[nof]

Just boycott Facebook already. 'but everyone uses it', yes but you have a choice. If you don't like the Facebook, then gtfo and make the effort to build something to replace it. But I guess that is too much work. People whine about Facebook, yet they do nothing to change the situation. You change the situation by making a choice. If your choice is to have Facebook account, then you are part of the problem, not the solution.

[b3lvedere]

I don't have a facebook account. Never had one (apart from some experiments and trials which were never under my own name or known aliases). Don't need it. Don't care for it.

I also don't have a Linkedin account. (Well, maybe i do now, because i have a hotmail account). Don't need it. Don't care for it.

According to others it is a bloody miracle i survive in IT :)

[fauigerzigerk]

No. Small publishers have no choice. They have to be where their readers are. All they can do is try to diversify as much as possible, but it won't mean a whole lot if one of the world's oligopolists cuts them off overnight.

[fwn]

> No. Small publishers have no choice.

Exactly this. The benefit of small newspaper services is just too small for most of their readers to bother making sure to actually receive the news.

If they are gone, other content will fill the gap. That's pretty bad for those current content creators, sure. It also enables a local news revival as soon as people realise that there might be huge value in some forms of local publishing.

[r3bl]

So what are you gonna do in Venezuela and Cambodia (also on this experiment) where people have and use Free Basics? Cut yourself off completely from your potential market because you don't want to have Facebook?

[nsnick]

Free Basics is a scam by Facebook to get more users hooked. India rightly rejected it.

[r3bl]

Well other countries didn't reject it. And the battle wasn't won because India rejected it.

[quadrangle]

It's not too much work, it's too costly. Boycotts themselves are almost never successful or effective at all. The only way for any boycott to fully work is if a critical mass of people join the boycott, and that critical mass is almost never reached. For individuals to boycott without the critical mass accomplishes nothing.

For those people where leaving FB is just individually positive, absolutely they should do it. For those doing, e.g. political organizing where most of their audience is on FB, they are stuck in a terrible conundrum.

Personally, I think FB should be used where effective to reach people on FB, and everyone should try to make at least 70% of their posts be specifically discussions of what's wrong with Facebook. As much as possible, every comment and discussion should include a side reference criticizing the platform. If enough people get the problem, maybe some day we'll have critical mass for a boycott that might work.

[cguess]

These countries' leaders would like nothing better than for people to boycott Facebook. The less information the "voter" has in these places the better for them.

It's not West where we can assume benevolence or at least competence in our leadership (ok, we... used to be able to do that, which makes this even scarier).

These people take everything they can until their caught, and if you're a small organization you can bet that you'll never be on a newsstand or build an audience without going to where people already are (hint: it's Facebook)

[mantas]

Turns out FB is no longer giving that newsstand either.

[frik]

Reminds me of a scene in "The Social Network" movie (2010):

  Lawyer: What are you doing?
  Mark Zuckerberg: Checking in to see how it's going in Bosnia.
  Lawyer: Bosnia? The don't have roads. But they do have Facebook.
  Mark Zuckerberg: [stops typing and looks up from his notebook]

Youtube clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pI-r39_QkAs

[Spoygg]

I'm sure they have roads in Bosnia :) Didn't watch that movie, but that's a hilarious quote

[Ygg2]

> then you are part of the problem, not the solution

Are you going US vs THEM on 2 billion people? Good luck with that.

[nippples]

> then you are a part of the problem, not the solution

^ regrettable quote

> Are you going US vs THEM on 2 billion people? Good luck with that.

^ another regrettable quote

Something's popularity says nothing about its value. See, for example, religion. The most popular ones still suck a lot. Some more than others.

[Ygg2]

> Something's popularity says nothing about its value.

True. But thinking you can shame 2 Billion people to stop using certain service?

[misiti3780]

Correction: They all suck

[orf]

That's a bad blanket statement to make. Why does Buddhism suck, for example?

[chmike]

Because people rule their life on base of beliefs, maybe ? (beliefs=unproven concepts assumed to be true)

[egwynn]

If life is a formal system, then it needs postulates. Obviously humans can’t agree on postulates. Do you have a useful scheme of postulates that you’re sure all humans will agree on? If so, please share. You’ll be able to clear up tens of thousands of years of misunderstandings if so.

[orf]

What specific Buddhists beliefs suck, or are unproven?

[jeromegv]

Why do you think Buddhism is so much better?

[Santosh83]

Off-topic: because the Buddha explicitly favours reason and testability over blind belief. Granted most Buddhists have developed rituals akin to other religions over the millennia (and also a lot of mythology that demands blind belief), but core Buddhism (as given in the suttas) is almost not a religion. In fact calling it a philosophy of life is a better description.

[bogomipz]

There's 7.6 billion people in the world. That's a substantially larger "US" if you are going to reframe the OPs comments as implying "US vs Them."

Also given the recent velocity and volume of bad PR for Facebook, it's possible that public sentiment is irreparably turning against them.

Lastly, technology has no shortage of once popular products that have been relegated to the dustbin of history - see AOL, Nokia, Friendster, etc. Today's dominance is far from a guarantee.

[benevol]

It needs to start somehow. It needs to start some time.

Why not right here and now?

[alphonsegaston]

I don’t have a Facebook account, but I also don’t believe that simply boycotting them is where action against them should end. We need stronger, ethics-based privacy laws that greatly check their psychological manipulation and mass surveillance.

[mantas]

The solution is not to build FB killer. The solution is to decentralise the web. Let's embrace newsletters and RSS feeds once again.

I recently came back to using RSS feeds and it feels great. The problem is that many websites don't maintain their feeds properly. Broken links, missing content and whatnot.. I guess nobody ever uses them aside from weirdos.

[folksinger]

The actual solution is to go for a walk in the woods with some friends or family members.

The actual solution is to invite your neighbor over for dinner.

The actual solution is to volunteer at a retirement home.

The actual solution is to join an amateur sports league.

The actual solution is to take an in-person group class in a subject that you find interesting.

[Santosh83]

In other words, confine computer use to research and communication in sci-tech alone?

Not bad. It's probably how things should have been, but that boat has sailed long, long back.

Point is, efforts to make decentralisation and independent content creating, hosting and sharing should go on simultaneously with other social steps that you have enumerated. Neither can replace the other.

[watwut]

How does any of that replaces facebook in just about any aspect?

[aswanson]

That sentiment is why 99.9999 of programmers like us never made facebook. Normal humans don't want to maintain seperate feeds and RSS readers for every possible interest etc along with a seperate message client along with a place to post photos, etc. They want something simple and human, like fb.

[mantas]

Humans are lazy by design. That's why most laws inconvenience on individual level for the sake of greater good. Getting rid of FB may soon reach that level.

[therealmarv]

I've also done the same. Invested the last 2 weeks more time in my theoldreader account and using twitter bridges (even instagram bridges exist) for not supporting entities like http://twitrss.me/

[nradov]

Newsletters and RSS feeds don't let me share pictures of my kids with distant relatives. For a lot of us that's the primary Facebook use case.

[52804375092485]

So uh, how far along is your Facebook-killer?