Posted by pier25 3 days ago
I wish there was an alternative to Facebook and Instagram, even if it had no users. We, as users, can solve the "no users" problem for you. Facebook and Instagram became popular, contrary to popular belief, not because it had "critical mass" or some Hoffmanite bullshit like that, but because it had the technical community using them, and they brought their friends and family.
Someone just needs to build it.
As for Instagram, again, I was there. Had that been a platform primarily for a technical audience, it wouldn't have taken it off.
The one platform you can say this about is Twitter. That, undoubtedly, started off with a much more tech audience, and grew so popular due to API integrations.
As for someone just needing to build alternatives. There have been dozens upon dozens over the years. Where are they now?
> There have been dozens upon dozens over the years
Such as? I think you'll find that all of them were created back when Facebook wasn't completely evil (and thus couldn't even get the backing of "technical" people), or they were created with some congenital flaw that made them completely unattractive to the average person. You have to have a Steve Jobs level of eye for detail with this stuff, and sadly most people cloning Twitter in a weekend are just doing it for fun.
Luckily the fediverse already seems to push away a lot of trolls, bigots and capitalists, but it's just a matter of time.
Edit: FWIW I come from a country where people considered themselves communists. Grandpa of my better half has a red star on their grave cross. IMHO ideologies are somewhat fucking people up.
But yes, there are a lot of self-described communists, socialists, anarchists and other leftist types there as well.
However, I wish they’d grow a pair and just outright block the FB and other similar dependencies that make such stuff necessary.
When the giants fight, which one of them is an evil monopolist, and which is the defender of freedom?
(This is why I actually like the iPhone approach more than the macOS approach these days; thought I do miss the late 90s when I didn't need to care because nothing had any mechanism to spy on me anyway).
If you hire a large amount of photographers and assign each of them to capture photos with certain themes you will be far more efficient and get cleaner data. And you can get images from places where people do not use meta products.
What can I use to "poison" their training? I'll just send them privately to the friends that would consider that fun.
Now the definition may vary, but the camera roll is probably the list of images on your phone (which the app accesses when you pick an image to post), not a list of pictures you already posted privately...
(Or so I hope.)