Facebook Groups alternatives?
reddit / selfhosted

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SecretSinner · 2023-12-07 18:53

Hello friends! I lead and organize a handful of in-person groups of
people for various reasons and am looking for a better way to keep
things organized. For instance, I write and direct a play once a year
and need a better way to wrangle my actors and crew. I also have a
group of TTRPG players that occasionally get together for short
campaigns.

The biggest hurdle is that it's been impossible to get everyone onto
the same platform. I have been using a Google Groups mailing list to
communicate with the cast for my plays for years. However, I've
discovered that young people don't check their email. Conversely, some
of my older friends have been unwilling to adopt something like
Telegram. Facebook Groups does most of what I want, but a few people
would rather wear nothing but itchy wool socks the rest of their lives
than use Facebook.

The most important feature is a messaging platform that will allow me
to send a message once and have it reach people on their platform of
choice. At a minimum, I'd like it to send to email and SMS. If the SMS
messages are simply a notification that they need to check their
email, that would be ok, but I'd prefer something that would send the
entire message as SMS. I'd prefer a system that also lets the end
users choose other platforms like Telegram, Signal, Facebook
Messenger, etc.

I prefer 2 way communication. IE, I can send a message out, someone
receives it via SMS or Telegram or whatever, and they're able to reply
to the entire group. I can live with it if it's just one-way
communication with me sending messages to the group.

Other features I'd love to have:

1. Group calendar: I'd like to have a URL that shows a rehearsal
calendar, for instance, as well as the ability for the end users to
subscribe to the calendar using iCAL.
2. Scheduling: It would be great to have a scheduling feature where
people can indicate their availability and I can build schedules from
that.
3. Polling: I'd like to be able to poll my group on various topics.
4. Documents: Ability to store and share documents.
5. Tasks: I'd like a task list where I can assign tasks with due dates
to specific people.
6. Side conversations:  The ability to have separate conversations
with specific members of the group.
7. Multiple groups: I'd like to have distinct groups that I can
manage, IE the actors for the show or the TTRPG group.

I'm figuring out how to setup NextCloud, Discourse, and Rocketchat to
test those out. Those seemed to be the most promising options based on
what I've seen so far. I thought I'd check in here to see what
suggestions you guys may have.

Thank you!

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Haliphone · 2023-12-07 20:40

https://www.reddit.com/r/selfhosted/comments/18cvnpx/five_years_later_
mobilizon_reaches_maturity/ maybe this?

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watchdog_timer · 2023-12-08 01:47

You might want to look into some of the Facebook-like open-source
social network programs like [Friendica](https://friendi.ca),
[Hubzilla](https://https://hubzilla.org/page/info/discover),
[Libervia](https://libervia.org/), or  [GNU
Social](https://notabug.org/diogo/gnu-social)