Yes. But by website in a box, it would have to be as dirt simple as signing up for FB.
So, gramma goes to a web page, clicks the signup, the website deploys a docker image on a webhost and spins up a UI that is not unlike what she is already used to.
Next, comment and "likes". You have to have a comment system that runs on there also. Gramma would invite others to her site by clicking invite. This would generate a specific invite signature for that person and would email it out (gramma would need to know Uncle Fred's email; sorry gramma). Uncle Fred would click the link and be taken to gramma's sight and can comment. All comments stay on gramma's sight. All gramma's content, period, stay's on gramma's sight.
There are some docker images on DockerHub which are very polished along those lines. OwnCloud for storage, Ghost for blogging. You run them with default settings and they open to a nice welcome page with a tutorial and a fully-functional setup.
With a docker UI like Kitematic, it's remarkably similar to an app store experience.
She wouldn't. But there are many people who don't like Facebook for privacy reasons or other reasons mentioned in this sub-thread. They might opt for such a service. And then it would grow organically if the experience/total package really was more in line what people want out of a web presence. Its not like the whole world would switch overnight
When has this actually happened? And by this I mean that out of nowhere Facebook suddenly has deleted someone's page and then not restored it?
I get what you are suggesting, but I can't help but to think you are making this way bigger issue than it actually is.
Also all of you are missing the most obvious point: if it hasn't happened to a lot (and I mean literally more than 10-20% of user base) it is not a significant risk and thus spending extra effort for literally no gain (and actually probably more of a loss in views/users/buyers/whatever) is not worth paying someone to design you a website and paying for updates and then A) paying for (yet another) 3rd party company to host your website B) learning how to setup, host, update, and maintain your own website.
I'm sure most of people on this site could easily setup their own website and run it wherever, but the reason why people are paying you to do such things for living means that most people can't be bothered to learn all the necessary skills.
Facebook's real name policy affects some people lots more than others - particularly lgbt people, and sex workers.
I'd guess that amongst my friendship group around 5-10% of people have been affected by this. This is disproportionately high - a suburban soccer mom is far more likely to never see anyone have problems with their fb account. But amongst certain populations this is a real problem and can put people at risk.
Fb has decided that the increase in value from 99% of users is worth the pain for 1%, and that the network effect will keep the 1% in line. They're probably right. On the other hand, fb got a foothold in the market through 1% of the population who are college students, an alternative social network could get a foothold through the queer or other communities that fb is ignoring.
I may have a business one day that sells bits for model steam locos. Many people who are likely to be my customers belong to a facebook group, and probably don't use their PCs much except for facebook and e-mail.
And if I needed to post a controversial point of view on my model steam loco business page, I've got bigger problems than facebook.
I can't stand facebook, but for my purposes it is probably the cheapest, most direct, and low effort way for those people to get to me. It's also probably pretty low effort on my part.
The business would never be more than a cottage industry and I certainly wouldn't want to spend ANY money on IT that I could avoid.
Anyone here offering to donate their time to keep all my IT in order for the same cost I can do it with facebook, and give me the exposure it will to my potential customers?
If so I'll give you my gmail address to get in contact ;)
I think that your point of view is both :
- totally acceptable :-)
- not really answering the OP question !
The way I understand it, the question could be phrased : "What costs are we willing to pay to reduce the collective social costs of ultradependence on private companies". You clearly states what are the costs you're not willing to pay, but don't really answer the question which is : what costs would you actually be ready to pay ? (Maybe the answer is none, but I don't feel like you actually state that ?)
I think you could have a connector between your site and Facebook. Basically an app that would synchronize content.
You should certainly start on Facebook, see if you have something valuable and then think about transferring to a self hosted solution. At that point you might find it worth it but maybe not.
Docker containers make sense because they are portable apps. You can choose where to deploy them, upgrade them, and store the data or what not.
>And if I needed to post a controversial point of view on my model steam loco business page, I've got bigger problems than facebook.
Yeah, but what if you post it on your personal wall, and get banned for that? You won't be able to access your page, it doesn't matter you kept it clean.
You're going to need to show examples for people being banned for JUST posting a controversial point of view. Most of the time I hear this, it wasn't for the point of view, but because the person was actually breaking the ToS, and they knew it.
What happened for me was that people stopped seeing my controversial posts to the point where the only reason I still had facebook, which was to discuss tech, philosophy, and politics with the masses, became void.
That was an awakening moment for me. Promptly deleted the damned thing and every other social media account I had. Technological echo chambers are going to do so much harm to society.
Yes, Facebook has an insidious shadow-ban system. Its goal is showing people what they like, and not what they don't like. So they're happy Facebook users, seeing happy Facebook ads.
Germany and France do this regularly for what they consider "hate speech" (for example retweeting newspaper articles about attacks by migrants). Germany has just installed a law that allows imposing multi million EUR fines on companies for repeatedly violating requests to delete user content that violates these fuzzy criteria.
There's a huge influx of German users to gab.ai because of this.
I am an advocate of having your own domain and having control. But most people don't care as much as the hacker news crowd does. "Phone broke, here is my new number..." really? For business it's critical to maintain any form of communication you have ever offered. But for personal, a lot of people don't care if they change their [email] and inconvenience their friends and family.
The internet is not crucial to everyones daily life. And honestly, it probably shouldn't be as crucial to ours.
I like the idea, but the goal would be to make configuration, deployment, maintenance, and good security as easy as possible. So easy that you don't have to touch a command line. Mind expanding on the idea a bit?
With some sort of "proof of upstream" cryptocurrency that trickles a percentage back to the content's origin node along with other nodes in between. Users would earn credits by leaving their devices connected and forwarding data, paying most of it back into the network when downloading data.
The original uploaders of very popular content would accumulate a surplus of credits, which they then sell to to mega-crawlers. Content creators would do well to be the original uploaders of their own content on such a network.
The credits would also be incentive to buy devices and leave them running in poor-coverage areas. E.g. the owners of billboards could mount repeaters along rural highways.
How sites would make money? I'm not really thinking about that too much right now, but I suppose sites could do all the usual things they do with the current web (advertising, accepting payments via credit card gateways, Bitcoin, Patreon, etc). It doesn't have to be an all-or-nothing proposition and it certainly isn't to me. Some functionality will still require a centralized service, just not the entire thing.
So, gramma goes to a web page, clicks the signup, the website deploys a docker image on a webhost and spins up a UI that is not unlike what she is already used to.
Next, comment and "likes". You have to have a comment system that runs on there also. Gramma would invite others to her site by clicking invite. This would generate a specific invite signature for that person and would email it out (gramma would need to know Uncle Fred's email; sorry gramma). Uncle Fred would click the link and be taken to gramma's sight and can comment. All comments stay on gramma's sight. All gramma's content, period, stay's on gramma's sight.
How does one monetize, however?