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 Let's not be reductive.
Facebook works, regardless of whether you have tech abilities or disposable income.
Facebook centralises and logs communication in a way that IRC never did.
Facebook is accessible and convenient af. Any competitor has to match that.
As a sysadmin I know everything gets logged, question is who can see it.
@USBloveDog @hhardy01 for my personal use, a feature. It's useful to have flawless, asynchronous group conversations, or the ability to search messaging history from any device. The issue, as always, is that it's also incredibly useful to those I don't want it to be useful to.
IRC has always used a server. And there's been bots such as eggdrop since forever. Try freenode and irissi client now.
@hhardy01 I'm sure it's doable in some form. The problem is, it's not accessible enough for someone to go from ignorant of the technology to fully integrated, without substantive research. If I say 'join Facebook' to people, they can can find Facebook, and from there the onboarding process takes them through to completion. (Even then, the grossly tech illiterate can struggle.)
That's the barrier we need to surpass.
@Hascobe @hhardy01 Exactly this. I have a blog. I'm never going to convince everyone I interact with on Facebook to join me there. I'm never gonna convince my mum that she needs to make an account to talk to me there and then get her childhood friends she's reconnected with to contact her there, too. Why would they?