
Friend of a Friend: The Facebook That Could Have Been - danhon
https://twobithistory.org/2020/01/05/foaf.html
======
amelius
A better comparison would be with telephony companies of the old days. We now
have the Telecommunications Act [1] that does for telephony what the article
is suggesting for social networks.

Quoting from Wikipedia:

> Since communications services exhibit network effects and positive
> externalities, new entrants would face barriers to entry if they could not
> interconnect their networks with those of the incumbent carriers. Thus,
> another key provision of the 1996 Act sets obligations for incumbent
> carriers and new entrants to interconnect their networks with one another,
> imposing additional requirements on the incumbents because they might desire
> to restrict competitive entry by denying such interconnection or by setting
> terms, conditions, and rates that could undermine the ability of the new
> entrants to compete.

So either social media companies should be classified as telecommunications
companies (imho not far-fetched), or we need something similar to the
Telecommunications Act but for social media.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications_Act_of_1996](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications_Act_of_1996)

~~~
jessaustin
Great idea, except for the fact that this didn't work at all. The 1996 Act
encouraged lots of outside investment in telco competition, but all of that is
gone now. Unlike in more civilized parts of the world [0], USA regulators have
not fostered competition in telecom. That's why we have 2.5 national telcos.

[0] [https://www.engadget.com/2011/06/28/why-is-european-
broadban...](https://www.engadget.com/2011/06/28/why-is-european-broadband-
faster-and-cheaper-blame-the-governme/)

~~~
Iv
Having followed the question in France pretty closely, most of the progress in
both broadband and mobile telephony came from mainly one slightly less greedy
ant later comer: Free Telecom. Before that, it was basically 3 operators with
several trials for illegal agreements on prices. Once Free was granted a
license, France entered the 21st century and prices fell. Unlimited plans
starting appearing.

The difference in terms of policy is not huge: the only difference is a slight
difference in terms of corruption and outrage. The process in France was
clearly corrupt, but a few institutions still do their job and users made it a
political issue.

Getting that mobile license was a short call and it changed everything.

~~~
agumonkey
It seems usa telco is many Time worse than the worst period in France. Not
that i don't appreciate free policies.

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sktrdie
I'm pretty familiar with FOAF, LinkedData, RDF and all of the rest of the
Semantic Web standards. But saying that all of these can replace a system like
facebook is a bit unintelligent. Facebook brings much more to the table that
users need which semantic web has never been able to accomplish like near-
instant response times, UX that even my grandma can use and 99%
availability... just to name a few.

Asking ever day users to create a site (buy a DNS and all that) and create a
FOAF file and host it is kind of ridiculous.

Facebook is a centralized monopoly I agree, but a bunch of standards isn't
going to replace the stuff that Facebook built.

I believe the problem of centralization can be solved by looking at the
problem differently: what if we continue using these giants for hosting our
data (with all the amazing benefits that that brings) but we urge them to
provide us with ways to control the way they show us this data. We need better
ways to explore our "connection graph", not just a static feed of people we
know and things they post.

For instance I'd like to be able to change the algorithm that generates my
main feed. I want to grab the "political liberal" feed from github (as an open
source example) and load it onto facebook; then grab the "climate change
biased" feed and load that and test how that works. I want to change the
variables of the algorithm, test it for a few days see how that works and
change it to something else if I see it's only reporting fake news.

This to me seems the problems we need to face this decade when it comes to
social networks; building p2p networks from scratch, or using other
decentralized standards is cool but isn't inherently solving the problem imho.
There's nothing inherently wrong with the social media giants if they prove to
us they can show us different views of the graph without getting in the way.

~~~
zozbot234
> Asking ever day users to create a site (buy a DNS and all that) and create a
> FOAF file and host it is kind of ridiculous.

It could work like email, where your ISP provides you with a FOAF (or more
generally Social Linked Data) store as part of your Internet access package.
Or you could buy federated hosting from your preferred 'cloud' supplier.

~~~
freeAgent
Does anyone remember Geocities? It was almost a rite of passage in learning
The Internet to set up one's very own Geocities webpage.

~~~
dgellow
> It was almost a rite of passage

... in the US.

~~~
wink
parts of Europe as well.

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rconti
> Did Facebook simply get there first, or did they instead just do social
> networking better than everyone else?

Isn't that kind of obvious? The article kind of answers that itself:

> In the beginning, way back in 1996, it was SixDegrees. Last year, it was
> Friendster. Last week, it was Orkut. Next week, it could be Flickr.

Friendster, Orkut, Myspace, Google+ (ironically, I had to Google the latter,
as I couldn't even remember its name). Many social networks have come and
gone.

That's not to say Facebook hasn't likely done unsavory things to perpetuate
its dominance. But it was better, in one or many ways, than all that came
before it, and all that have tried to succeed it. Many haven't even tried.
Twitter and Instagram don't even attempt to replicate your real-life
connections. Hell, I can't even remember what pseudonym my real-life friends
are using on these other networks. They're playing a different game.

This is a strength for those networks, in some ways. For those who care about
what "influencers" say, or in what opinions are shouted the loudest by the
folks followed by the most loud-shouters. If you care about both a
footballer's opinion on a match as well as what he ate for breakfast; what a
Kardashian wore as well as what she was paid to say.

In many ways, the various social networks aren't attempting to compete,
they're attempting to 'win' their own niche.

~~~
tjoff
It is very hard to gain traction now when Facebook already has a near monopoly
for most but niches. That wasn't the case back when Facebook started.

I'd actually think you can say that Facebook simply got there first, and with
first I mean to first capture the large swath of people that wasn't techies
nor young people. They had great timing with when the mainstream started to
get pretty _comfortable_ and curious about the Internet (which was a pretty
huge deal considering how big the barrier to computers and the Internet was
for many/most people).

~~~
jarjoura
Facebook was absolutely not first.

MySpace had a HUGE lead. Facebook came in with a superior product and won on
its own merit. If you want to claim first person advantage, you should
definitely point to Friendster though in the US or Orkut in South America.

However, for all the dozens of social networks trying to unseat the behemoth
MySpace, they all collapsed under their own weight. Turns out building a
scalable network of social connections is a very hard problem to solve.

~~~
rconti
I think parent's point still stands. They're saying it's hard to compete _now_

I don't think it was intentional on Facebook's part, but in retrospect it
would have been a brilliant strategy. MySpace was largely populated by a high
school/shortly-post-high-school crowd.

Facebook came along and your college had to be added/invited (since residence
halls and class schedules were curated). Nothing drives demand like
exclusivity. Now all of MySpace's former demographic was clamoring to get in
-- either by graduating HS and moving to college, or by having their existing
college added.

And then the floodgates opened.

~~~
jarjoura
College-only Facebook would have died after everyone graduated and it really
took off after they decided to compete with Twitter's feed. The model of
having a stream of news of people complaining about what they had for
breakfast allowed grandparents to get massive FOMO and join to see what their
grand kids were up to.

Zuckerberg for all his flaws has always had an eye for what the next big
social media wave is and went after it.

~~~
rconti
Agreed, but I think a(n unintended) side effect of college-only was to drive
the demand.

Things we utterly hated, like turning a pull-only format of "let me view my
friend's profile" (which later became "what's changed is in yellow") into the
push style "newsfeed", and requiring real names, really made it what it is
today. Obviously there are still fake accounts, and people aren't all using
their real names anymore, but it's so much closer to a "real" profile than
anything else out there.

But yeah, especially the newsfeed. Making users poll friends' profiles never
would have resulted in the engagement they require. Frankly, the platform
would have died because user interest/engagement would have gone elsewhere.

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rtpg
On the subway tangent, Tokyo does continue to have multi-company competition
in its transit system, yet has continued to build out its network, including
new lines through the middle of the city in 2008! (Fukutoshin)

There’s a lot about why the system works, but it goes to show that network
effects aren’t insurmountable

It’s a bit more costly then some alternative systems, but it’s better to have
an expensive line that exists rather than a cheap line that doesn’t.

~~~
dnautics
As does Singapore (MRT and ComfortDelGro compete), which is arguably one of
the most effective and cheapest systems in the world. There isn't
infrastructural problems, (as I understand it, I could be wrong) as a part of
the operating contract, they are required to have interoperable fares.

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Zaskoda
We should own our friends lists... which we used to call our address book.

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1980phipsi
The piece starts with an analogy about the MTA, but I find it a rather weak
one. The NYC government could have imposed a regulation that any subway built
in the city must be built by certain standards for tunnel size and the ability
to interchange. That would have helped provide some ability for the two
systems to interlink. Moreover, the city government intervened significantly
into the operation of private train and subway businesses. The article even
notes the city tried to compete directly. Government-run businesses often use
the law to squash competitors. Then, when the competitors go out of business,
they say it's a natural monopoly and everyone forgets about it.

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geonnave
> This issue of identity was an acute one for FOAF. (...) there does not exist
> and probably should not exist a "planet-wide system for identifying people,"
> (...)

> Do we trust the homepages and conclude we have two different people? Or do
> we trust the email addresses and conclude we have a single person? Could I
> really write an application capable of resolving this conflict without
> involving (and inconveniencing) the user?

It seems the author identifies identity online as a major problem.

Interestingly, the last years have witnessed significant efforts towards a
concept called "self-sovereign identity" [1, 2] that tries to solve exactly
this. Emerging standards at the W3C [3, 4], open source software at the
Hyperledger Foundation [5], and even non-profits [6] are working globally on
the technology and governance of such a system.

Eventually, I think, self-sovereign identity will happen. I wonder what will
be the impact on decentralized social networking.

    
    
      [1] http://www.lifewithalacrity.com/2016/04/the-path-to-self-soverereign-identity.html
      [2] https://sovrin.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/The-Inevitable-Rise-of-Self-Sovereign-Identity.pdf
      [3] https://www.w3.org/TR/did-core/
      [4] https://www.w3.org/TR/vc-data-model/
      [5] https://www.hyperledger.org/projects/hyperledger-indy
      [6] https://sovrin.org/

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AceJohnny2
Around 20 years ago, friends in college used this French social networking
website Zdarmanet. We mostly used it as a distributed contact list. I often
wonder what it could've been if they had been a bit more aggressively
commercial.

Realistically though, the strong (at the time) French database and computer
privacy laws likely would've prevented it from every doing the slow-boil
takeover that Facebook accomplished. In the end, even those laws were
ineffective in handling the foreign behemoth that Facebook became.

Edit: website is now closed, displaying " _After more than 15 years I am
stopping this service. Sorry... in case you would need anything related to
that please see notojo.cz for how to contact me._ " and I guess it was of
Czeck origin, not French?

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LeonB
Distributed things are more resilient, but centralized competitors tend to
scale faster.

Once a given centralized competitor has scaled sufficiently they will achieve
a monopoly due to network effects and predictably abuse that monopoly to
reduce future competitors. Tale as old as time.

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DaveFr
Here's an idea: Plaid for social networks, built on the FoaF standard. The
first vertical could be a personal website built from your social data.

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makomk
Friend of a Friend: Boy was the internet a different place in the pre-
Cambridge Analytica era.

Seriously, I can't see how something that revolves around the assumption that
everyone would just merrily broadcast their entire friends network to the
whole internet would be able to fly nowadays.

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Gravityloss
Legislating natural monopolies way after they were obvious has been a problem
for more than a hundred years. It is probably a case where the free market
leads to a problematic situation and hence it is hard to discuss for
ideological reasons.

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bcrosby95
Note that the social network Hi5 used (still uses? not sure) FOAF. So it can
live harmoniously with centralized networks, if the networks choose to make
use of it.

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ddmma
it’s amazing how much quiet your life becomes after you unfriend 99,9% of your
social graph, bit similar to noise canceling on the airpods. give it a try :)

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nautilus12
I think the reason these ideas never took off (exception of rdf) is that they
were too focused on specs and not enough on systems implementing them.

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holdenc137
Don't forget Solid-Server. Sir Tim's war rages on.

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holdenc137
Don't forget Solid Server- Tim's war rages on.

