destination that is structured in exactly the same bad way as Facebook. But, they all lack 2+ billion user advantage Facebook has (see Metcalfe’s Law). With this recent surge of Facebook abandonment, this seems like a good time to ask, again, is it time to build the next social network?
Before I get into that, I should note that I don’t intend to delete my Facebook account right now. More importantly, if I do, or for those of you who are doing so soon, I am easy to find. I intend to keep this blog, and my personal email address (varrin at sugargroup dot net) has been the same for over 20 years now. And that brings me right back to the point I’m wanting to make: When we switch platforms, we lose a lot. This is a problem which needs to be solved.
In the good old days of the internet, it wasn’t too difficult to switch email addresses. Your contacts list was in your email program, so you could just switch servers without losing your contacts. Just send an email out to everyone with your new address, and press on. This is because email wasn’t just Compuserve or AOL or Netcom (remember them?), rather it is a set of protocols. Sure, AOL offered email, but so does Google and a zillion other providers. If you don’t like one, switch to another. But the rest of the world doesn’t have to change just because you want to.
With Facebook, this isn’t the case. When you leave, you lose contact (through Facebook) with everyone on that platform. But it’s worse than that. Not only does the social content not cross the border to the rest of the internet (usefully, anyway), but the contact list is not portable in any meaningful way. Consequently, there is a big obstacle to switching platforms. Today, there are alternatives that are structured better, but, alas, they’re not easy enough to use. The ones that are easier are mostly built just like Facebook: wrong (centralized).
This problem seems important enough to put some attention into fixing. The solution must involve a system that is fundamentally decentralized. Every #1 reason I’ve heard people cite when leaving Facebook, from data privacy concerns, to censorship, to news feed tinkering, etc., are all dependent on centralization of the infrastructure. Ironically, every person I’ve heard announce their departure recently (and almost all of them ever) have left for another centralized platform. At its very best, this is a stop gap measure. But if a replacement becomes popular, and therefore useful, that creates another barrier to adopting an actually-good solution. So I am not inclined to switch to another platform, aside from evaluation, until it’s structured right. Fool me once, shame on me…
From my perspective, a suitable replacement must meet the following criteria to provide sufficient incentive to move:
- Decentralized (and Federated) – whether this means numerous servers communicating (like email) by protocol such as ActivityPub, or some yet-to-be-developed blockchain sort of solution, it can’t be all in the hands of one entity. Not only must the servers (if there are such things) not be in the hands of one entity, the data shouldn’t be confined to one network of servers.
- User friendly and reliable – Facebook does this really well, even if imperfectly. It should be easy for users to start a new life in (hopefully) their final social destination on the internet. This includes the availability of phone apps and such that simply work right.
- Long form and media-inclusive posts – Facebook allows longer posts (than eg. Twitter), and the option to include media (photos, videos, etc).
- Threaded comments – It’s easier to unthread comments Twitter-style than to thread them Facebook-style (or reddit- / forum-style). For discussion, some level of comment threading is so useful as to be necessary.
- Group functionality – Even Facebook could improve on their group functionality, but whatever federated replacement comes into existence should facilitate interaction among groups of users across platforms (including private groups).
Those are the minimums, and I’m not aware of a single solution which meets them all. Additionally, I’d say its almost essential for the underlying server software to be open source. Some additional criteria that would be nice to have might include end-to-end encrypted content (that might be a Neat Trick), and something akin to Nomadic Identity (see Hubzilla).
Of the ‘popular’ replacements, a couple warrant comment. Minds is not yet decentralized, but this appears to be in the works. Gab is, I believe, a Mastodon node, so it is already decentralized, but subject to Mastodon’s downsides (short form, non-threaded, no groups). Parler and MeWe are hopelessly centralized.
I have indicated my interest in a better platform for quite some time. I’m putting this on my own blog to make my expression of interest sticky. I’m interested in hearing from any of you about what direction might be best to go, and how I can help move progress along towards a solution that’s good for everybody.
And, in the mean time, for those of you who are going away, I expect to remain reachable by email at varrin at sugargroup dot net.
V-
FB has become to manipulative and in many ways an intelligence and brain drain.
Excellent post
We will have to figure something out. It does make sense to do something decentralize. I think the system will attack any of our attempts to escape their networks, but we could survive them.
I am on twitter, FB, Instagram, mewe, gab and some forums
FB won’t let me do anything but accept friends since last week … who knows how long this will last.