this post was submitted on 23 Jul 2023

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Why have we not done a federated Facebook replacement yet? (self.asklemmy)

submitted 1 year ago by JTode to c/asklemmy

28 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I'm not the most on point as far as keeping up with the internet so possibly it is actually happening, but I have not yet identified a direct challenge to Facebook from the fediverse that has been settled on by those already here.

I was on Mastodon for a while but realized I hate Twitter-style interactions, as much as I enjoyed posting about all the stuff I'm into - as the Twitter people kept coming like waves of Saxons with funny hair on Britain's fair shore, I got into some supremely silly arguments and then got out. I didn't bother to wait for them to burn my village, they're welcome to it.

I'm now giving Lemmy a go, because as far as participation in platforms, I lasted longest at Reddit, though I was gone long before the recent exodus. Hopefully my dogs, cats, plants and microcontroller projects will get some love from The Internet's Good Strangers here.

But I was, in the early days, quite an avid FB user and considered it unleaveable until 2016, at which point I realized it was not just leavable but likely to get us all killed. I still have a (good parts of) Facebook-shaped hole in my online life, which is where all my real friends and relatives used to hang out for my daily perusal, and where I could send out my various snarks and know I was amusing at least one or two people who genuinely found my antics delightful. I'm not a troll but I'm definitely a Grouch, and even Oscar needed a hug every now and then.

So given that most of us are here because we recognized the cycle of enshittification at some point and decided to make a different choice, and given that we've so quickly embraced replacements for every other big silo, and given again that most of us were probably once on FB and used it to be connected to our real people... why have we collectively shied away from even offering a viable Facebook alternative?

Whenever I ask my more "woke" friends why they're still there, it nearly always seems to be that their old relatives are all there. I can see that that would be a great challenge, to move them off of that pablum-crack. Maybe the Secret Council Of Woke Fediverse Elders is using all these lesser platforms as gamergate-like test runs to iron out the kinks in federation. Perhaps even the seeming willingness of Mastodon admins to let Meta poke their tentacles in the door is entirely a feint - perhaps Mastodon was never intended to be kept in the first place, but rather, is just a honey pot to gather important battlefield notes for the coming attack!

maybe?

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[–] jesterraiin 30 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Why have we not done a federated Facebook replacement yet?

Because Facebook is highly useful as a container for people you wouldn't want to interact with.

[–] JTode 8 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Lol true, in nearly every case. But some of them are family or dear friends. :>

[–] jesterraiin 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The risk outweighs the potential gains!

[–] JTode 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

What would the risks be?

Like, context, last month when I was on Mastodon and the great argument about whether to federate with Meta happened, I was very much on the "fuck no not ever" team. In terms of opening the federated door to them, I can think of many ways that ends horribly for us but not so many where it actually hurts them. So it's not that I discount the danger they represent to anyone who interfaces any part of themselves with their products.

But a Federation that directly competes with the constructive parts of Facebook's social infrastructure (mainly, connections to family/friends and groups for local communities/events), and tries to be as easy to use, with no interfacing directly with facebook, I don't see the risk, other than, they will obviously send their hooligans, but I don't see what they can do if we just say no.

I'm still gonna be watching the Threads plot unfold, they forced a good opening but apparently it's petered off, and they no longer have infinite capital to throw around for Ubering.

[–] jesterraiin 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

What would the risks be?

What's your experience with userbase site-to-site migration?

[–] JTode 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

None whatsoever, other than, I actually was enjoying Mastodon for about two weeks and then two Twitter exodi brought a flood what I can only describe as twitthink, so I definitely know how a userbase can fundamentally alter the character of a community in a relative heartbeat.

I'm sure there's all sorts of well-thought-out technical reasons why it can't work that I haven't thought of, but in all honesty I don't find such ministrations very compelling. Fundamentally, I do still believe in the ability of groups of well-informed and competent people to pull things off.

But again, aside from the stuff I already thought about like server loads, traffic management, all the problems of federation that we're already aware of, what I'm specifically wondering if I'm missing, is, are there risks specific to going up against FB that are different risks from what we're already doing to the other sites?

[–] jesterraiin 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

None whatsoever,

I see.

[–] JTode 1 points 1 year ago

I see.

Equally cryptic rejoinder which does not avoid the question.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yeah... I have Viber for that. Anyone wanna contact me, they can do it via Viber. They know I don't do FB/Twitter/IG.

[–] JTode 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I just use email and, you know, telephones. They see about as much of me as they ever did in real life, and facebook was never a representation of my real life to begin with. But the place is hurting them, and they think they can't leave. Just like when a friend is in an abusive relationship, we can't make them leave, but we can prepare a place for them to land when they do, and these people are all gonna need some doomscrolling methadone if they ever jump off that slot machine.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

The exact reason I decided to install Viber was fast communication with everyone else (everyone uses it around here) and to caiter to the needs of my friends and relatives.

You can't really do anything for them. It's like a drug, if they refuse to admit they're addicts, then there is nothing you can do.

We are all addicted to something, no doubt there, whether it be cigarettes, alcohol, drugs, gambling, social networks, doesn't matter. The real test is, what will you do once that thing that you're addicted to suddenly is no more. I have done this test on myself a few times. The first is the hardest. You really have no idea what to do, even though you have like a bunch of things shelved in your head that need to be done, but you just can't stop thiking about the thing that you're deprying yourself of. The second time it's easier, the third, even easier. I'm at a point right now that I know I can quit Lemmy or the net entirely for an unlimited period of time, if I wanted to. It's just training of the mind, nothing more.

I suggest you prepare them mentally for one of the hardest things they'll have to endure (if none of them have ever given up drugs, gambling, alcohol, cigrettes, those addictions are far worse). First leave them without FB for a week or two, let them stress it out. Afterwards, Lemmy will feel like heaven to them, lol 😂. Cuz let's face it, you can't doomscroll here, there still isn't that much content, but you can scroll for about an hour or two, no problem there.

[–] JTode 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's interesting too, back in the 90s, there was a steady stream of new stuff coming online always, but you did tend to run out of new stuff within a set period of time and need to go play Doom or something. I remember when the first Reddit phone app came out and there was this idea that you could just scroll forever, as a feature, and... hmm.

I look around and I see a lot of things being treated as not just necessary, but articles of faith, when discussing what social media needs to look like. Zero effort is one, and global reach is another. The former was never intended to be a feature of the internet, the latter is there as the default - a silo can only limit your reach, in the final analysis, but it can make you louder within its bubble I suppose, and it seems that a lot of us find that very important. I'm happy just to be discussing this with another presumably human and obviously rational brain, me. If I post my dog, I just need one "zomg so cute" and I'm satisfied.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Things are different now because everyone is a content creator now... everyone has something interesting, funny, informative, shitty they just have to share. Social media made sharing those things real easy. So, basically, now, there's an endless supply of stuff you can scroll through. Everyone is online now, that wasn't the case back in the 90s.

Things are what they currently are (easily accessible to everyone, even 90 year old granma that has no understanding of what the internet is, but her only living friend has an account on FB, so she told her to hop on board) bacause of the money insentive. Everything has a price tag nowadays. A perfect example, cryptocurrency. It isn't worth anything, but someone decided to put a price tag on it and now, it's worth a lot. And things can't pan out any differently in a capitalist economic system where everything has to have a price tag. People sometimes think "you know, if we did this or that differently, maybe things wouldn't be so bad". At this moment in time, maybe, but you're just postponing the inevitable. Things will be like this, sooner or later. A global shift in econmic orders has to happen in order for companies to lose insentive in gathering data (they make signups and other things easy so more people will get hooked and be online as long as possible) and just stop developing the platforms... which in turn will drop the user base and eventually, the plaform will die. If you can't sell the gathered data or use it to make money, it's worthless.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The first federated application I ever saw was Diaspora, which was basically federated Facebook. It predates Mastodon by 5+ years.

Thing is...it seems like it's harder to launch federated Facebook. With Twitter or Reddit, as long as there's enough activity on the new platform, it can act as a drop-in replacement for the original. There might be friends or favorite subscriptions who make the jump, and you might miss them, but they're not critical to the experience.

But with Facebook...the whole point is that the people you're interacting with are real-world friends and family. You need to convince them to migrate to the new platform. If they don't do it, the platform is kinda pointless. And...generally speaking, one's real-world friends and family usually aren't a bunch of enthusiastic early-adopters.

I created an instance in the early days, and convinced like 3-4 people to give it a try. None of us knew anybody on other instances. It's not designed to find new friends easily. So it just quietly died.

Of course, this was pre-2016, pre-evil-Facebook, back before large-scale skepticism about social networks, when people stared at you blankly when you talked about "federated alternatives". But I still don't think I could get my family to transition, because they'd be losing all their contacts with the specific, real-world friends they have on Facebook (not to mention, say, the Facebook Marketplace, which is apparently a big deal...)

[–] JTode 6 points 1 year ago

You've basically elucidated my working hypothesis as to why there is not a prominent FB competitor already - someone already mentioned Friendica, and I had heard of that, and I think gnusocial is another one. But this absolutely is precisely why this will be the hardest to replace. Every other platform just needs users, this one needs to connect to the people you actually care about, and indeed, our grandparents and such are not gonna be enthusiastic about something that's more difficult to use.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

I think friendica is the name you're looking for.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Who is “we”?

[–] JTode 2 points 1 year ago

The Federation. Everyone who has made the choice to move away from silos and into a community-based paradigm. Like I said, I am pretty sure most of us over a certain age were there at one time.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

https://diasporafoundation.org/

The Diaspora protocol is similar to ActivityPub, but it was designed specifically for the Diaspora platform.

[–] soulifix 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I feel the concept of FB can still work. Just don't have someone like Mark running it.

Friendica is an option but I don't want to keep going to social media platforms where I have to constantly server hop. Lemmy is about as far as I'll go, but anything else, is a deal breaker.

[–] JTode 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Well, I just spent about ten minutes typing out a few thoughts in response but we're also getting a momentary lesson that nothing comes without work or money - Lemmy.world is running slow right now, and my post went down the memory hole, it seems. It might resurface, I don't quite understand these servers yet.

We are in difficult, choppy waters, and will be for some time. We gave up the smooth ride when we left the safety of the corporate silo, where eveyrthing is paved and painted for us.

edit: speaking strictly for me, it's good to be home.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Frankly, I don't want the first one. Why make another?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

From a technical standpoint, I can't see media-heavy social media in the format of Facebook lasting too long in a federated environment considering the costs involved to maintain the server instance. Trying to do that while being free is absolutely unsustainable. Another shift in resource management would have to happen before platforms like that would be inexpensive and scalable.

Currently, Lemmy instances are slowly and steadily growing with each user interaction within, and between instances. Most shared content is link aggregation meaning minimal server resources. But resource usage goes up much faster when images, or even videos are uploaded to be shared. This format will only grow more expensive over time, and definitely won't last in the current format.

[–] JTode 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Duplicating the function of FB as it is, it seems to me, is entirely off the table, and bandwidth/egress costs are the primary reason, with no real solution that actually replicates their level of reach. On that, we entirely agree.

But, who says the media you're sharing needs that much reach? People definitely would need to be able to post video - good video - of their kids' recitals and whatnot, for viewing by those who want to watch a video of a child's recital. That group of people, however, consists of immediate friends, family, teammates, teachers, etc. It's an amount of bandwidth that you could handle in your own email account.

Again, what I'm proposing we ought to be doing, is identifying and speccing out the actual, constructive social benefit of Facebook's specific social infrastructure, and ideally remove all toxic elements (privacy etc), and then look at what resources are required to achieve that subset of Facebook's current range of functionalities. In the example of posting your kid's recital, the assumption that you need Facebook's servers to achieve that is not a correct one - as I said, a simple group email will get the media to everyone in your immediate circle with great efficiency. Even just a webhook script could format that payload for easy viewing.

Hell, more I think about it, duplicating the good parts of Facebook actually looks easier and easier... (edit: on a purely tech level, assuming usage to network with close real world connections only - this is the stated reason why all of my friends who are still there, are still there)

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

He had us in the first half, not gonna lie.

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