6 ms·

For those of us in families that are spread over the globe in a dozen time zones and separated in different countries, what other methods of connection even com

For those of us in families that are spread over the globe in a dozen time zones and separated in different countries, what other methods of connection even come close to social media? Facebook (and the rest) have provided a way for us to vicariously experience glimpses into each other's lives and in many cases reconnect with people who we never would have otherwise.

fnordpiglet 4y ago
I would point out that email also serves here but with worse algorithms for displaying what you want to see :-)
owlninja 4y ago
I can understand this for sure! In my experience Facebook degraded and a lot of people that just posted pictures with small updates moved to Instagram. Again, anecdotally, I have a pocket of friends in Prague and they mostly used Instagram. But now Instagram is moving the same way with a clutter of suggested posts or 'reels' - or whatever their version is.
jhugo 4y ago
My extended family shares a paid Slack instance and it works great. Some of them are on Facebook as well, mostly for marketplace and groups; I don't use FB (I am not really interested in seeing glimpses of distant relatives' lives). I think there is a real future for services targeting the middle ground between the very public nature of Facebook and the very private nature of an email.
cassianoleal 4y ago
I have siblings, cousins and other relatives and friends spread around the globe. We keep in touch over Signal, WhatsApp, FaceTime, Jitsi, Messages... It's a little more work. We don't speak as often as we used to see each other's posts on Facebook but when we do get in touch it's a lot more personal and meaningful. It's not rare either. I speak to some pretty much daily, others weekly to monthly, and others perhaps more spread apart but it's always great when we do get in touch. No vicarious experiences, no voyeurism into one another's lifes. Only pure and intentional human connection with all the imperfections that come with it. I recommend it.
- FullyFunctional 4y ago
  I can't even remember when I deleted my FB account, but my experience matches yours exactly: less but better. It _is_ a bit of a pain to juggle the matrix of options, but the bulk go through iMessages, Keybase Chat, Twitter, and good ol' mail.
  - stevenjgarner 4y ago
    I am way past that point. I used to use Slack personally but I like Slack about as much as FB, so I now primarily have reverted to my own personal blog, where I make posts with video etc and take comments, and post those posts on FB, Twitter and other social media. It's like I have gone back to what works. My closest family and friends have a login to that blog where we share posts that are private. All our YouTube videos are unlisted and embedded on the blog with settings to prevent "Watch on YouTube" etc. I have my own nix servers and maintain shared family audio/photo/video/media content. We extensively use Signal, Facetime and Skype. When you have a large extended group that wants to stay interconnected globally there is only so much you can do - different participants have their own preferences and if you want to stay connected with them you have to use their poison of choice. It is unrealistic to alienate users who only know one or two platforms and lack the technical expertise, time and yes money to invest in yet again something new. Also, I never did understand the benefit you get from deleting your FB/Instagram account - Meta still owns your content. It never gets deleted. Isn't it better to maintain your account but lock it down to your own standards? (e.g. link external content, share content to focused groups of users, etc). You can use Messenger (which is all some people actually use). What do you gain by deleting the account? Just losing control. EDIT: One thing I think is great with FB is the ability to export all your content. I do that at least annually and have a MySQL database into which I import it all (which gives me the coveted ability to search for a specific post either by date back in 2008 for instance, by text etc). Why would I want to lose all that?
    - cassianoleal 4y ago
      > Meta still owns your content. It never gets deleted. How can you verify that? This would be against the GDPR and other data protection laws in other countries.
Banana699 4y ago
Why not "closed world" apps like Whatsapp or Discord ? I personally loath them (specifically Discord) but they seem optimized for the kind of use case you want. Facebook and friends are a huge and dysfunctional towns square, but you don't need a towns square to talk to your family, you need a private shed.
- mst 4y ago
  Those two seem very different to me. Discord, to me, is "shiny consumer IRC that I hate" (I similarly consider Slack to be "shiny commercial IRC that I hate"). Whatsapp, to me, is "the thing I use to replace SMS when I'm talking to people in other countries and don't want my phone bill to explode."
- josephd79 4y ago
  If they haven't already, it's only a matter of time before Discord spins up a way for companies to advertise on their platform.
- stevenjgarner 4y ago
  One of the things I do enjoy is Google Meet videos with my grandchildren that allow for the video to be saved. I can then save that video in my own (private) blog on my own private server. I have found that recording Facetime QT video on macOS/iOS is too problematic.
mst 4y ago
My chosen family (most of the people of my bio family I kept in touch with have passed on) are very much like that, but I keep in touch with them via a mixture of IRC, gchat and twitter DMs (fascinatingly the one member of my bio family I enjoy talking to who's still here uses twitter DMs to talk to me.) The people who're local to me I catch up with in person, and regularly get "oh, yeah, you're not on facebook, I can actually tell you about this" with a huge grin and it's a big happy for me every time. I've found that for whatever reason people's twitter feeds are "stuff I've found interesting" and I catch up with them separately from that, which I've found fine. (note: this is an observation of what works for me, please don't consider this as in any was a criticism of your use of facebook if it's working for you, keeping in touch with people is awesome and "whatever works for that is good" applies)
- josephd79 4y ago
  IRC > *

fnordpiglet 4y ago

I would point out that email also serves here but with worse algorithms for displaying what you want to see :-)

owlninja 4y ago

I can understand this for sure! In my experience Facebook degraded and a lot of people that just posted pictures with small updates moved to Instagram. Again, anecdotally, I have a pocket of friends in Prague and they mostly used Instagram. But now Instagram is moving the same way with a clutter of suggested posts or 'reels' - or whatever their version is.

jhugo 4y ago

My extended family shares a paid Slack instance and it works great. Some of them are on Facebook as well, mostly for marketplace and groups; I don't use FB (I am not really interested in seeing glimpses of distant relatives' lives). I think there is a real future for services targeting the middle ground between the very public nature of Facebook and the very private nature of an email.

cassianoleal 4y ago

I have siblings, cousins and other relatives and friends spread around the globe. We keep in touch over Signal, WhatsApp, FaceTime, Jitsi, Messages... It's a little more work. We don't speak as often as we used to see each other's posts on Facebook but when we do get in touch it's a lot more personal and meaningful. It's not rare either. I speak to some pretty much daily, others weekly to monthly, and others perhaps more spread apart but it's always great when we do get in touch. No vicarious experiences, no voyeurism into one another's lifes. Only pure and intentional human connection with all the imperfections that come with it. I recommend it.

FullyFunctional 4y ago
I can't even remember when I deleted my FB account, but my experience matches yours exactly: less but better. It _is_ a bit of a pain to juggle the matrix of options, but the bulk go through iMessages, Keybase Chat, Twitter, and good ol' mail.
- stevenjgarner 4y ago
  I am way past that point. I used to use Slack personally but I like Slack about as much as FB, so I now primarily have reverted to my own personal blog, where I make posts with video etc and take comments, and post those posts on FB, Twitter and other social media. It's like I have gone back to what works. My closest family and friends have a login to that blog where we share posts that are private. All our YouTube videos are unlisted and embedded on the blog with settings to prevent "Watch on YouTube" etc. I have my own nix servers and maintain shared family audio/photo/video/media content. We extensively use Signal, Facetime and Skype. When you have a large extended group that wants to stay interconnected globally there is only so much you can do - different participants have their own preferences and if you want to stay connected with them you have to use their poison of choice. It is unrealistic to alienate users who only know one or two platforms and lack the technical expertise, time and yes money to invest in yet again something new. Also, I never did understand the benefit you get from deleting your FB/Instagram account - Meta still owns your content. It never gets deleted. Isn't it better to maintain your account but lock it down to your own standards? (e.g. link external content, share content to focused groups of users, etc). You can use Messenger (which is all some people actually use). What do you gain by deleting the account? Just losing control. EDIT: One thing I think is great with FB is the ability to export all your content. I do that at least annually and have a MySQL database into which I import it all (which gives me the coveted ability to search for a specific post either by date back in 2008 for instance, by text etc). Why would I want to lose all that?
  - cassianoleal 4y ago
    > Meta still owns your content. It never gets deleted. How can you verify that? This would be against the GDPR and other data protection laws in other countries.

Banana699 4y ago

Why not "closed world" apps like Whatsapp or Discord ? I personally loath them (specifically Discord) but they seem optimized for the kind of use case you want. Facebook and friends are a huge and dysfunctional towns square, but you don't need a towns square to talk to your family, you need a private shed.

mst 4y ago
Those two seem very different to me. Discord, to me, is "shiny consumer IRC that I hate" (I similarly consider Slack to be "shiny commercial IRC that I hate"). Whatsapp, to me, is "the thing I use to replace SMS when I'm talking to people in other countries and don't want my phone bill to explode."
josephd79 4y ago
If they haven't already, it's only a matter of time before Discord spins up a way for companies to advertise on their platform.
stevenjgarner 4y ago
One of the things I do enjoy is Google Meet videos with my grandchildren that allow for the video to be saved. I can then save that video in my own (private) blog on my own private server. I have found that recording Facetime QT video on macOS/iOS is too problematic.

mst 4y ago

My chosen family (most of the people of my bio family I kept in touch with have passed on) are very much like that, but I keep in touch with them via a mixture of IRC, gchat and twitter DMs (fascinatingly the one member of my bio family I enjoy talking to who's still here uses twitter DMs to talk to me.) The people who're local to me I catch up with in person, and regularly get "oh, yeah, you're not on facebook, I can actually tell you about this" with a huge grin and it's a big happy for me every time. I've found that for whatever reason people's twitter feeds are "stuff I've found interesting" and I catch up with them separately from that, which I've found fine. (note: this is an observation of what works for me, please don't consider this as in any was a criticism of your use of facebook if it's working for you, keeping in touch with people is awesome and "whatever works for that is good" applies)

josephd79 4y ago
IRC > *