[HN Gopher] Ask HN: Organize local communities without Facebook?
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Ask HN: Organize local communities without Facebook?
I want to move our local communities off Facebook and onto our own
platform. Is there a off-the-shelf solution or any collaborators I
can join to move something along? EDIT: I live in a more rural
community (moved from a big city). We have 5-6 small (~50k people)
towns, all well connected. Everything happens on Facebook. I would
like to move to a different platforms. Plus points for self-hosted,
federated.
Author : recvonline
Score : 313 points
Date : 2025-01-21 13:19 UTC (9 hours ago)
| scarface_74 wrote:
| Your issue is going to be that people don't want to keep track of
| yet another platform.
|
| You may be able to get away with the free tier of Slack.
| prisenco wrote:
| Good old fashioned email listservs are always an option.
| yurishimo wrote:
| It depends on what kind of community you want. Something like
| Facebook Events, I haven't really seen a successful alternative
| for.
|
| If you just want a discussion board, Discourse is self-hostable
| and people might be familiar with it from other companies. I'd
| argue it's not a very normie-friendly platform however and out of
| the box, I find the notification defaults quite annoying. Maybe
| admins can change that, but most of the communities that I'm a
| part of do not.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| How many people in rural America are going to be familiar with
| Discourse? And if the end goal is to have a discussion forum
| and you are trying to meet the needs of the people, why would
| they care about it being self hosted and what happens when the
| original poster gets board?
|
| This is like the hobbyist version of resume driven development.
|
| But the better question is, what is the purpose of getting off
| of Facebook? Are the users asking for it?
|
| Especially now that Zuck has kissed the ring, conservatives (ie
| rural small town folks) are not trying to flee Facebook now if
| they ever were.
| tgirod wrote:
| Maybe have a look at mobilizon : https://joinmobilizon.org/en/
|
| Never had the opportunity to test it, but it's been developped by
| the fine folks of framasoft as an alternative to facebook for
| community/event organization. Might fit the bill for you.
| iLoveOncall wrote:
| > it's been developped by the fine folks of framasoft
|
| This is enough to tell me it's not gonna be suitable.
|
| Their software are all absolutely awful because their
| organization follows the skewed principle that FOSS is enough
| to "sell" and they don't take UX into consideration at all.
|
| Literally none of their alternatives are successful, always for
| this reason.
| rhizome31 wrote:
| Framapad, Framacalc and Framadate are used quite a lot around
| here.
| BaudouinVH wrote:
| Indico is a not-framasoft open-source made in CERN event
| organisation solution : https://getindico.io/
| 1oooqooq wrote:
| > main features: > Multi-granular tree-based protection
| scheme
|
| that will drain users from Facebook instantly! i can already
| see the flood of people coming. /s
| SiempreViernes wrote:
| Honestly, to me the main feature is that people tend to
| upload their slides to indico hosted conferences, but
| that's more of a cultural feature.
| SiempreViernes wrote:
| Not sure that the intention is to organise a seminar
| series...
| everybodyknows wrote:
| Thanks for the link. This leads us to one proxy of the system's
| usability, namely the current base of installations:
| https://instances.joinmobilizon.org/instances
| holri wrote:
| We use https://groups.io/ and are happy
| nofinator wrote:
| I've also been happy with Groups.io. A local community moved
| there a few years ago when Yahoo Groups shut down.
|
| The downside is that to get more of a Facebook community
| experience with a calendar, files, and subgroups, you will
| probably have to pay for for the Premium level.
| https://groups.io/static/pricing
| gchamonlive wrote:
| Hard to say without more info. What's this community? What's the
| nature of the subjects around which this community is built?
|
| Communities are made of people, do you think they'd be willing to
| move?
| arccy wrote:
| depends on what experience you want... a lot of communities exist
| on just a chat app like whatsapp (europe mostly), line (east
| asia), etc
| xnorswap wrote:
| A WhatsApp group might well be an easier alternative for many
| people, although it's another Meta company if that's a concern.
| BaudouinVH wrote:
| Whatsapp belongs to Meta. A group on Signal would be entirely
| outside the Zuckerberg-verse.
| gorjusborg wrote:
| Zucker-verse has a nice ring to it. It's a place for all
| those zuckers ;)
| xnorswap wrote:
| I'm aware of the link, but people don't have Signal, everyone
| has WhatsApp.
|
| In the UK at least, a recent ofcom ( Communications regulator
| ) report suggested that 76% of people reported using WhatsApp
| in the previous 3 months.
|
| This is close enough to the 83% of people who reported making
| a phone call in the past 3 months that you can consider
| "everyone" to have WhatsApp in the same way you'd consider
| everyone can make phone calls. Yes, there are notable
| exceptions you may have to accommodate for or be prepared for
| if necessary, but you can by default assume everyone has it
| on their phone.
|
| If OP's objection is to Meta, then of course don't use
| WhatsApp. But if the objection is Facebook as a platform then
| a message group may be suitable.
|
| [1] https://www.ofcom.org.uk/internet-based-
| services/technology/...
| jdlyga wrote:
| If it's the United States, people don't use WhatsApp very much.
| Still, it's just another Meta app like all the others.
| chneu wrote:
| Craigslist is still very active and very much a thing.
| slackfan wrote:
| Knocking on a door and actually talking with people. Barring that
| a ham bbs that geographically covers your tegion.
| dylan604 wrote:
| when's the last time you were happy and excited when someone
| randomly knocked on your door? exactly
| Jgoure wrote:
| why is this
| dylan604 wrote:
| Random people knocking on your door is in-person spam that
| is much more expensive for you to receive
| Clubber wrote:
| When you live in a rural area, you're way more isolated.
| Remember when the lockdowns were finally over and you were
| happy to just be able to interact with people again, even if
| you were an introvert like me? It's kinda like that.
|
| Also, door to door salesmen don't tend to go to rural areas.
| slackfan wrote:
| About four weeks ago when i got a random offer for about 10
| free laying chickens.
| ecshafer wrote:
| > I live in a more rural community (moved from a big city). We
| have 5-6 small (~50k people) towns, all well connected.
| Everything happens on Facebook. I would like to move to a
| different platforms. Plus points for self-hosted, federated.
|
| Do YOU want to move off of Facebook for some reason, or do people
| want to move off of Facebook for some reason. MOST people in the
| US, especially in a rural are are not going to quit an app
| because say the CEO of a company is friendly to the President.
| You have an uphill battle, and at best you are going to shed a
| majority of users. Facebook is a popular platform, especially for
| those 30+ people in a small town that use local groups.
| sebstefan wrote:
| Most people in the US have already quit that app, the battle's
| not that uphill. You're starting half up
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| > _Most people in the US have already quit that app_
|
| Subjectively, that feels wildly untrue. Do you have any
| numbers to back this up?
| TuringNYC wrote:
| >> Subjectively, that feels wildly untrue. Do you have any
| numbers to back this up?
|
| Agreed. Also not everyone realizes WhatsApp and IG are also
| part of Facebook. Aside from elderly folks, almost now one
| I know uses traditional facebook. However, almost all
| Millenials and GenZ I know use IG. Practically everyone I
| know who has overseas family/friends uses WhatsApp.
| tartuffe78 wrote:
| This is not my experience living in a small (~5,000) city ,
| Facebook is where everything, farmer's markets, fairs and
| festivals, and other community events are announced and
| organized.
| arbor_day wrote:
| That seems wrong. More than half the US population uses
| Facebook. https://www.statista.com/statistics/408971/number-
| of-us-face...
| mplewis wrote:
| There is absolutely no way that 80% of the US actively uses
| Facebook.
| bdangubic wrote:
| yup, quitting in droves ...
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/223289/facebooks-
| quarter...
| rgbrgb wrote:
| That shows quarterly revenue not user activity in the US?
| In my orbit there is nearly 0 Facebook usage outside of a
| few boomers but instagram seems very popular.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| So you're going to ignore publicly available information
| based on your anecdote?
| bdangubic wrote:
| "In my orbit" there 100% of the people play racquetball
| which means there are roughly 350 million players in the
| USA - hence it is the most popular sport on the planet
| and owner of my local team is richer than all NFL owners
| combined /s :)
|
| Also see
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/408971/number-of-us-
| face... just for kicks :)
| scarface_74 wrote:
| This doesn't jibe with publicly available statistics..
| that_guy_iain wrote:
| Most people you know may have. But most people have not quit
| Facebook.
| ADeerAppeared wrote:
| > because say the CEO of a company is friendly to the
| President.
|
| "Engaging in political censorship of their platform in favour
| of the President" is a little more than being "friendly".
|
| Free Speech in the US is dying. Ignore it at your own peril.
| karaterobot wrote:
| The point is that the people he's trying to communicate with
| don't care about that. You don't need to argue about that
| here, it's not relevant.
| sirsinsalot wrote:
| Dying? It isn't free speech if you can say what you like, but
| can only do it in a sound proofed room, alone.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| He's talking about private groups.
|
| Regardless, no private platform is forced to provide you a
| voice. You can set up your own site and set up your own
| servers if need be. People have been getting their ideas
| out there before social media and even when the mainstream
| media wouldn't cover them.
|
| That's how the civil rights movement came to prominence.
| graemep wrote:
| > Regardless, no private platform is forced to provide
| you a voice.
|
| That was a reasonable stance historically. Only the
| government had real power to control speech.
|
| Now a tiny number of platforms have a huge amount of
| power. They should have an obligation not to censor,
| because between them they can virtually block all
| practically available channels of communication.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| Again, during the civil rights movement there was no
| social media and mainstream media.
|
| You use personal outreach and then you build up from
| there. There are church networks, civil groups, advocacy
| groups etc
| graemep wrote:
| > There are church networks, civil groups, advocacy
| groups etc
|
| Which are now largely dependent on social media and the
| like to reach people.
|
| Church's somewhat less so because they do have services
| that people physically go to. Most campaign and advocacy
| groups work online, and for some social media is their
| main focus. They have to go where people are.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| Then that's their problem. I doubt that there is any
| group that you can't start locally and build up a
| following.
| Hasu wrote:
| > They should have an obligation not to censor, because
| between them they can virtually block all practically
| available channels of communication
|
| Absolute bullshit. It has never been easier in history to
| publish your own thoughts for the consumption of anyone
| who is interested in reading them. You can make your own
| website and put just about whatever you want on it. You
| can write and publish pamphlets or books with print on
| demand services. You can record audio or video with your
| phone and put it on your website or just send it directly
| to people. You can walk down to the town square and say
| pretty much whatever you want.
|
| You absolutely don't need to be on Facebook or Twitter or
| ANY social networks to exercise your free speech. None of
| these companies has power over any means of communication
| other than their own platforms. You don't have to use
| their platforms.
| graemep wrote:
| > You don't have to use their platforms.
|
| Yes, but you can reach far fewer people if you do not.
|
| This is well on the way to arguing that you are free to
| say what you want in a sealed room.
| Hasu wrote:
| You don't have the right for anyone to care about what
| you say, and never have.
|
| Your argument seems to be that the New York Times has no
| choice but to publish my op-ed, because otherwise how
| will anyone find it?
| scarface_74 wrote:
| And? If you are on a platform and depending on random
| people finding your message, how are you going to get
| above the noise?
|
| You have to put in the work. Major changes happen by
| people getting thier voice out before social media
| ADeerAppeared wrote:
| Much in the same way you are allowed to criticize Putin in
| Russia.
|
| So long as you do it in a sound proofed room.
| javier123454321 wrote:
| Are you talking about his role censoring for the current, or
| for the former admin? His flip flopping shows such a lack of
| character. However, being selectively outraged because this
| time he is doing it for someone you disagree with, which a
| lot of people are, reveals the real motives.
| dingnuts wrote:
| ok so where do those who have been consistently mad at the
| people variously in power going back to 2016 or even 2008
| go to complain? non-partisan free speech believers exist
| zer8k wrote:
| People are gonna stay upset for quite a while. The
| billion dollar election manipulation campaign spanning
| Reddit/Tiktok/Youtube/Television was extremely effective.
| It convinced a very, very specific kind of person that
| the by-the-numbers worst candidate in modern history was
| going to win in an absolute landslide.
|
| It will be years before these people realize how much the
| media was controlled from 2020-2024 specifically in favor
| of one political party. For a lot of people this was the
| first time it was extremely obvious and going back to
| Bush and Obama social media and the internet in general
| weren't considered "serious" political campaign
| locations. I certainly dont remember either Bush's or
| Obama's election being so insanely partisan to the point
| of calling one party Nazis. Of course there was vitriol
| but it was so tame compared to today.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| >being so insanely partisan to the point of calling one
| party Nazis
|
| Do you mean the party who just used the inauguration to
| have a senior government member throw nazi salutes? The
| party whose presidents first actions included pardoning
| dozens of members of fascist groups?
|
| You can't really be choosing this moment to complain
| about calling these people nazis??
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| I was about to say Musk doesn't have an actual role in
| government but I guess an executive order has made DOGE
| real, by renaming US Digital Service the US Doge Service.
| mmooss wrote:
| I think you need to make the argument about Nazis on its
| merits. Trump's people do much that fits the definition
| of fascism, many try to normalize or advocate for
| fascism, dictatorship, and even normalize Hitler. His
| most prominent member of government did a proto-Nazi
| salute (and don't say he's too dumb to know what it would
| look like).
|
| And that paragraph would not be objectionable to many
| people in that political grouping.
| javier123454321 wrote:
| I agree. I like nostr the most out of the similar
| attempts at creating a standards based multi client
| social graph. Not a huge fan of federated servers like
| Mastodon. Bluesky seems like it has some good parts with
| the @ protocol, but is quite bad at non-partisanship in
| practice.
| blactuary wrote:
| He didn't censor for the former president
| gadders wrote:
| He did, and has said so publicly:
| https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/czxlpjlgdzjo
| blactuary wrote:
| He did not, and if you follow the actual facts and read
| the internal communications you find out he lied
|
| https://www.techdirt.com/2025/01/16/rogan-misses-the-
| mark-ho...
| hoten wrote:
| Wow, that misinterpretation of "you can't yell fire in a
| crowded theatre" is really something. Do you think that's
| a smoking gun that he's shamelessly manipulating the
| audience, or is he really that dense (or, I suppose to be
| fair... is it an honest mistake - we all have blind
| spots)?
| gadders wrote:
| Yes, Zuckerberg admitted that this is what used to happen
| under Biden recently on a podcast,
| XCabbage wrote:
| Huh? When has Facebook ever implemented political censorship
| on behalf of _Trump_? I am not aware of a single case of such
| a thing even being requested, let alone granted. The scandals
| about government-directed social media censorship were under
| Biden 's admin, not under Trump's.
| chriswarbo wrote:
| "Instagram hides search results for 'Democrats'"
| https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4g32yxpdz0o
|
| > While users who type "#Democrat" or "#Democrats" see no
| results, the hashtag "Republican" returns 3.3 million posts
| on the social media platform.
|
| > By manually searching Instagram for "Democrats", rather
| than clicking on a hashtag, users are greeted by a screen
| reading "we've hidden these results".
|
| > "Results for the term you searched for may contain
| sensitive content," it says.
| XCabbage wrote:
| This is really obviously not intentional, let alone
| requested by the Trump admin.
| sanderjd wrote:
| Definitely curious to see how long it takes to get fixed,
| now that it has gotten media attention.
| mmooss wrote:
| While I agree about Trump, Facebook has censored left-wing
| causes such as Palestinians. Zuckerberg's embrace of Trump,
| including possibly getting approval for Facebook's recent
| changes, raises many concerns.
| briandear wrote:
| Free speech died when Covid came along.
| coldpie wrote:
| You're correct, but this is quite a boring response. If no one
| tried to make the world a better place, the world would never
| get better. It is an uphill battle, but I wish the OP luck all
| the same.
| jf22 wrote:
| If you can't communicate with anyone you can't make the world
| a better place.
| diggan wrote:
| Maybe that's why OP is looking for an alternative to use
| for communication and organization?
| latexr wrote:
| Tell that to Jadav Payeng, who planted a forest by himself.
| He accomplished, on his own, more for the good of the world
| than most communities on Facebook ever will.
|
| https://interestingengineering.com/science/jadav-payeng-
| the-...
| zdragnar wrote:
| Rural Facebook communities aren't trying to change the
| world. They're there for light conversation, gossip and
| organizing get-togethers.
|
| It's important to note that Jadav didn't get other people
| to change and join his crusade before it happened. He
| merely went out and did what he wanted. People were
| inspired by seeing it happen.
|
| People aren't going to be inspired by yet another social
| network touting federation and other technical mumbo-
| jumbo, because it doesn't help them do anything they
| weren't already doing on Facebook.
|
| This whole conversation is very strange to me indeed.
| latexr wrote:
| > This whole conversation is very strange to me indeed.
|
| Because you're not engaging with the point?
|
| For starters, the original claim was to "make the world a
| better place", not "change" it. Beyond that, the point of
| my reply was to show that it is indeed possible to make
| the world better without communicating with anyone else
| (contrary to the original claim).
|
| Anything else is your own addition.
| jf22 wrote:
| Eh, that's improvement, but the world didn't change
| because of a small forest.
| latexr wrote:
| You (and your parent comment) said "make the world a
| better place", not "change" it. Very few things change
| the world meaningfully.
|
| And the point stands: what he did was more relevant than
| most (if not all) Facebook communities will ever
| accomplish.
| jf22 wrote:
| Splitting hairs.
|
| If you use a platform nobody uses to try and change the
| world you won't change it just like if you tried to plant
| trees without using seeds.
| latexr wrote:
| The point is precisely that _you don't need a social
| networking platform to do something meaningful_.
| jf22 wrote:
| I don't think the author was talking about isolated
| change like planting some seeds.
|
| Real change requires humans to collaborate and work
| together.
| latexr wrote:
| > isolated
|
| The whole thread is about _limited_ and well-defined
| communities, not the world. What the OP wants is
| _specifically_ "isolated".
|
| > like planting some seeds
|
| Spending thirty years planting _a 550 hectare forest_ and
| restoring wildlife to it is not "planting some seeds".
| Please don't be reductive.
|
| > Real change
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman
|
| Change is change. You don't get to define someone's life
| work, which was more meaningful and impactful than most
| of us will ever achieve, not "real" to fit your narrow
| definition.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| 50K people is a limited community to move to another
| platform???
| latexr wrote:
| Yes, yes it is. _By definition._ "Limited" means
| "restricted in size", not "an arbitrary number a random
| person thinks is small". From the moment OP defined "this
| is for this specific community of this size", it is
| limited. It will be abundantly clear when they have moved
| no one, or every one, or a critical mass, or not enough.
| Because it's limited, bounded, constrained.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| Well in that case so is the total population of earth.
| latexr wrote:
| We're not discussing the total population of the Earth.
| The thing about words is that their meaning may depend on
| context.
|
| If we were discussing everyone who has lived and will
| ever live, the current population of the world would be a
| limited snapshot. Same if we were discussing every planet
| and civilisation in the fictional world of Start Trek.
|
| But we're _not_ discussing that. Making up something
| we're not talking about to attack what we are is called a
| straw man argument.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| And for the purposes of the stated goal, for one person
| or even a company to get 50K people to switch from
| Facebook or to use another platform especially when all
| someone else has to do is start a group on Facebook,
| might as well be "the number of people on earth"
| difficult.
| latexr wrote:
| Yes, I agree, I've said that several hours ago.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42781581
|
| What you're arguing against is not the point I was
| making. My point in this thread is way up there: it
| replies to someone saying you cannot make the world
| better without communicating with other humans, by
| presenting someone who on their own improved the world
| more than most (if not all) Facebook groups ever will.
|
| When I used the word "limited", it was _clearly_ in
| reference to it being an "isolated" specific community
| and _not_ everyone.
| jf22 wrote:
| Mincing words and splitting hairs again.
| latexr wrote:
| Words have meanings. Communication between humans, which
| you're keenly defending, depends on a shared
| understanding of them. I haven't commented on it until
| now, but in my view _you're_ splitting hairs by
| repeatedly creating your own definitions (e.g. defining
| what is "real" change or not; changing the definition of
| words you said; saying "improvement" is not "change";
| misunderstanding "limited"). So your repeated accusations
| don't really land.
|
| I don't think it's worth either of our times to continue,
| though. We've strayed too much from the original point.
|
| A good evening (or your equivalent time of day) to you.
| jf22 wrote:
| Yeah, and mincing words to make a silly argument valid
| isn't communication, it's arguing for arguments sake.
| gabruoy wrote:
| He very literally did change the world. There wasn't a
| forest there and now there is. In fact the conception of
| "the world" as an abstract global concept is much less
| impactful than what people see outside their window and
| in their city/community.
| bee_rider wrote:
| We could communicate more effectively 20 or so years ago.
| Communication technology had already matured, but we didn't
| have these engagement-driven social media platforms. The
| goal of these platforms isn't to communicate, it is to sell
| ads and pick engaging posts to re-broadcast.
|
| What gets people engaged is stupid anger. Even stuff I
| agree with on some fundamental political level, the social
| media version is just stressed out, to the point of being
| ineffective and often wrong in detail.
|
| Centralized as driven social media can't go out of business
| fast enough.
| jf22 wrote:
| Sure, but if nobody is on the platform or other end of
| the line, who cares?
| briandear wrote:
| Communication was more effective 20 years ago? I remember
| using a Skypager when I was a Reuters journalist. I also
| remember processing film in bathrooms at news events then
| having to scan negatives using a suitcase-sized scanner
| and computer and it being 30-60 minutes to get photos
| onto the wire. Now it's instant.
|
| Saying communications were more effective 20 years ago is
| highly debatable and certainly an argument tinged with
| nostalgia.
| pixl97 wrote:
| >Saying communications were more effective 20 years ago
|
| Of course it's debatable because reality can be measured
| in multiple dimensions.
|
| Is it faster, yes. Is filtering out the massive amounts
| of bullshit communications easier? Not really, especially
| with content aware spambots than can be ran by the
| millions. It's easy to get crushed by bullshit asymmetry.
| For me this makes most communications less effective
| because I have to spend even more time figuring out the
| actual poster and their motivations.
| bko wrote:
| I think you're mixing a few things here. There's social
| media (TikTok, Instagram, X, viral crap) and then there's
| social media (organize parties, facebook marketplace,
| Whatsapp, etc).
|
| They may share a technology platform, but they are not
| the same.
|
| If you have children you'll see social media (#2) is
| incredibly useful and facilitates greatly in
| communication. We're much more connected than our parents
| were thanks to these apps.
| BlarfMcFlarf wrote:
| Facebook is rapidly moving away from effective
| communication. AI slop, AI posters, and algorithmic
| preferences for decisiveness over local community with
| engagement farming algorithms. If the communication
| medium you use is turning toxic, it's imperative to find
| alternatives before communication breaks down and a
| switch becomes impossible.
| ecshafer wrote:
| Do you think its a better place, or do the users think its a
| better place? Take political partisanship out of it. So its
| about a 30/30/40 breakdown between Trump/Harris/None. So 70%
| of people either Support or Don't care that much about Trump,
| and that's assuming that every single democratic voter is
| angry enough to quit Facebook over this, this is probably not
| true. You are looking at probably >85% of people that don't
| think that getting rid of Facebook would make things better.
|
| A better world is subjective.
| coldpie wrote:
| > A better world is subjective.
|
| Yeah, obviously. So part of the OP's task will be selling
| their communities on why switching away from Facebook is a
| good thing. Given everything that's going on, now is a good
| opportunity to do that. But before they can do that, they
| need to know what to switch _to_ , which is the topic of
| this thread.
| vladms wrote:
| Is Facebook though the perfect community tool? Using
| centralized systems has advantages
| (simple/easy/available/cheap) but also disadvantages (less
| customization/less control/more expensive). When Facebook
| appeared maybe the alternatives were not there due to
| technical complexity is this still the case nowadays?...
| robertlagrant wrote:
| There were alternatives, but the network effect is real.
| Facebook wants people to stay on their platform, sure,
| but people also like staying in one app if they can. They
| know how to use it, and it's not yet another app.
| underdeserver wrote:
| Facebook is where his community is, and it's good enough for
| them. Why would anyone move? What possible hope does he have
| of overcoming the network effect and convincing people to
| move to something they don't know? (And is most likely - for
| their use case - a worse experience)
| coldpie wrote:
| Everyone agrees this is an uphill battle. What I'm saying
| is that's a boring reason not to do something you believe
| in.
| talldayo wrote:
| There are a lot of justified, boring reasons to not do
| something. I despise Facebook, but I'm also not going to
| waste my time trying to convince my cohorts to use a
| self-hosted federated alternative. You have to be blindly
| foolish to even hold out the slightest hope that these
| people will use an alternative, and I say that as a
| Mastodon user/apologist.
| coldpie wrote:
| Okay.
| horacemorace wrote:
| Many of us are insane in this way. Deride us as blind and
| foolish.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > Everyone agrees this is an uphill battle
|
| No, most people don't care about having this battle -
| that's the point. If there's no demonstrable reason to
| leave (e.g. "former president got banned from major
| platform, so go to new platform") then the - valid, if
| personally boring to you - point is: how will you
| persuade people to leave it?
| coldpie wrote:
| Good question, let's try to answer it. Suppose OP
| believes they have a serviceable replacement in place.
| What arguments could they use to convince their
| communities to switch to it? Here's some ideas:
|
| - No ads.
|
| - Free, even for business-use.
|
| - No algorithm interfering with visibility.
|
| - It's usable by community members who do not have a
| Facebook account, for whatever reason.
|
| - Allows for more free-form content.
|
| - More choices for content delivery format &
| notifications (say, email, text message, newsletter
| links).
|
| Maybe you can come up with some. What would you find to
| be a convincing argument to switch to a community-owned
| organization platform instead of Facebook?
| briandear wrote:
| Who pays for it?
| lowercased wrote:
| I'd suspect the 'free' and 'no ads' would be somewhat
| mutually exclusive. Perhaps a particular group organizer
| pays a modest amount - $19/year(?) - to manage/moderate
| groups up to X000 members.
| pc86 wrote:
| Which means it isn't free, it's a charity project paid
| for by the group organizer(s). That's probably fine in
| the short term, maybe even longer, but eventually the
| organizer(s) will move out of the area, or get tired of
| managing the group, or die, or whatever, and someone will
| need to manage it.
|
| Honestly if it really would just need to cover the price
| of the cheapest hosting you can find and the domain
| registration a single small-to-medium Adsense ad in the
| sidebar might generate enough to cover it. I don't know
| how many impressions/pageviews it takes to generate $20
| but it can't be that many.
| pixl97 wrote:
| Hello, it appears you've never even ran the most basic
| internet platform before in your life.
|
| Simply put you have to ask the most important questions
| first, then build an app backwards from that
|
| 1) How will it be paid for
|
| 2) How will it be moderated.
|
| So, you've already failed number one. You have no means
| to pay for it.
|
| Then you failed number two. If it gains even a modicum of
| popularity it will be completely and totally over ran
| with spam.
| coldpie wrote:
| I agree it's unlikely to succeed, but I find thinking
| about our problems and trying to fix them much more
| admirable & interesting than just rolling over and
| accepting things as they are. You can't improve things if
| you never even try.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| These aphorisms also don't improve things. There are
| actual barriers to trying something; if your suggestion
| doesn't clear them then yes, it's no point trying that
| suggestion.
| bdangubic wrote:
| _You can 't improve things if you never even try._
|
| There are things you should not try as you can easily
| deduce that they are not rooted in any reality, e.g.
| "free" and "no-ads"
| pixl97 wrote:
| The important issue in thinking about problems is
| understanding all the interconnected problems.
|
| The internet is a horrifically hostile place. If you
| design a product without that in mind you're creating a
| danger for yourself and for your users. Slap a community
| site up without thinking about COPPA or GDPR or whatever
| Californian law and suddenly you'll have problems. Slap a
| site up without heavy moderation and it will be filled
| with the most awful porn you can imagine.
|
| It's not about just accepting the way things the way the
| are, it's avoiding becoming a casualty of the way things
| are.
| mmooss wrote:
| > most people don't care about having this battle
|
| That is also true of every advance society makes: Most
| people are happy the way they are. It's an obstacle every
| innovator and leader faces. Yet somehow, we make changes
| and advances.
| redserk wrote:
| Most people don't care about the platform that's used if
| there's enough buy-in.
|
| I was part of something similar a few years ago at a
| local makerspace. We were using Meetup.com for a while
| then someone relatively new suggested we try using
| Discord instead. There wasn't much of a convincing reason
| besides "let's try it", so a bit over half of the active
| people gave it a shot, and everyone else followed since
| that's where the activity was.
|
| While a few people were initially grumbly over making a
| new account, there aren't many complaints now that we
| have bots to help with calendars and a bot to help us
| monitor equipment.
| briandear wrote:
| It's a Quixotic quest. Moving an online community off
| Facebook isn't changing the world for the better or
| worse. It's inconsequential unless you build an
| objectively better community. Just switching from Coke to
| Pepsi isn't a wasted effort. Focus on zero to one, not
| zero to another version of zero.
| mmooss wrote:
| It increases privacy (depending on the new platform), and
| reduces exposure to whatever toxic stuff is on FB.
| bko wrote:
| Doing something personally is fine. But trying to
| convince an entire community to ditch something that
| works and is likely incredibly valuable to them to stick
| it to some billionaire you don't like is just wrong.
| Zolomon wrote:
| We all helped our families and loved ones to ditch MSN
| for Google Talk for Skype for WhatsApp for Discord etc.
|
| It might happen again. :)
| darthrupert wrote:
| You're being sarcastic when you're implying that any of
| those switches were worth it, right?
| spencerflem wrote:
| its not wrong - we should all ditch facebook
|
| it does seem unlikely to work though, for the reasons you
| mentioned
| scarface_74 wrote:
| It doesn't matter what the poster believes. He is doing
| something for the benefit of a community that doesn't
| care about whatever ideological battle he is trying to
| fight and inconveniencing them in the process
| archagon wrote:
| Fine, let's nobody do anything and convince nobody of
| nothing. Sit on couch, watch telly, mind own business.
| Great life!
| jklinger410 wrote:
| > If no one tried to make the world a better place, the world
| would never get better.
|
| This is kind of a cost-benefit issue though. The benefits of
| having a local community outweigh the negatives of the
| platform having its own issues.
|
| If your issues on the platform cause you to ditch it, which
| ruins your community, than what have you actually done?
|
| I believe when it comes to anything that is not-for-profit,
| that the path of least resistance the only path. Therefore
| moving off of Facebook is simply not a consideration.
| cyanydeez wrote:
| you're arguing local, short term benefits with global long
| term damage.
|
| Very near sighted, but an actual problem government, good
| governance, has struggled with absolutely. Part of the
| techno fascism is emerging because people are entirely
| easily manipulated with todays egg prices and not tomorrows
| suffering of human rights.
| bko wrote:
| > techno fascism
|
| I keep hearing this. What does this mean?
|
| My guess would be "a system in which big technology firms
| can effectively censor speech with coordination from the
| state". But I think those that use it mean something
| else.
| jfactorial wrote:
| I think "techno fascism" is a term people are using to
| describe tech company CEOs operating as unelected
| oligarchs embedded within the new US government.
|
| If you're looking for a better term, we could call it
| "technocratic anti-liberalism" to perhaps cover all the
| bases. People are attempting to describe the current
| situation in which the wealthiest humans in all of
| history are supporting an anti-liberal executive by
| making financial donations to anti-liberal leadership and
| making changes to their products to further the messages
| thereof, e.g. broadcasting Nazi ideology and making Nazi
| salutes.
|
| "Wealthy" as in "holding more personal wealth than the
| bottom half of the US population"; "anti-liberal" as in
| "espousing and acting in opposition to classical liberal
| values of consent of the governed and equality under law
| by denying the validity of elections, attempting to
| overthrow the US liberal democratic government with
| force, pardoning foot soldiers found guilty of such an
| attack, utilizing king-like executive direction to
| undermine the highest law of the land, avoiding all
| punishment for his own guilt, and so forth.
|
| That's how I interpret the term.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| I'd say categorically that fascism is not a helpful term
| to describe movements outside the 1900-1945 period in
| Europe. (e.g. Japan's movement was anti-colonial if
| anything, Tokugawa Japan would have been happy to be left
| alone to gaze its navel, if that wasn't possible it
| wanted the asia-pacific region as a buffer zone)
|
| Today it is "Keir Starmer is a fascist" (Sci-fi writer
| Charlie Stross), "the local people department is fascist"
| (BLM supporters), I half expect to hear "Jesus was a
| fascist" although certainly that accusation is leveled at
| his followers.
|
| There's something seductive about the imagery in Pink
| Floyd's _The Wall_ and _V is for Vendetta_ that is
| evocative of the period. Perhaps today 's political
| systems are on the brink of failure due to inaction the
| way that the remnants of European aristocracy were. But
| we're not going to face what we're up against using
| "thought stopping" terms.
|
| One could make the case that the real problem with
| "people worried about the price of eggs" is a lack of
| meaning and that Trump's talk about going to Mars or
| annexing Greenland addresses that more directly, as do
| the fantasies of fascism which can elevate ordinary
| feelings of despair.
| spencerflem wrote:
| Elon Musk did a Nazi salute, live on stage, twice
| jfactorial wrote:
| I agree with you about trying to avoid thought stopping
| terms, and the desire for more specific language in
| important topics. It's tempting to think that history
| repeats itself, but it doesn't. It really doesn't.
| Historians will find ways of comparing and contrasting
| one moment with another, but whatever is happening right
| now is not determined by any historical law playing out.
|
| Our language is bending as it ever does to help people
| explain these political shifts--often people who see
| what's happening but don't have much education on the
| matters of history, political science, philosophy. Bear
| in mind that 21% of US adults are illiterate, and far
| fewer are even equipped to read, say, Thomas Paine.
|
| We need ways of talking about the values that are winning
| (nationalist theocratic autocracy) and the ones that are
| not (the open society, secular liberal democracy), and
| the word "liberalism" in the US has beenn so tarnished,
| so I think "fascism" today has come to mean "anti-
| liberal." I'll take what I can get.
| archagon wrote:
| Big tech leadership cheerily cozying up to an
| authoritarian president, felon, and rapist who started an
| insurrection and literally tried to overthrow the last
| election.
|
| Musk -- one of the most powerful people in Washington --
| doing things like throwing a sieg heil salute, supporting
| the AfD, claiming that "Hitler was a communist,"[1] and
| calling for the execution of a government witness[2].
|
| Thiel proclaiming to "no longer believe that freedom and
| democracy are compatible," and then half of Silicon
| Valley showing up to party with him[3].
|
| Techno fascism is what it says on the tin: technologists
| who are _very happy_ with fascism for the sake of money
| and power. (Just don 't call them fascists, they hate
| that.)
|
| [1]: https://www.wired.com/story/elon-musk-far-right-
| german-leade...
|
| [2]:
| https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-
| politic...
|
| [3]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42773678
| pixl97 wrote:
| >you're arguing local, short term benefits
|
| Whelp, we know which one is going to win then. An
| economic benefit now wins the vast majority of the time.
| cyanydeez wrote:
| Yes, local maximums are deceptive and should be pointed
| at as often as possible
| pimlottc wrote:
| I wish them luck too! But you have to be realistic and
| understand your users. Their value are not necessarily your
| values. A new services must be clearly better for them to
| switch; just being "not Facebook" is not that compelling to
| the average person.
| tobyjsullivan wrote:
| The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the
| unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world
| to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the
| unreasonable man.
|
| - George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman (1903)
| pc86 wrote:
| Nobody is talking about "making the world a better place,"
| we're talking about a few Facebook groups using a different
| app instead (and approximately 100% of those people will
| still be on Facebook doing other things).
| bottled_poe wrote:
| Exactly, is OP really the one who should be influencing others
| preferences? Most couldn't give two shits about the
| technological perils that await them just over the horizon -
| and should you really be the one to inform them of those
| horrors? Just relax - and embrace the book of faces. The
| movement will be swift and relatively painless, mostly.
| JohnMakin wrote:
| This is a bizarre response on a platform that frequently
| discusses moving things off of centralized applications and
| services out of concern for the long term stability or safety
| of that platform - you assumed their motives and turned it into
| a political statement right out of the gate.
| tredre3 wrote:
| > This is a bizarre response on a platform that frequently
| discusses moving things off of centralized applications and
| services
|
| I disagree, GP's comment is typical of HN. The discussions
| you've mentioned do happen frequently, but surely you've
| noticed that at least half the comments (and often the top
| rated ones) will inevitably be "it can't be done so why even
| try".
| bongodongobob wrote:
| No it isn't. Moving yourself off of a platform is one thing.
| Moving 200k random users off (for reasons?) is impossible.
| mplewis wrote:
| Everyone wants to move off Facebook. The platform is shit and
| its main job is to shovel posts you don't want to read at your
| face so you scroll past them and view more ads.
| lsllc wrote:
| This. After WhatsApp was acquired by Facebook (this predates
| any of the current political stuff, it was entirely about
| privacy), I tried to get friends and family to switch to
| something else -- Signal in fact as iMessage was a no-go
| because of the lack of Android support.
|
| Out of ~30 people, I got precisely 3 people to switch. No one
| else cared, no one else wanted the hassle of switching. I even
| got a few comments along the lines of "but no-one I know is on
| Signal" etc. I ended up re-installing WhatsApp because I
| decided that the loss of contact with so many people was worse
| than any privacy worries I had at the time.
| seb1204 wrote:
| I managed to migrate my family but no one else. So now I
| still have WhatsApp and Signal.
| ghaff wrote:
| Yeah, my gut is that of those 30K people on Facebook you
| might get a few hundred to join a new platform. But maybe
| not. It probably won't be very useful without the other 29K
| people plus (even if a lot of those are probably not very
| active).
|
| Heck, we see this with Mastodon and Bluesky, their content is
| very thin in my experience (even if Twitter's is also thinner
| than it used to be at least with the mostly tech-related
| content I followed).
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| You won't get folks to move, because people tend to "stay
| stuck."
|
| Us tecchies (typical HN members) _literally can 't_ imagine
| what non-tech people go through, when encountering tech.
|
| It's terrifying, humiliating, and intimidating. The reaction
| from us techs, does nothing to help, as we tend to sneer at
| them, and do everything we can, to humiliate them. Fairly
| typical bullying, but we don't want to admit it, because we
| were always bullied, and don't want to admit that we are just
| doing the same to others.
|
| Most folks painfully learn rote, then get terrified of
| changes. This is why so many folks don't want to upgrade, or
| add new features. Just learning the ones they have mastered,
| was difficult enough. They can't deal with doing it on a
| regular basis (like most of us tecchies do).
|
| Until we accept this, and keep it in mind, when we design
| solutions, we won't get much traction. People who do
| understand it, and design for it, tend to make _a lot_ of
| money.
|
| This is also why we need to introduce changes _S L O W L Y_ ,
| even when we feel that it doesn't make sense.
|
| Basic human empathy. It's kinda rare, these days.
| dawnerd wrote:
| I managed to get people over to Telegram. Signal was a no go.
| It's still a bit inconvenient. Mobile only unless you link a
| desktop is a non starter for me period. Majority of people
| don't care about e2ee. They want an easy to use app that
| syncs everything and doesn't require reading a manual.
| misiek08 wrote:
| Sad you got downvoted. Signal UX is 100x worse than
| Telegram and I probably can calculate it to prove this
| exact number. I'm dreaming about Telegram client and
| Signal-like openness.
| hallman76 wrote:
| > because say the CEO of a company is friendly to the President
|
| OP didn't give say politics had anything to do with it. Let
| them nerd up if they want to.
|
| Centralization around specific platforms has plusses and
| minuses. Having alternatives drives innovation.
| kcplate wrote:
| > Do YOU want to move off of Facebook for some reason, or do
| people want to move off of Facebook for some reason. MOST
| people in the US, especially in a rural are are not going to
| quit an app because say the CEO of a company is friendly to the
| President.
|
| I can't fault for someone making the attempt _for whatever
| reason_ but if the reason is tied to politics I think that it
| will fail. People ultimately attempting a platform shift for
| political reasons like this will find that most people are 1)
| simply not as dogmatic politically as the activist types that
| would propose a change like this even if they are "on the same
| team" and 2) people are unwilling to leave a system of comfort
| for a novel system that works even slightly differently to
| their comfort zone to essentially do the same thing.
| chickenfeed wrote:
| We have local community groups on FB. One for our hamlet of
| about 50 houses. Some households refuse to join as they don't
| do Facebook. I only do Facebook because of the local group. I
| long ago gave up trying to fill those people in. It is somewhat
| of a pain.
| 7thaccount wrote:
| I've had some success with looking at meetup.com and finding when
| some kind of group is going to meet up somewhere, show up, and
| see if things click. I played some board games recently and then
| got added to the weekly text notification and now have some
| adults to chill with when I have an opening on that day.
|
| Facebook is used for a lot of notification/scheduling at my local
| game store though. I refuse to use Facebook, but don't want to be
| a burden on everyone else. I found some people I like and gave
| them my phone number and told them I'm down for a game whenever
| they are. Although rare, I have gotten a text before and gone and
| had fun.
| pluc wrote:
| Website to announce and register interest, mailing list or blog
| to post. You can send your website updates to Facebook for the
| first few months then kill it once everyone is on board.
| diggan wrote:
| Yeah, simply write some .html, .css and .js files, just `scp`
| it over to your VPS and then easily setup Mailman with systemd.
| Easy peazy :)
| aklemm wrote:
| Somehow some way, the end game needs to be entities curating
| space they own (websites) and syndicating out to platforms for
| reach/engagement. Indieweb has the fundamentals, but no path nor
| intention for broad uptake.
|
| Anyone have bright new ideas on this angle?
| EGreg wrote:
| I know I've been posting this a few times over the past few
| months, but I haven't started promoting it yet to the world.
|
| This is a hard problem because people expect real-time chat,
| videoconferencing, livestreaming, privacy controls, proper
| notifications, profiles, photo uploads and much more.
|
| I have spent over a decade building essentially an open-source
| Facebook that can federate in more interesting ways than
| Mastodon, and can support Matrix protocol and much more etc. It
| has all those features I mentioned out of the box, and is
| completely open-source.
|
| Short answer, watch this:
|
| https://qbix.com/communities
|
| Or just look at these PDFs:
|
| https://qbix.com/community.pdf
|
| https://qbix.com/alumni.pdf
|
| Longer answer, read this: https://www.laweekly.com/restoring-
| healthy-communities/
|
| We use it to serve our own local communities:
|
| Here is the code: https://github.com/Qbix/Platform
|
| Or if you want, contact me: greg at the domain qbix.com and I can
| help set it up for you.
| qntmfred wrote:
| #YangGang
| bzmrgonz wrote:
| looks full featured from the screenshots.. but... 6 stars??
| eigart wrote:
| Does anyone know a tool to form groups on AT protocol? Maybe
| custom feeds? That would be a great feature! I've been meaning to
| look into it for a while.
| helboi4 wrote:
| Everything I do is either a Whatsapp group or a Telegram group
| these days. Whatsapp is owned by Meta but is at least encrypted,
| private and free from the bullshit of a real social media.
| Telegram is a better alternative if you really want to leave Meta
| behind. People will suggest Signal but in my experience literally
| nobody uses it except radical organisers. I have only one group
| on there and its for a protest group. Nobody else ever even
| messages me on there.
| gvurrdon wrote:
| I've managed to persuade some people and groups to use Signal.
| If I could find a way to use Whatsapp without Meta being able
| to identify me via my phone number and ransack my contacts then
| I would, reluctantly, give it a go.
| benatkin wrote:
| It's owned by Facebook
| dv_dt wrote:
| The activitypub based pixelfed servers are open source and give
| an Instagram like experience. And there is the advantage that it
| can federate with outside fediverse feeds too
| davidw wrote:
| 'Network effects' make this kind of move quite difficult unless
| there's a really compelling reason. You'd want to aim to maybe
| start from scratch with a dedicated group.
| doodda wrote:
| I have a similar pain in my rural community. All the restaurants
| and businesses post their news on the two local facebook groups,
| pretty much in lieu of having updated websites. I'd love it if
| there was a non-terrible alternative for this use case.
| julianlam wrote:
| For self-hosted and federated community building, might I suggest
| NodeBB?
|
| v4 now fully federates, has always been self-hostable, and is a
| great piece of software for migrating from Facebook.
|
| Consider the "feed" plugin for a less jarring experience. Push
| notifications via the "web-push" plugin.
| rsolva wrote:
| With "fully federates", do you mean that it can share forum
| categories and/or posts with other NodeBB servers?
| namenumber wrote:
| One successful version of what you're asking about seems to be
| the Vermont based Front Porch Forum. They have gotten some press
| in the last year and there was this thread about them on
| hackernews a while back :
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41208506
|
| Whether they'd be receptive to share their secret sauce and let a
| thousand Front Porches bloom is another question though, guess
| you could ask them! :)
| everybodyknows wrote:
| I've wondered how FPF has managed to pull off such an
| achievement. Perhaps FPF became the local standard, reaching a
| self-sustaining mass of users before the Facebook and Nextdoor
| marketing machines saturated user attention elsewhere in the
| country?
| lubujackson wrote:
| Having grown up nearby, there is a strong sense of roots
| people have out there, as well as a strong preference for
| local-made everything. Think of it as a rural, fairly well-
| educated anti-Walmart energy. It may be hard to reprodu e
| that environment and even harder to start something like that
| up once alternatives are already available.
| bwanab wrote:
| I came here to say the same. Having recently moved to VT, FPF
| has been a real eye opener in terms of civil, useful local
| discourse. I don't think it's in the DNA of people in Vermont
| since the local subreddits for VT and communities are just as
| weird as they are other places I've looked at.
| beisner wrote:
| For events specifically, my cohort (somewhere between Gen-Z and
| Millenial) have moved event organizing entirely to Partiful,
| which I've found to be far superior to Facebook Events. Doesn't
| help with group posts though.
| nzoschke wrote:
| I'll second Partiful.
|
| Their use of good old fashioned www links and SMS messages
| makes it easy for everyone to share and join events. No app and
| no Partiful account necessary.
|
| They also have simple and good event privacy model, group
| scheduling, reminders, Venmo based ticket system, and group
| chat.
|
| It's taken over almost completely in my social circles and I'm
| all for it.
| dangoor wrote:
| Any idea what the business model is?
|
| It seems like they might have group organizing features now,
| but I'd be concerned about adopting it for a group without a
| clear idea of how they're going to make money
| darknavi wrote:
| From Google:
|
| > Partiful does not make money yet. They are a venture-backed
| startup with many millions of dollars of funding. They will
| eventually offer a premium version, an ad-supported model, or
| be acquired by a larger company like Eventbrite,
| Ticketmaster, Snapchat, or one of these other potential
| acquirers.
|
| Basically, enjoy it while you can. There is nothing wrong
| with using a free service like this while you can. Best case
| IMO is that they monetize it with low fees and have a product
| that is actually worth paying for.
| teopatl wrote:
| Could a Patreon or Medium or Subspace page work for this?
| Announcements, mailing list, even a payment system for beer money
| flanbiscuit wrote:
| The neighborhood I live in runs a listserve that's very active.
| I'm not sure what made them choose a listserve over facebook,
| maybe it predates FB. The neighborhood is historic and there's an
| association that runs it.
| nmorenoEM wrote:
| https://werz.at
| gardnr wrote:
| It's hard to read with all the fancy scrolling.
| righthand wrote:
| I tried to sign up for this to check it out but it requires an
| instagram account or some existing online media
| presence...pretty big barrier to entry for someone looking to
| leave Meta properties.
| hk1337 wrote:
| One thing I would keep in mind is that you're most likely going
| to have to maintain both communities for a long time to get
| people to transition to the new one.
|
| What sort of features are you looking for in a community
| platform?
| Stronico wrote:
| I run a discussion group that meets once a month - our tech stack
| is 1. A blog running WordPress that I use to announce meetings 2.
| A meetup.com account (free tier) that has the same information as
| the blog 3. A MailChimp account (free tier) where I send notices
| about the meetups 4. A very active Slack group (free tier) where
| I announce meetups and we have entended discussions. Discord
| would probably work just as well.
|
| I've never used Facebook for anything, but the above four tools
| work very well for us.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| You don't see how much more work that is?
| Stronico wrote:
| I've got it down to 45 minutes a month, including a phone
| call to the venue.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| And what happens when he gets tired of managing all of
| that? With Facebook he can just give someone else admin
| access.
| Stronico wrote:
| I can just give the logins to someone else. My current
| setup is a workable, optimal, but not clean solution to
| the problem.
| solid_fuel wrote:
| Organizing people takes work, and passing off a single
| set of credentials to someone else doesn't mean that work
| will still get done - whether its all in one place or
| not. Look at all the subreddits which are lost because of
| no moderation, even when they used to have a team.
|
| When they eventually get tired of managing all this, they
| will eventually need to hand the reigns off to someone
| else. Hopefully someone will step up, because if someone
| doesn't it won't matter if the group is in 4 places or
| one.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| This is why Facebook ended up being the tool of choice. Stay in
| one app instead of logging into 2 and checking your email and a
| website. I'm only surprised that 1-3 can't all be done via
| Meetup.
| jaimie wrote:
| They all can be done through Meetup - I think the point here
| is that multiple channels avoids vendor lock-in and increases
| the likelihood that a user will overlap with one of the 4
| communication strategies.
| Stronico wrote:
| All of those can be done on meetup - but then we would lose
| a lot of people who are not, and will not be on Meetup.
|
| The email list is probably the single most important part
| of the tech stack actually.
| latexr wrote:
| > Stay in one app instead of logging into 2 and checking your
| email and a website.
|
| The point seems to be that you can pick whatever service you
| want and will still get the information because it's repeated
| across channels. The manager needs to post to all four, but
| everyone else picks one.
| johnneville wrote:
| Discord has replaced facebook and reddit for some of my
| communities and it works really well in general. Unfortunately
| we are seeing them turn toward incorporating ads which is
| somewhat offputting. I'm already looking into a self hosted
| discourse forum as an alternative but it lacks the immediacy of
| live chat for better or worse
| cwoolfe wrote:
| Why not Mastodon? https://joinmastodon.org/
| weberer wrote:
| >I want to move our local communities
|
| What does that mean? I think we need a lot more context on what
| you want to do. Are you the IT administrator for the county and
| want to find alternative ways of disseminating announcements? Or
| are you just a citizen that wants people to chat somewhere else?
| mattlutze wrote:
| Go low-tech and start printing a small local newspaper.
|
| Pay for it with ads from local businesses, and give it away for
| free at all those stores. Get your regional Chamber of Commerce
| to help set you up with connections and sales channels.
| declan_roberts wrote:
| This sounds like a fun hobby.
| fatline wrote:
| local newspaper with an online version. You can then use the
| online version to try to use to hook the people into some
| alternative online platform for the community (a mailing list,
| a forum, something more advanced)
| wnolens wrote:
| This seems awesome actually. And a practical path in a small
| place. Print --> Online --> Online Community
| hedora wrote:
| Or, just mail a copy to everyone once a month. I don't think
| 50K mailers costs all that much these days. Maybe start
| smaller? 5K?
| tobinfekkes wrote:
| We have one of these small little local magazines that prints
| every two weeks with all the local events and stories and
| humor. It's free (paid for by ads for local businesses), and
| delivered in bundles to all the local outfits.
|
| At first, I thought it was a little bit silly to start a print
| magazine in 2020, but honestly, it's amazing and everyone loves
| it. I look forward to each new edition. And they become hard to
| find cause people grab them so quickly!
|
| Huge hit, highly recommend. But remember: it's a huge hit not
| because it's a print magazine; it's a hit because the execution
| of the couple that manage it. They're top-notch, and it's a
| "hobby" for them, not their main jobs.
| coffeefirst wrote:
| My neighborhood has a guy who runs a small blog/newsletter.
| It's pretty good! They do roundups on new businesses, events,
| schools, talks to the city council rep from time to time, and
| has a generally positive community vibe.
|
| Because it has an editor (and you could break the work up
| amongst a few people) you don't have the same problems that
| listservs have (spam) or nextdoor (gossip and paranoia).
|
| Substack or mailchimp would be fine for v1.
|
| If you don't want to distribute something on paper or cover any
| costs, this is a fine place to start.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Yes, do this and learn firsthand why all the small-town
| newspapers are gone. Printing, paper, and distribution is
| expensive, and nobody will pay enough for print ads anymore to
| cover the costs.
| latexr wrote:
| Are we talking 50k people _per town_? So over a quarter of a
| million people in total, each with more connections to other
| people outside said towns?
|
| I applaud and encourage your chutzpah, but I'm not too optimistic
| about your prospects. Do _you_ want to move your community out of
| Facebook, or does _the community_ want to do it? Do they even
| agree with your reasons for wanting to move, or is it possible
| they actually agree with Zuckerberg and voted for Trump?
|
| Remember _you only have one shot_. With that large of a group,
| you'll find people with all levels of skill, patience, and
| ideology. If your solution isn't immediately _better_ (not equal;
| better) than Facebook, you already lost. It doesn't need to be
| better at everything, but it does need to be better at the most
| important and most used features. And make sure you believe in
| the cause enough to be the goto person for every question.
|
| Make a list of what the platform _needs_ to support and do and
| come back with that. Then test, test, test. You won't succeed if
| you rush, people move slowly.
|
| Best of luck to you.
| mmooss wrote:
| > you only have one shot
|
| That is not true at all. Trying, failing, and trying again are
| part of any change or innovation. In fact, it's close to the
| truth that nobody succeeds the first time.
| latexr wrote:
| When you're trying to move a significant mass of people from
| something that works to another platform for ideological
| reasons, you'll be met with resistance. Every time you fail
| you'll be met with more until you can move no one.
|
| "Innovation" doesn't matter at all here, that's not in
| question in the slightest, you're conflating concepts. I'm
| giving specific advice, not making a general statement.
| LinuxBender wrote:
| The only alternative I can think of that all of your community
| probably already have is email. Set up an email mailing list and
| lock it down so only members of your community and those invited
| by your community can use it. Despite the wishes of some here
| email will never go away and will be used by anyone communicating
| with businesses.
|
| For your bonus criteria email can be self hosted but that's a
| more complicated topic as it pertains to mailing lists. At least
| a couple people in your community should be at list technical
| enough to follow internet examples. Mailing lists are federated
| per the spirit of the definition as they can each use their own
| existing email provider.
| jasode wrote:
| _> move our local communities off Facebook and onto our own
| platform. Is there a off-the-shelf solution_
|
| To get better answers, you need to flesh out _all the features of
| Facebook_ that your communities are using. E.g. Shared event
| calendars? Groups? Private Messaging? Video hosting for users to
| upload vids of community events? Live feeds? Etc.
|
| Look at the left side of navigation topics to help you enumerate
| and think about it:
| https://www.facebook.com/help/130979416980121/
|
| Do you expect those ~50k to create new logins for the new
| platform? Or do they sign in with their existing "Facebook ID" to
| avoid hassle of new account creation? Do they need a phone app?
| If it's website only from the smartphone web browser, do you need
| web push for notifications? Facebook interaction with others has
| convenient lookup from the phones' contact listing. Web-only site
| doesn't have straightforward access to smartphone's address book
| (without PhoneGap). Etc.
|
| If your communities are using a lot of those social networking
| features, it means trying to use Mastodon as a substitute for
| Facebook is going to be a very incomplete solution.
|
| Of course, alternative solutions are not going to fully match
| Facebook but you still need to think of the threshold for a
| _minimum viable feature set_ so your 50k users won 't reject it.
| jaymzcampbell wrote:
| This is such a great answer. You've given me flashbacks to many
| zoom meetings that started with "Can't we just...".
| heavyset_go wrote:
| I've seen projects go off the rails trying to replicate
| Facebook's features for their groups, so make sure that your
| minimum actually means _minimum_ in your MVP.
|
| You can build out a million features for Facebook parity, but
| it doesn't mean much if you have low traction.
|
| There were also cases where a simple Wordpress (or whatever)
| site would have worked, but the owners went all in on
| replicating FB features, instead of making sure users actually
| went to their new property at all.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| More to the point, if, like Robert Putnam, you believe that
| the nation is on the verge of a civic crisis because of the
| breakdown of local organizations
|
| https://www.joinordiefilm.com/
|
| the goal is to get people to join clubs, so you want some
| kind of service which has a _specific_ mission and the
| _minimal_ part is important. You want to put blinders on your
| users. You don 't want them to get served irrelevant ads and
| notifications. I'd consider this site
|
| https://fingerlakesrunners.org/
|
| which is basically a calendar of events that they host; they
| have forums but people aren't chewing the fat, they're having
| discussions that are focused around the events that
|
| https://forum.fingerlakesrunners.org/
|
| You don't have the horrific moderation problems that come out
| of "is it fake or not?" or "is this socially acceptable or
| not?" because the real question is "is this relevant to the
| events we put on?" in which case the problem of "your free
| speech is (in my view) your obnoxious behavior" which gets
| worse the more purposeless a site is.
| RealityVoid wrote:
| The best feature of FB is reach. You can't replicate that
| without a global social media platform. So don't. Just build
| local communities that thrive _despite_ the fact they are
| started on FB. More in-person social interaction might upend FB
| and social media, but we currently play this game so these are
| the rules we must follow.
| hkt wrote:
| There are a few I'd recommend:
|
| Loomio - this is usually for coops, especially decision making,
| but last I checked works well as a forum.
|
| Lemmy - federated reddit alternative.
|
| Discourse - the forum we know and love.
|
| Flarum - decent alternative to discourse.
|
| The challenge with all these is moderation: Lemmy solves it best
| by having subreddit style division of labour, with moderation per
| "board". Discourse supports trusted users if memory serves, and
| I'm not sure about the others.
|
| I'm pretty sure discourse and Lemmy also support eg, log in with
| google/facebook/etc which eases onboarding a lot.
|
| Personally, I'd go with Lemmy. It is less mature than discourse
| but probably more suited to your purposes.
| candu wrote:
| (Disclaimer: I've never tried to move large numbers of people off
| of Facebook; I have organized community groups from scratch
| before, and I have led initiatives at work that consisted largely
| of convincing people to do a thing. Much of this advice is from
| that perspective. YMMV.)
|
| So: my advice is to not think of it as all-or-nothing. You will
| _not_ be able to move 300k people off of Facebook overnight. This
| is somewhat akin to every IT migration project ever: it always
| takes longer than you think, and is not always a linear process
| from "fewer people migrated" to "more people migrated".
|
| It's also akin to community organizing: there is no substitute
| for actually talking to people about it, especially in the
| initial phases. Or: high-touch sales, where you may initially
| need to spend a _lot_ of energy and time per person successfully
| moved over. The other common thing here is that you will hear
| "no" a lot, which is a valuable experience anyways (but will be
| frustrating).
|
| Also: unfortunately, no one will care if it's self-hosted or
| federated, outside of niche tech circles. They will care about
| whether they can reach the people they want to reach, and whether
| the user experience is good or not. This is reality: talking
| about these points _will not help you_.
|
| Some things you'll probably need to do:
|
| - Identify a single credible alternative platform. - Identify
| specific groups of people who are willing to be early "de-
| adopters". For instance: a local youth group, a sports club,
| whatever. Ideally you are a part of this group already; you then
| have a much better chance. Businesses will likely say no, so you
| want community groups. - Within those groups, identify champions:
| people who care about the same thing you care about, and are
| willing to commit time and effort to help. - Together with your
| champions, build a toolkit that allows you to scale up your
| efforts. This may be guides on how to talk to people about the
| change - what works, what doesn't. This might be instructions for
| setting up a specific platform. It might be communications
| channels, leaflets / flyers for putting up in public places,
| whatever.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| The first thing that comes to mind for me is
|
| https://nextdoor.com/
|
| which is very much about community organizing but it has an
| aura of "people spreading rumors about bicycle thefts at the
| movie theater downtown (why don't they call the cops?)", the
| woman who radiates creepy signs of precarity (is cleaning up
| and looking for the phone number of the people who are
| suspected to run an illegal landfill) and then posts screen
| shots of the creepy come-ons she gets from guys who want to be
| her sugar daddy, etc.
|
| Maybe there's a space for a platform that specifically targets
| small, community, in person kinds of organizations, maybe even
| targeted to a particular geographical area; something like
| Meetup but just a little less structured.
|
| Here's a fair sized local organization (has more than one run a
| month) that has a good site
|
| https://fingerlakesrunners.org/
|
| But making that scalable is tricky; somebody in the club's
| leadership is a Wordpress pro. $5 a month would be cheap, but
| people are niggardly. If you're a web tech native owning a
| domain name is table stakes, but I think you'd lose 80% of
| "normies" even the phone-dependent "internet natives" if they
| had to get a domain name. There is a certain amount of panic
| over the breakdown of community organizations, see the line of
| research described in this film
|
| https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/join_or_die
|
| and rather than getting $5 a month out of people who think they
| can't afford it, getting funding from somebody like the United
| Way (for a particular area) or the Knight Foundation might be a
| better idea.
| davidw wrote:
| I wonder if a subreddit would work?
|
| Nextdoor dot com is actually even more toxic than a lot of
| Facebook is and I would avoid at all costs.
| some-guy wrote:
| I have found that Nextdoor isn't toxic, your neighbors are
| davidw wrote:
| Nah, most of my neighbors are nice people who I talk with
| in person.
|
| So what happens on Nextdoor is that there's sort of a
| vicious cycle where normal people show up, get grossed
| out by the toxic ones and leave.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| My problem w/ a subreddit is that reddit would show you a
| lot of stuff that is off-mission for the group and
| surrounding community. Also I'd expect such a page to be
| focused around getting people to show up to events rather
| than having discussions (e.g. the moderation problem is
| much easier if discussions are only for the purposes of the
| group; off-topic rants about divisive subjects are easy to
| squash; you don't have the problem of the rumor mongering
| about crime which I think is toxic on nextdoor but doesn't
| cross the line)
|
| I wouldn't mind ads but I'd want to see ads of the old-
| school sponsorship variety (the running club could see ads
| for the local running shoe store, one of the local grocery
| stores, an overfunded non-profit like the United Way, etc.)
| as opposed to the auction-based, personalized ads that
| you'd see on reddit. Similarly if a sidebar on the running
| club had a link to a local board game or ham radio club I'd
| think that's OK but the mission on my mind is to get people
| to join the ham radio club where they're going to do comms
| for the running club, not to maximize time on site.
| rcpt wrote:
| There are local Craigslist forums if Nextdoor isn't weird
| enough for you
| scarface_74 wrote:
| Let's be honest, Nextdoor is about people seeing that a black
| person is suspiciously going into a home using their garage
| door opener, driving in their garage and using their key...
| narag wrote:
| Remove "black" and it's the description of living in a
| small town.
| luizfzs wrote:
| I'd suggest a different approach. I'm not sure how feasible it is
| for your case but just my 2 cents.
|
| Community building would probably be way more efficient if done
| in person. That would make getting to know each other way easier.
| It would allow 'water fountain' type of interactions; which you
| usually don't have online.
|
| So, my 2 cents would be to find a park, or something else public
| (weather permitting) and gather there. It could also bring
| passerbys to get curious and gather more people.
|
| Not everything has to have a technological solution. In-person
| interactions should be more important for community building.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| Does Nextdoor have anything useful for you? They have community
| events and so forth.
| malfist wrote:
| I don't know about your nextdoor, but my nextdoor is complete
| trash. Half the posts are people asking for trades people
| recommendations and the other half are "this [minority] person
| walked by my house twice, anyone know if they're a criminal?"
|
| Community building on that platform seems like it'd be really
| difficult with it's current atmosphere.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| Oh, it's the pettiest platform. I used to like going on there
| and imperiously reminding everyone that we're all neighbours
| when things got heated.
| mig39 wrote:
| I run a few community groups using Discourse. It's great because
| there's a mode where you can make it into a type of
| listserv/forum hybrid. If people are more comfortable in e-mail,
| they can use that. If they want to use their web browser, they
| can use that. Works great on mobile. Easy to self-host.
| inanutshellus wrote:
| * Look into Diaspora. (https://diasporafoundation.org/). Upside:
| It's basically a self-hosted facebook. Really cool project.
| Downside: Unlike facebook, there's no fake/pushed content so it
| tended to feel stale.
|
| * Look into hosting a forum (e.g. phpBB). Forums are excellent
| because they don't lose old information like facebook does. When
| someone says "Hey what's the policy on dogs?" three years later I
| can search "dogs" and find the answer. Downside: They're not
| pretty, not full of pictures and no infinite scrollingz. sadge
| alfababies. Kidding aside, if you do try a forum, be sure to not
| offer a bunch of niche subtopics. The more subtopics the more
| stale the forum feels overall. Just stick to one main topic until
| someone asks for a second.
|
| * IRC chat. I hosted an IRC group for several years at work and
| it worked great. We only killed it when we decided to move to an
| enterprise communication app.
| amelius wrote:
| > Downside: Unlike facebook, there's no fake/pushed content so
| it tended to feel stale.
|
| It would be cool if they had a scraper that could pre-populate
| the system with some content from Facebook.
| redserk wrote:
| Or go for the small-town gossip feel and have fun with $10 in
| LLM credits.
|
| "Generate a quick (salacious|funny|sad) story involving
| (random group member) and (random object) happening at
| (randomly selected location)."
| danap wrote:
| Here is list of available software from my hosting company,
| $150/yr, for Forums, and Social Networking. Another I had on my
| own server was Citadel, (citadel.org).
|
| Good luck, because most people use there cell phones now days and
| a lot of sw like those listed are just not meant for that format.
|
| Forums:
|
| phpBB - phpbb.com SMF - simplemachines.org MyBB - mybb.com
| bbPress - bbpress.org XMB - xmbforum2.com Flarum - flarum.org
| ElkArte - elkarte.net FUDforum - fudforum.org miniBB - minibb.com
| TidyBB - tidybb.co.uk Flatboard - flatboard.org
|
| Social Networking:
|
| pH7Builder - ph7builder.com Jcow - jcow.net Open Source Social
| Network - opensource-socialnetwork.org HumHub - humhub.org Family
| Connections - familycms.com Elgg 6 - elgg.org
| mooreds wrote:
| We have a local email list. Hosted on google groups, but I
| suppose you could use a tool like https://groups.io/ or self-host
| as well.
| teeray wrote:
| Came here to suggest groups.io as a mailing list. I use it for
| my HOA--we need timely notifications (trash pickup delays,
| parking bans, etc.) and a lot of folks don't have (or want)
| Facebook. It has solid moderation tools, apps if you want them
| (you don't need them), and some useful bonus features
| (calendars, polls, wikis, docs, etc.) if you find yourself
| needing them.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| I know someone who committed a misdemeanor and is on probation,
| one term of which is that he's not allowed to use "social media"
| (chat, etc.) although he can use plain ordinary web sites.
|
| This person made the mistake they did because of their social
| isolation and the probation officer is entirely supportive of his
| developing more face-to-face connection, but he finds it
| frustrating to find a poster for something like a board game club
| which has nothing but a QR code that points to a Facebook page.
| horrible-hilde wrote:
| oh wow, this concept deserves its own post. Imagine emergency
| evacuation info being unattainable like this.
| barbazoo wrote:
| Before looking for a solution, have you checked with your
| community if there's even interest in an alternative? I have yet
| to meet a non-tech person that cares about this issue.
| alexashka wrote:
| May I suggest getting to know your community and understanding
| what their problems are before trying to change it.
| carlnewton wrote:
| Mate! I'm building exactly this!
| https://carlnewton.github.io/posts/building-habitat/
|
| Let me know if this is what you're after and you want some help
| setting up an instance.
| paarals wrote:
| There is a software that has a technopolitical project behind it
| called Decidim. It comes from the legacy of 15M - 2011 in Spain,
| where the organisers needed an alternative like the one you
| mention, and to have a 'facebook of democracy':
| https://tecnopolitica.net/en/content/white-paper-decidim. The
| Barcelona City Council made the project possible and now it has
| an international community with more than 400 organisations,
| including many local communities. Apart from being an open source
| and democratic project, it is a very mature product that has not
| lost the orientation of the spirit of its creation.
|
| Decidim is a political social network that allows communities to
| have a free technology, with democratic guarantees and designed
| for the common good. While this technology can be installed with
| knowledge of Ruby on Rails and some knowledge of servers, so
| perfectly self-hosted, there are also organisations that offer it
| in SaaS format at a very competitive price. Also, you can
| federated differents Decidims:)
| drillsteps5 wrote:
| I've been trying to get out more, and attend some events/groups
| IRL (sports, hobbies, whatever). They all might be in meetup, but
| all communication is happening in FB groups, FB messenger, Insta,
| Discord, etc. I don't have either and it makes things seriously
| more difficult...
| bongodongobob wrote:
| Unless they all want to... You can't.
| shireboy wrote:
| I have same problem and landed on using simplelists.com for email
| groups. Users don't have to install anything or get yet another
| account.
|
| Still, I would like to find something that does text, email, and
| basic group features like calendar and photos
| 65 wrote:
| There's always phpBB (old school) or Discord (new school).
| fullstackhero wrote:
| There are a couple commercial options in this space.
|
| Example: mightynetworks.com
| sam_uk wrote:
| I've had some success with Humhub. Writeup here:
| https://www.shareddigitalguides.org.uk/guides/social-network...
| geor9e wrote:
| My local communities are on (in order of popularity): facebook,
| telegram, discord, facebook messenger, signal. Some attempted to
| migrate to mastodon and bluesky but those were all failures,
| since getting a large and diverse group to sign up for something
| new is a herculean task. You just need one popular poster to
| refuse to leave a platform for everyone to refuse to leave. I
| personally just use burner accounts under my hamsters name for
| everything, lock down my permissions, use an RSS reader to see
| all my groups and friends facebook posts without having to visit
| (feedbro, all posts set to public).
| paride5745 wrote:
| Similar experience for me. Facebook groups, WhatsApp groups and
| telegram groups. Some years ago somebody tried to move people
| to signal groups, but it went nowhere... and this is Germany,
| where there is no sympathy for Meta and in general people are
| quite privacy aware.
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| I'd first figure out how much of it is something you want to do
| vs. something everyone wants to do.
|
| There's a content creator I follow that proudly moved from
| Youtube to their own Peertube instance. Even though I like their
| content, I never run into it anymore. Every couple months I think
| "oh yeah, I should check on them" and manually navigate to their
| Peertube instance and watch half a video.
|
| Make sure you aren't dooming the community.
| afiodorov wrote:
| Why don't you build it? Just the features people need of course.
| Seems like the kind of thing LLMs are quite good at (giving you
| prototypes).
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Find an open-source social media project.
|
| Set it up.
|
| Send the URL to your neighbors.
|
| See who joins. Might take off, might (probably) not. But seems to
| me that's basically it.
| caycep wrote:
| This is salient given policy moves by the CEO. My thoughts:
|
| -most of what you need is basically something similar to Facebook
| Groups (nowadays, I bookmark Facebook Groups for the 3 groups I
| follow, and skip the main feed, which is basically all ads and
| random memes these days)
|
| -you need a platform with mass adoption - FB got it w/ free
| accounts back in the day, connecting old classmates or whatnot.
| So a new platform would need to be free for average users
|
| -simple signup - single "Server" - i.e. can't have the weaknesses
| of individual forum server software or even mastodon/federated
| solutions (not enough users, hard to setup)
|
| -some way to monetize - i.e. the sins of Facebook can be traced
| (in part) to reliance on ads to monetize. so maybe charge for
| admins who want to set up their own group? It would be be an
| order of magnitude less income than Facebook but maybe
| sustainable if you keep the scope of such a site/service small.
|
| The younger gen these days use a lot of discord, older gen uses
| slack, but the way they are set up with individual "servers"
| seems clunky to me, and no web interface but it's relatively
| close.
| RegnisGnaw wrote:
| More question, how are you going to deal with SPAM and
| moderation?
| caycep wrote:
| yeah I suppose that is also a main issue - i.e. whatever
| monetary model behind it needs to fund teams that addresses
| that point
| oddb0d wrote:
| If you're adventurous, you could try:
|
| https://theweave.social/moss/
|
| It's early alpha - here's the story behind it:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kh1UVlIKvNg
| bastardoperator wrote:
| You need a private subreddit. Do not use nextdoor, we do admin
| there and it's just constantly fending off racist garbage.
| orwin wrote:
| Sorry I don't have time to look if a good solution exists, but
| you have to check out framalibre by framasoft. Half the apps they
| recommend don't really work out of the box, but the rest is
| pretty good, and everything can be self-hosted.
|
| https://framalibre.org/ (it's french only, sorry)
|
| Good luck!
| khrbrt wrote:
| A club I'm active with posts everything to Meetup and Facebook.
| Meetup is the "official" source of truth for posting events and
| photos and limited chats related to the events themselves ("Where
| are we parking?" type questions). Facebook for social chat and
| announcing "unofficial" hangouts/parties.
| acomjean wrote:
| Meetup is often used in the groups I'm in. A friend used to
| organize and it cost the organizers money but no the members.
| It was pretty ad free.
|
| Now they're asking members to sign up (and pay) for more
| feature (meetup plus). and show ads. But still decent for
| organizing meetings.
| red_admiral wrote:
| There are a few alternatives out there but nothing which has
| anything like the network effect of the big players. Spond seems
| to be popular in some areas (not just for sports teams as
| advertised).
| fooker wrote:
| This seems like a great way to splinter your community.
| nitwit005 wrote:
| I'd echo others that you probably won't succeed, but there is
| still an action you can take, which is to create new communities
| elsewhere.
|
| The success of newer social platforms like Discord is mostly
| people creating new groups there, rather than wholesale
| migrations. Facebook itself followed that pattern in earlier
| days.
| wintermutestwin wrote:
| Haha. discord is the only social app that would be worse for
| this purpose than facecrook.
|
| That said, your main point is solid.
| seltzered_ wrote:
| https://Hylo.com is trying to be that alternative, they're not
| federated yet (longer-term goal i think) but they are open-
| source.
| Neil44 wrote:
| WhatsApp groups are big in the UK, I think you can do QR join
| codes.
| talkingtab wrote:
| Yup. Same situation. I suspect same motivation. Interested in
| collaboration.
|
| I've never used this before but you can try:
|
| 2i2wbyza4 at mozmail dot com
|
| Or suggest a contact method.
| neilv wrote:
| A friend recently moved to a rural area, and this question came
| up. I mentioned Fediverse as one possibility, with caveats.
|
| I think you'd have to go through and make sure you know exactly
| what to tell them to install/configure for each of the following
| scenarios:
|
| * Willing to install an iOS app.
|
| * Willing to install an Android app.
|
| * Willing to create an account in a Web site, and want to get
| email when someone in the group says something (with a hashtag or
| whatever).
|
| Also see whether they're willing to talk on Fediverse, or they
| want something less public.
| rylan-talerico wrote:
| Lu.ma is great.
| kaikai wrote:
| I live in a small community that relies on Facebook, and I would
| be shocked if you could get people to switch. You might get a
| few, but the network effect is strong enough that most will stay
| on Facebook.
|
| One alternative is an old-school email list. We have one run by a
| single older woman, who refuses any form of updates or help. If
| she's sick, emails don't go out. If you want to sign up, you need
| to ask her. Still, it's easy for people to use on a variety of
| platforms, uses minimal data, doesn't have any tracking, and
| doesn't have ads. The longer-form, slower nature of email makes
| it less likely to devolve into drama like the local Facebook
| groups do.
|
| Even if you do self-host something decentralized, you need it to
| be reliable without you. If you succeed and your community relies
| on it, you're doing them a disservice by not making it a reliable
| even if your circumstances change.
| qznc wrote:
| The obvious Fediverse alternative for Facebook is
| https://friendi.ca
|
| It federates with Mastodon and co.
|
| Some statistics: https://fedidb.org/software/friendica
| scrollaway wrote:
| Use Lu.ma for the calendar + newsletter, and whatever platform
| has least friction for the most people for peer-to-peer
| communication (WhatsApp would be the answer in Europe, I dunno
| about your rural community).
| magneticmonkey wrote:
| I'm cofounder of an app called dateit an event planning and RSVP
| app we have been developing over the past couple of years. We
| started it because we noticed many of our friends were leaving
| Facebook, and group texts were becoming a hassle. While it might
| not have every feature you're looking for just yet, we're
| actively working to expand its functionality. In the future,
| we're hoping to introduce features like communities and a public
| events feed.
|
| You can check it out at https://dateit.com/ I'd be happy to offer
| you and maybe some others here free access to our premium
| features so you can experience everything the app has to offer.
| Just create an account and email me at rob@dateit.com and mention
| this post.
| goretron wrote:
| I'm working on building a simple, open source, no-frills app for
| people who just want a basic tool to organize small communities.
| If you're interested in something like that let me know.
| tacostakohashi wrote:
| The rural areas I've been a part of tend to have one or more
| noticeboards, either on the main street, or often at the main
| supermarket. People put up flyers, business cards, possibly with
| links or qrcodes, or otherwise phone numbers.
|
| In Vermont, there are mailing lists for every town that are
| widely used, https://vitalcommunities.org/community-discussion-
| lists/ and also Front Porch Forum https://frontporchforum.com/. I
| guess the latter is pretty much what you are talking about, a
| community social network that is not Facebook or Nextdoor and not
| trying to become a megacorp.
|
| There is still a lot of facebook groups for many small towns, but
| its easy enough to totally ignore and just use noticeboards,
| ask/talk to real people, etc if you want.
| dddddaviddddd wrote:
| Depends what your community needs. I'm part of a dance group that
| only needs to communicate events, so most communication happens
| by email (BCC from organizer to everyone). Then, anything more
| complicated happens in-person or through other channels.
| tqi wrote:
| > I want to move our local communities off Facebook and onto our
| own platform
|
| If you're serious about this, then you need to ask yourself (as
| dispassionately as possible) why you think this should happen.
| What benefits are you trying to provide, what shortcomings are
| trying to bridge. Then validate with your community that these
| are actually problems they even want addressed, and if so how
| badly do they want it. Then search for alternatives that
| explicitly accomplish that.
| vishnunarang wrote:
| I would 100% recommend https://www.mightynetworks.com/ Look at
| the case studies as well to see how successful communities have
| been on this platform http://www.mightynetworks.com/case-studies
| brailsafe wrote:
| [delayed]
| jfactorial wrote:
| Start a Slack and invite your community to it. Moderate it
| graciously with a simple, public, fair code of conduct. Make sure
| all the FB users are invited. The features just beat Facebook
| IMHO.
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