7 ms·

The thing that holds me to Facebook is that it's become the town square for my local community. It's where people go to discuss the community's political chall

The thing that holds me to Facebook is that it's become the town square for my local community. It's where people go to discuss the community's political challenges. So many important dialogs about local issues happen on Facebook, and it's the only real way to be a part of those conversations. Things like zoning, planning, city and county budgeting, ordinances, and so on. If I leave, not only do I lose the ability to participate in those conversations in a significant way - I lose awareness that they're even happening. The newspaper (what's left of it) certainly doesn't cover them. I have many friends who I see on a regular basis in person, but we don't always talk about all of them. And when we do, it's often inspired by conversations that were already happening on Facebook and a continuation of the conversations happening there. We need a good replacement for this piece of it. Having an accessible, local town square where all the local activists, citizens, and officials can interact and dialog about local issues is really invaluable.

techrich 7y ago
Then people should meet at the town hall and talked, this kind of stuff got done before facebook. And people where just as busy, bringing kids up going to work etc.
- maxerickson 7y ago
  Well gee, wouldn't that be great. But a couple people leaving Facebook isn't going to lead to it.
- kristiandupont 7y ago
  Maybe they should. And maybe people should handwrite letters like they used to. But even if it might be what they should do, it's not what they are going to do.
- tmikaeld 7y ago
  Discussing and taking part of a topic online is also about seeding motivation, it's as important as actually going to a place. Plus, having the ability to plan, discuss, reference, lookup etc - _while_ discussing something, saves a ton of time and effort that would be wasted when speaking face-to-face.
ej12n 7y ago
Nextdoor comes to mind, but not necessarily a local online town square which I agree with your comment that a source like that is invaluable to keep up with local issues.
- hinkley 7y ago
  I've seen too many stories of people discovering their neighbors are racist/classist assholes on Nextdoor to want to participate. Leave me a few illusions about the inherent goodness of people.
  - vuln 7y ago
    Must be a geographical issue. I’m very active on next door and I’ve never seen such behavior. Sure there are a few spats like recently about fireworks but I’ve never witnessed anything “racist” or “classist”. I understand this is anecdotal, my experience might not match others.
    - brbsix 7y ago
      Probably. I live in Seattle and people seem to frequently complain about having to see homeless and other "undesirables" in their neighborhood. I love it when their posts also include stealthy photos of the offenders in question. /s I've seen neighbors who live in my same building posting this sort of crap. Obviously there are a lot of issues to address in the city, and people should certainly find ways to do that, but I find it really maddening when people pile on and and take out all of their frustrations on a single person.
  - andirk 7y ago
    (SF Bay Area here) I personally enjoy watching almost every ND convo degrade into which person is the biggest victim (race, class, and so on). Bothered me at first, but now it is sheer entertainment
  - Vrondi 7y ago
    Cannot possibly be worse than the way people act on Facebook.
rhacker 7y ago
It seems like we are all royally screwed if policy is now being decided on and only through facebook. I have never had a FB account and will never have one. It seems extremely crazy to be required to go through a bunch of legal terms of service just to participate in government. In fact it may be illegal technically.
- carlob 7y ago
  I totally agree with you. And I'm very scared of the day a job, the school my kids go to or whatever important life activity will require me to have a facebook, whatsapp, linkedin, twitter or whatever account. We need something to replace these, possibly a federated, open standard, but I guess even the self hosted forums of yore were much better than this.
  - mxuribe 7y ago
    There are numerous alternatives that could (and hopeful should) replace FB - through what is referred to as the FediVerse - specifically via Pleroma, Mastodon, GnuSocial, etc. While admittedly mastodon is the platform that gets the most mindshare (and most users access the fediverse through it), it is not the only one...And much like email, users employing mastodon as "their tool" can communicate with other users who might employ other tools like pleroma, etc. Users have a choice! And, this federated universe is all aligning on open federated standards like ActivityPub [1]. So, yeah, there are options already in existence...and, the challenge is less technical, and more: "how do you get YOUR network of friends/family onto the fediverse?" Well, the migration has already begun, so it should only be a matter of time... [1] https://www.w3.org/TR/activitypub/ https://www.w3.org/TR/activitypub/
    - majewsky 7y ago
      > Well, the migration has already begun, so it should only be a matter of time... As much as I would like this to be true, they said the same thing about XMPP.
- javagram 7y ago
jtr_47 7y ago
What if our very own public Libraries had the ability to host local communities' dialogs etc. One of the things that it would protect is "freedom" of speech and it would be a better platform for communities to voice their concerns etc, without the fear of having their data mined or even have their voices or issues removed, because it was offensive. Of course it would not be a perfect platform, but as an American, we need to start understanding and protecting the liberties and rights our own Constitution is providing us. Peace.
- salgernon 7y ago
  I'm not sure why you're being downvoted - but I really like the idea of public libraries hosting community social networks. Librarians have traditionally been fiercely privacy conscious and they could provide an archived platform for local government as well.
sailfast 7y ago
When I bought my new house, I got to join the neighborhood Facebook group. That’s where all the news happens. They used to have a listserv, but the on onboarding is better / easier on Facebook and you get more features than a listserv - because everyone is already there plus threaded comments. I really wish it were somewhere else so I didn’t have to log on. I’m just not sure where else it would be and still see the same level of engagement.
jadbox 7y ago
>The thing that holds me to Facebook is that it's become the town square Yep, but most social platforms are not really tuned to being a town square, and instead are optimized for feeds and stirring emotions. They often rewarding behavior that's counterproductive to finding common ground. We need platforms like DinnerTable.chat [1] that is built around the idea of bringing people together across the spectrum and localities. DTC is an open community-driven live discussion platform that matches you one-on-one with others to playfully challenge perspectives, while unlocking achievements. It's been my passion project for the last two years, and since beta, we've been growing steadily. [1] https://dinnertable.chat/about https://dinnertable.chat/about
- CodeCube 7y ago
  I'm not disagreeing with you (I've never used this service you linked) ... but what becomes "the town square" has nothing to do with how optimized or tuned it is for that purpose. People are gonna do what people are gonna do, and if you want to be involved with certain people, you gotta go where they are.
  - jadbox 7y ago
    Thanks, we're in the process of connecting directly with different communities. There's a few towns in California that we're working with to bring local civil debate topics to the platform. It's actually been a common topic of feedback for many of these towns that it's hard for people to discuss policies in a physical location because of time constraints, as well as traveling across town during after work rush hour traffic. Facebook groups/pages are often used for local community discussion, but they are not in practice 'town halls' where people talk about policies and are able to work through differences of opinion. There's a lot of research out there now that shows that Facebook and Twitter have had very little success in fostering cross-viewpoint discussions, mostly due to the platform mechanics.
- spurmboy 7y ago
  I say this with respect and for your benefit: this is the most cringe inducing product description I’ve ever read.
nunodonato 7y ago
MeetUp has potential... but the fact that it requires one paid account to start groups is probably whats holding it back. Otherwise, I love it
- vorpalhex 7y ago
  MeetUp got very expensive and their tooling is very disappointing. They used to be great for small social groups (I ran a quite popular one for boardgames and bars) but they got too enchanted chasing Enterprise-y recruiting events and their pricing model got all sorts of crazy.
Vrondi 7y ago
Facebook serves similar functions in my area, and is the best way you can find out if paving/waterline work/etc are causing street closures, or if wrecks or similar are causing a closure.
godelski 7y ago
I feel like this isn't so crazy of an idea, but any can't the city host it's own website with forums and everything? This could enable easier and more clear threading than Facebook, and you can look through history and pin topics/announcements. The library could be in charge of hosting it and archiving everything (isn't this already something libraries are supposed to do? The archiving of local news.) There's plenty of free software to do this too. There are so many variants that could be done off of this too. A federation of these servers, as towns help one another balance and archive data. Or help communication between towns. I'm sure a discussion somewhere like HN could quickly improve on this idea in a way that would be robust and easy to implement (because a key thing is that we want to get small towns to be able to implement this)
- canada_dry 7y ago
  > can't the city host it's own website with forums and everything Of course it could... but with tight public budgets it would likely be implemented so poorly as to be useless.
  - xtiansimon 7y ago
    My city can barely make a webpage (poor content structure), and event calendar that isn’t woefully out of date. What about the US Digital Services? A WPA program for 21st century?
  - godelski 7y ago
    Well then as a rebuttal: >> I'm sure a discussion somewhere like HN could quickly improve on this idea in a way that would be robust and easy to implement (because a key thing is that we want to get small towns to be able to implement this)
  - godelski 7y ago
    That's why I suggested a group of technologically savvy people undertake the challenge to devise a system that is trivial to implement. Cost likely isn't going to be much considering a small town isn't going to need much bandwidth and since many do already run websites (albeit shabby).
JJMcJ 7y ago
some schools for instance, announcements to parents are made via Facebook, so an account is almost essential.
NikkiA 7y ago
"Public Good" and "for profit" are incompatible.
kumarvvr 7y ago
I think an app like Telegram or Signal should fill that place. FB is too feed algorithm driven. For a townsquare like requirement, a chat group should be sufficient.

techrich 7y ago

Then people should meet at the town hall and talked, this kind of stuff got done before facebook. And people where just as busy, bringing kids up going to work etc.

maxerickson 7y ago
Well gee, wouldn't that be great. But a couple people leaving Facebook isn't going to lead to it.
kristiandupont 7y ago
Maybe they should. And maybe people should handwrite letters like they used to. But even if it might be what they should do, it's not what they are going to do.
tmikaeld 7y ago
Discussing and taking part of a topic online is also about seeding motivation, it's as important as actually going to a place. Plus, having the ability to plan, discuss, reference, lookup etc - _while_ discussing something, saves a ton of time and effort that would be wasted when speaking face-to-face.

ej12n 7y ago

Nextdoor comes to mind, but not necessarily a local online town square which I agree with your comment that a source like that is invaluable to keep up with local issues.

hinkley 7y ago
I've seen too many stories of people discovering their neighbors are racist/classist assholes on Nextdoor to want to participate. Leave me a few illusions about the inherent goodness of people.
- vuln 7y ago
  Must be a geographical issue. I’m very active on next door and I’ve never seen such behavior. Sure there are a few spats like recently about fireworks but I’ve never witnessed anything “racist” or “classist”. I understand this is anecdotal, my experience might not match others.
  - brbsix 7y ago
    Probably. I live in Seattle and people seem to frequently complain about having to see homeless and other "undesirables" in their neighborhood. I love it when their posts also include stealthy photos of the offenders in question. /s I've seen neighbors who live in my same building posting this sort of crap. Obviously there are a lot of issues to address in the city, and people should certainly find ways to do that, but I find it really maddening when people pile on and and take out all of their frustrations on a single person.
- andirk 7y ago
  (SF Bay Area here) I personally enjoy watching almost every ND convo degrade into which person is the biggest victim (race, class, and so on). Bothered me at first, but now it is sheer entertainment
- Vrondi 7y ago
  Cannot possibly be worse than the way people act on Facebook.

rhacker 7y ago

It seems like we are all royally screwed if policy is now being decided on and only through facebook. I have never had a FB account and will never have one. It seems extremely crazy to be required to go through a bunch of legal terms of service just to participate in government. In fact it may be illegal technically.

carlob 7y ago
I totally agree with you. And I'm very scared of the day a job, the school my kids go to or whatever important life activity will require me to have a facebook, whatsapp, linkedin, twitter or whatever account. We need something to replace these, possibly a federated, open standard, but I guess even the self hosted forums of yore were much better than this.
- mxuribe 7y ago
  There are numerous alternatives that could (and hopeful should) replace FB - through what is referred to as the FediVerse - specifically via Pleroma, Mastodon, GnuSocial, etc. While admittedly mastodon is the platform that gets the most mindshare (and most users access the fediverse through it), it is not the only one...And much like email, users employing mastodon as "their tool" can communicate with other users who might employ other tools like pleroma, etc. Users have a choice! And, this federated universe is all aligning on open federated standards like ActivityPub [1]. So, yeah, there are options already in existence...and, the challenge is less technical, and more: "how do you get YOUR network of friends/family onto the fediverse?" Well, the migration has already begun, so it should only be a matter of time... [1] https://www.w3.org/TR/activitypub/ https://www.w3.org/TR/activitypub/
  - majewsky 7y ago
    > Well, the migration has already begun, so it should only be a matter of time... As much as I would like this to be true, they said the same thing about XMPP.
javagram 7y ago

jtr_47 7y ago

What if our very own public Libraries had the ability to host local communities' dialogs etc. One of the things that it would protect is "freedom" of speech and it would be a better platform for communities to voice their concerns etc, without the fear of having their data mined or even have their voices or issues removed, because it was offensive. Of course it would not be a perfect platform, but as an American, we need to start understanding and protecting the liberties and rights our own Constitution is providing us. Peace.

salgernon 7y ago
I'm not sure why you're being downvoted - but I really like the idea of public libraries hosting community social networks. Librarians have traditionally been fiercely privacy conscious and they could provide an archived platform for local government as well.

sailfast 7y ago

When I bought my new house, I got to join the neighborhood Facebook group. That’s where all the news happens. They used to have a listserv, but the on onboarding is better / easier on Facebook and you get more features than a listserv - because everyone is already there plus threaded comments. I really wish it were somewhere else so I didn’t have to log on. I’m just not sure where else it would be and still see the same level of engagement.

jadbox 7y ago

>The thing that holds me to Facebook is that it's become the town square Yep, but most social platforms are not really tuned to being a town square, and instead are optimized for feeds and stirring emotions. They often rewarding behavior that's counterproductive to finding common ground. We need platforms like DinnerTable.chat [1] that is built around the idea of bringing people together across the spectrum and localities. DTC is an open community-driven live discussion platform that matches you one-on-one with others to playfully challenge perspectives, while unlocking achievements. It's been my passion project for the last two years, and since beta, we've been growing steadily. [1] https://dinnertable.chat/about https://dinnertable.chat/about

CodeCube 7y ago
I'm not disagreeing with you (I've never used this service you linked) ... but what becomes "the town square" has nothing to do with how optimized or tuned it is for that purpose. People are gonna do what people are gonna do, and if you want to be involved with certain people, you gotta go where they are.
- jadbox 7y ago
  Thanks, we're in the process of connecting directly with different communities. There's a few towns in California that we're working with to bring local civil debate topics to the platform. It's actually been a common topic of feedback for many of these towns that it's hard for people to discuss policies in a physical location because of time constraints, as well as traveling across town during after work rush hour traffic. Facebook groups/pages are often used for local community discussion, but they are not in practice 'town halls' where people talk about policies and are able to work through differences of opinion. There's a lot of research out there now that shows that Facebook and Twitter have had very little success in fostering cross-viewpoint discussions, mostly due to the platform mechanics.
spurmboy 7y ago
I say this with respect and for your benefit: this is the most cringe inducing product description I’ve ever read.

nunodonato 7y ago

MeetUp has potential... but the fact that it requires one paid account to start groups is probably whats holding it back. Otherwise, I love it

vorpalhex 7y ago
MeetUp got very expensive and their tooling is very disappointing. They used to be great for small social groups (I ran a quite popular one for boardgames and bars) but they got too enchanted chasing Enterprise-y recruiting events and their pricing model got all sorts of crazy.

Vrondi 7y ago

Facebook serves similar functions in my area, and is the best way you can find out if paving/waterline work/etc are causing street closures, or if wrecks or similar are causing a closure.

godelski 7y ago

I feel like this isn't so crazy of an idea, but any can't the city host it's own website with forums and everything? This could enable easier and more clear threading than Facebook, and you can look through history and pin topics/announcements. The library could be in charge of hosting it and archiving everything (isn't this already something libraries are supposed to do? The archiving of local news.) There's plenty of free software to do this too. There are so many variants that could be done off of this too. A federation of these servers, as towns help one another balance and archive data. Or help communication between towns. I'm sure a discussion somewhere like HN could quickly improve on this idea in a way that would be robust and easy to implement (because a key thing is that we want to get small towns to be able to implement this)

canada_dry 7y ago
> can't the city host it's own website with forums and everything Of course it could... but with tight public budgets it would likely be implemented so poorly as to be useless.
- xtiansimon 7y ago
  My city can barely make a webpage (poor content structure), and event calendar that isn’t woefully out of date. What about the US Digital Services? A WPA program for 21st century?
- godelski 7y ago
  Well then as a rebuttal: >> I'm sure a discussion somewhere like HN could quickly improve on this idea in a way that would be robust and easy to implement (because a key thing is that we want to get small towns to be able to implement this)
- godelski 7y ago
  That's why I suggested a group of technologically savvy people undertake the challenge to devise a system that is trivial to implement. Cost likely isn't going to be much considering a small town isn't going to need much bandwidth and since many do already run websites (albeit shabby).

JJMcJ 7y ago

some schools for instance, announcements to parents are made via Facebook, so an account is almost essential.

NikkiA 7y ago

"Public Good" and "for profit" are incompatible.

kumarvvr 7y ago

I think an app like Telegram or Signal should fill that place. FB is too feed algorithm driven. For a townsquare like requirement, a chat group should be sufficient.