https://techcrunch.com/2010/05/12/diaspora-open-facebook-pro...
You kill Facebook by ceasing your use of Facebook, if you can without too horrible consequences.
This would threaten FB and immediately lead to an API blocking arms race, to be followed by a legal challenge. If you're well funded and win the legal challenge (which hey, IANAL at all, but the comparison between FB today and Bell in its time is not crazy) you win.
After the Cambridge Analytica fiasco, I’ve told all of my Facebook Messenger contacts that I’ll only chat on Signal from now on. With Signal providing identity management (and backed by a foundation with $50 million in the bank), that might reduce the bootstrapping necessary.
Start with profiles, then groups, then events, and grow from there.
Calacanis should just fund one of the 100+ alternatives that already exist, but don't yet have a critical mass of users. Funding someone to write new software for something that not only could, but should be bootstrapped is unlikely to produce anything viable.
Once people can have all the benefit of Facebook (i.e. mutual visibility with Facebook users) without having their data stored on Facebook's servers, or their experience controlled by Facebook's UI, then Facebook will quickly diminish in relevance.
My chief complaint, personally about these sites is that I'll use it, just let me use it the way I want to in relative peace. That means: unless I subscribed to a specific type of update, I don't want to hear about it. No "In case you missed", no "Your other friends liked x, why don't you go indicate the same by interacting with UX feature 42", no "Hey friend 88 is on the platform, go look at what they're doing and signal your emotional reaction to it".
Never thought I'd ever say this: I want to see the baby pictures again. What are your families up to? How are you doing? Haha that video you shared is great, gave me a good laugh during my work break, here's a quick private message, let's catch up over a cold one this weekend. I miss our humorous conversations. THAT'S the kind of interaction I miss, when I was the one initiating it.
Some say this stuff is driving us further apart and I couldn't disagree more. It keeps us involved while respecting the fact that we want to have independent lives we live on our terms. It lets my friends four states a way know I'm not affected by the bombings here in Austin while also giving me another resource to pop in more 1-to-1 and see if I can crash on their couch when I come to town.
I like that. It allows groups of friends to breathe when the pressure isn't to share everything but actually....create....NETWORKS.
Get it social networking sites? I want to use these features, but I want to use them on my terms, for crying out loud.
So to anyone who wants to take up this challenge...I'm not telling you how to run your site, but if you heed the above I may sign up.
Feature-wise, I'd much prefer everyone switch to Telegram, but I wouldn't be surprised if these features come to WhatsApp soon. Main reason I think they haven't is that Facebook might still try to make their main product 'work', or perhaps some kind of anti-trust issues?
The replacement to Facebook, when it comes along, will look nothing like Facebook.
It's a serious question too, what would it look like to create a public/government arm of social media?
Edit: I honestly don't think it's hard. Delete your facebook, stop using it and don't replace it with something else. People lived without being used by social media services for a very long time.
If we don't like Facebook's business model of using user data to make money we'd have to charge people to use it, and not a lot of people would be willing to do that.
Of course, one could argue that it's possible to make money with user data without being evil, but no one seems to have managed to do that so far. I bet if this project became as successful as Facebook it would be hard not to end up in the same exact spot.
Is it a kind of a parody?
I suppose it's also a pretty big issue that one can't have multi-device accounts yet (which is being worked on, as I understand it).
