thoughts about Facebook and @Mainebot 's article https://medium.com/tootsuite/replacing-the-pillars-of-the-internet-235836580a0e
I don't think Facebook is like the others. And the reason, stupidly and maddeningly, are Real Names.
Before FB, if my aunt wanted to message your uncle, she'd have to get his handle (number, e-mail...) somehow.
Now she types in a name and gets the right person, just like that.
Facebook solves discoverability, at least for existing IRL social networks. I'm not sure a distributed thing can do that.
I mean. Can we implement a thing that looks like FB and has all the right features? Sure! Everyone currently on Mastodon will love it and flock to it.
And everyone else, that is most of the real-life people out there, will stay on FB. And we'll stay too because otherwise we won't see their photos and won't get invited to their events. Because everyone else is there, and because you don't know That Guy From Work's handle so you can't actually send him the invite on not!FB.
So could we maybe replicate the thing with realnames somehow? Sure we could! Put in a searchable "real name" field, federated social circle tracker, get people's contact lists and securely and privately match them, display friend suggestions, etc. etc.
*Would* we do that?
Hahahahahahaha no. No way in hell. Not in a million years, not ever. Because we don't *want* these features.
I'm not sure _anyone_ wants them, actually. But they are what makes the whole thing work.
@generica Your FB experience is very different from mine O_o
I consider groups to be among the worse known ways to communicate, their main advantage being the FB integration. What do you think is good about them?
(also it helped me immensely to realize that most of my timeline is stuff i actively don't care about. but yeah, i feel the skinner box. what if the next post is interesting?)
Very interesting. I don't actually like the groups that much but they've replaced a lot of blogs so i am on them for genealogy and language stuff, mostly article sharing. Most importantly, fb is needed for playing scrabble. I have unfollowed all but about 20 people so my timeline is only ads and I don't visit it often.
@matejcik
I agree. Real names have made it different. It's the new phone book. @Mainebot 's article https://medium.com/tootsuite/replacing-the-pillars-of-the-internet-235836580a0e is excellent (I'm going to check out matrix). I feel trapped on fb. Groups are good but friending most co-workers isn't. For me the entrapment is related to fomo. Step away from the screen and fb gets less important. Getting outside, reading books over articles, etc. Easier said than done.