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Do folks have a suggestion for a Facebook alternative? I'm about fed up with the state of things, but still want to feel connected to social circles (even if th
by ktm5j 5mo ago
Do folks have a suggestion for a Facebook alternative? I'm about fed up with the state of things, but still want to feel connected to social circles (even if they're online only) and politics (ideally without the hate spam bots).
- outside1234 5mo agoBluesky
- Pay08 5mo agoBluesky both isn't an alternative to Facebook and is generally terrible too.
- microtonal 5mo agoMastodon has been great for me to follow niches I'm interested in.
- stvltvs 5mo agoThe trick is to get your friends and family to jump ship with you.
- jjulius 5mo agoI jumped ship, and the friends and family who are important to me are still on the ship, by and large. Yet I've never felt as though I'm missing out. We communicate via alternative forms (texts, calls, hanging out in person) and I have never felt disconnected. The whole trope about people being worried about missing out is misplaced - that feeling is exactly what these products are designed to imbue in their users. Ultimately, if you value others, you'll make the effort to connect somehow, and if they value you, they'll return that energy. If that two-way street doesn't exist, if they're not willing to give back a similar effort, then why do we need to know what they're doing or thinking every day?
- stvltvs 5mo agoI largely agree, but this discounts the personal value of keeping contact with weaker connections that we don't talk with often but still have some concern for.
- dfxm12 5mo agoGroup text? Individual texts/calls? Setting up a monthly codenames game or book club, etc.?
- thinkingtoilet 5mo ago[flagged]
- ktm5j 5mo agoI will do as I please, thanks.
- amanaplanacanal 5mo agoYou asked for a suggestion, they gave you one. And this is your response?
- ktm5j 5mo agoAre you serious? He didn't answer my question, he jumped all over me judging my choices and insinuated that I don't get enough real life human interaction.. so yes that's my response.
- jjulius 5mo agoYes, OP did - the alternative to social media is not more social media, which is a view shared by many. OP didn't judge you, they stated their opinion and asked you to soul search. If you truly feel that judged and offended, and I say this with kindness, perhaps you would do well to ask yourself why.
- tejohnso 5mo agoIf you have the option of moving people off of facebook, how about a slack or discord group? If they won't move off of facebook, I'm not sure there's anything you can do to retain the same level of interaction. Maybe you could allow yourself a reduced level of interaction while still feeling connected. For example, an SMS every couple of days should be plenty enough contact to keep up with any significant events. If you really want to take the reins, you could organise events yourself, ensuring you won't miss them.
- latexr 5mo agoSocial is where the people are. If you’re using Facebook to keep in touch with friends and family, the only viable alternative is wherever your friends and family are. Chances are it’s going to be impossible to switch everyone (or even most people) over, so you’re stuck if you care about those connections. Or you can do what I did and simply say “fuck it”. Get rid of your account anyway and deal with the consequences. I don’t even have WhatsApp (because, you know, Facebook) but don’t feel like that’s been a detriment to my social life. The people I care about understand and I see most of them on the regular. SMS and phone calls still work. I do know some people who live abroad that fortunately I can communicate via iMessage, but if that weren’t an option then email would have to do. I've been doing this for over a decade and while there was some friction at first, it’s been long since it has been an issue. It probably helps that these days most people understand that avoiding Meta is a good thing. If you don’t care about people you personally know in your social media, then pick whatever you want depending on features. I recommend Mastodon. It has quirks (what doesn’t) but it’s fine. Chronological (not algorithmic) time-line, open-source, you can even subscribe to people with RSS feeds. If there’s someone you’d like to follow from e.g. Bluesky, there’s often a Mastodon bot for their posts. Or you can subscribe via RSS there as well.
- ktm5j 5mo agoThanks for the reply.. yeah I might just be at the "fuck it" point. I've done that before and it always makes me feel healthier (calmer, sleep better, etc).
- buellerbueller 5mo agoThe offline world is where the people are. Social is where the accounts are, many of which have a nonhuman substrate with the goal of coercing alignment out of you.
- latexr 5mo agoI don’t understand the point of the pedantry. Obviously I was talking about people you know personally that you know are not bots, and obviously I prefer and advocate for connecting with those you interact with offline. I don’t see how you can read my comment in good faith and take anything else from it.
- chadgpt3 5mo agoWhat do you use it for? There's never a single alternative to a social media platform the way there is for say online shopping - the experience isn't fungible. But you may be able to find another platform to fulfil the same purposes.
- forshaper 5mo agoThe software is never the issue with this, it's where people are that's the problem. Though I did witness my age-peer friend groups finally switching to Signal in the late 2010s (away from Facebook Messenger), I don't actually know what convinced them. The security-conscious minority element had been pushing it since it started but were generally mocked. I think it finally showed up in a New York Times article, which is what helped them.
- Pay08 5mo agoI'm curious why WhatsApp isn't much more popular in the USA. Is it the lack of anonymity?
- Cider9986 5mo agoNo, I don't see any indication it has anything to do with the "anonymity". Very few people, even technical people care about anonymity to the extent that they try to achieve it in everyday life. It is frequently confused with privacy, however. (https://www.privacyguides.org/en/basics/why-privacy-matters/ https://www.privacyguides.org/en/basics/why-privacy-matters/) iMessage is the dominant messenger because most people have iPhones combined with the fact that SMS has long been free and unlimited, so people don't see the problem of using it with the occasional Android user. Really, it's all about the defaults. Even though everyone uses iPhones, they still use the calling feature from their cellular provider, because Apple doesn't push FaceTime as the default calling mechanism. Signal is gaining popularity because there are people that care about using it over iMessage. Signal is 100x better than WhatsApp, but it feels so unstable using any centralized messenger that has complete control over the software and the users. No centralized service can truly be relied on, non-profit or for-profit. But clearly that's what has to happen in order for the service to become mainstream, so it's an acceptable compromise for me. It's not like I can't say Signal does great things for privsec and metadata reduction.
- buellerbueller 5mo agoFor the politics part: join and volunteer for a local political party, even a small one, that aligns with your views.