Really, asking "what should replace Facebook" is putting things the wrong way around.

A more interesting way to ask the question is, "what did Facebook replace."

People used to build their own websites. People used to have blogs. People used USENET which was truly distributed and un-censorable.

Facebook and Google took the open internet and open standards and monetized and made everything crappy. Enough of that. Nothing should replace Facebook, it's done, stick a fork in it.

@hhardy01 Most of the people who now use Facebook to communicate did not, in fact, do those things. They still need to communicate online. They need a Facebook replacement.

@LogicalDash @hhardy01 are you saying they didn’t do those thing because they are non-technical, or because those things had already been supplanted by Facebook when they started using the web?

@ajroach42 @hhardy01 Both are true, and it doesn't really make a difference to my argument

If you really believe that everyone who currently uses Facebook should get technical enough to start their own blog ... that's what you're advocating as a Facebook replacement. You are now in competition with the other efforts to offer a replacement for it, and should conduct yourself accordingly

@LogicalDash @ajroach42 @hhardy01 Yeah, there's a certain kind of tech hubris that thinks that not wanting to learn how to set up a blog is a failing in other people. I'd rather try to take into account what is good about blogs, and what was good about the golden age of Usenet, when designing something for non-technical users.

@gcupc @hhardy01 @ajroach42 @LogicalDash There’s also an entire generation of tech missing from this argument. The people who did those things could afford the high technical and monetary costs of doing them, mostly by paying University tuition. That internet was a walled garden, and it was Early ISP’s that broke the walls down and, in the process of monetizing the internet, democratized it.

Facebook replaced AOL (and MySpace).

@jay @LogicalDash @ajroach42 @hhardy01 @gcupc i feel like it both replaced those things AND brought in an audience that neither of those things could. there are people in my life who use facebook to the exclusion of all other parts of the internet, who never used a computer regularly before that. part of it is tablets/phones - they come with facebook installed. it's less intimidating

@wolfteeth @gcupc @hhardy01 @ajroach42 @LogicalDash @jay

I feel some of the #openweb tools are getting good anufe to be used by normal'ish people. of course lots are not #geekproblem

@hamishcampbell @jay @LogicalDash @ajroach42 @hhardy01 @wolfteeth I really like the idea of #Indieweb, but like the *minimal* requirement is to set up your own static website on your own domain, and IMO it would be ideal if everyone could do that, but it's not realistic today.