6 ms·

Back in 2005-ish era, I helped reboot a college club (I was the coach/advisor). We started out using forum software to co-ordinate what we were doing but event

• dartharva 3mo ago
  I tried hard but am failing to see how what you say couldn't just be fulfilled by a chat group today (or even back then).
  • ericbarrett 3mo ago
    But which one - SMS/RCS? iMessage? WhatsApp? Signal? Telegram? Discord?
    • alexpotato 3mo ago
      Exactly this. Plus the notifications for chat groups are basically: - show me everything - don't notify me at all
      • gregdaniels421 3mo ago
        Discord is a bit better about that with "pings"
    • soramimo 3mo ago
      E-Mail! :)
    • Symbiote 3mo ago
      When I ran a student society we used an email mailing list. You can have two if necessary, one only for announcements and one for discussion.
      • nradov 3mo ago
        This tends to run into problems with people not actually reading their email, especially when the messages are falsely classified as spam. That might not be a problem if all the members are on the same school mail server but it's problematic for general usage.
      • jandrewrogers 3mo ago
        Many people don't read their email anymore. When I send an email I often have to send a text message to the person telling them I sent an email or they won't see it.
        • hvb2 3mo ago
          > Many people don't read their email anymore. I don't see how that would work as in many jurisdictions, email is an accepted legal way to communicate between a company and a customer. So when you don't year your email that's like not reading your snail mail in the 90s. It might go well for some time, until you miss that one message about a late payment or something...
          • jandrewrogers 3mo ago
            A large number of services that send various billing etc things via snail mail and email also send text messages. The other part of this is that almost everything is automated these days for most people. Bill payment etc happens automagically. Most necessary notifications occur via phone apps. Ignoring email works just fine, as evidenced by the fact that the majority of people I know don't check email unless it is for their work. Zero impact on their lives. It is the same with snail mail. I think I check my snail mail 6-8 times per year mostly so that the letter box doesn't physically overflow with junk.
    • erichocean 3mo ago
      Whatever the group owner picks, same as it's always been. No one cares about the actual choice, only that it is made.
      • tanseydavid 3mo ago
        > No one cares about the actual choice, only that it is made. If the actual choice requires me to install an app then I care quite a lot and will probably decline to join in. I don't think that I am the only one who feels this way.
        • bawolff 3mo ago
          Then life moves on without you in the club. Unless they are chosing something super obscure and sketchy, most club members are going to be fine with the leader just saying, we're picking whatsapp, either join or dont.
    • CatMustard 3mo ago
      Funny, every time I've joined a new group for dancing or art classes or DnD or anything it's always 100% of the time a WhatsApp group, no questions asked. (This is in Ireland). Never occurred to me that Americans wouldn't have a common group chat app everyone uses. Do Americans not all use iMessage, since pretty much everybody has an iPhone there?
      • radiorental 3mo ago
        >Do Americans not all use iMessage, since pretty much everybody has an iPhone there? I'm Irish and travel back and forth a lot. First, not everyone has iPhones, Android has 40% of the market. Older generations use Facebook to manage their clubs. I'm increasingly seeing Whatsapp and occasionally Signal for younger and more tech-savvy social circles. Facebook is non-existent in sub 35 year olds. Its just taking longer to switch over (or away from) Facebook given how tech savvy older folks are here compared to Ireland.
      • SoftTalker 3mo ago
        I'm probably the wrong person to answer since I don't and never have used any social media, but it seems like groups here mostly use Instagram. Or just iMessage with fallback to SMS for those not on iPhones. Unlike most of the rest of the world, iPhones dominate in the USA.
      • ethersteeds 3mo ago
        Around 58% of American smartphone users are iPhone. It's a lot, but not enough to be universal. In my family there's 5 iPhone users and 4 Android users, amusingly similar to the national ratio. Apple has famously made its strategy to use iMessage to enforce exclusivity. If you want to reach everyone, it's not iMessage. And Whatsapp in the US is worse, closer to 1/3.
        • hylaride 3mo ago
          What people miss about the US phone market is that while it's almost 60% iPhones, the vast majority of the top half of the income spectrum use them. I'm not sure if it's the same as it was a decade ago, but being excluded from iMessage group chats was a real exclusionary move for many teenagers.
    • joe_mamba 3mo ago
      I have Messager app fatigue at this point (where I live). - Doctors offices and official services use SMS. - Some of my close family and friends use Signal (on my pressure). - The distant boomers use Facebook Messenger - With the younger people they use Snapchat. - Almost everyone else in the country uses Whatsapp as that's the dominant messaging app. - My friends who live in Berlin use Telegram - Online communities for tinkering and foss projects require Discord. God I miss the 2000s.
      • jjav 3mo ago
        > God I miss the 2000s. Exactly! Having to check 27 different places for messages (also add individual sites like linkedin, etc, where people message), it is completely ridiculous. Just send me email. It's universal, standard, no corporation owns it (thus no corportation can shut me out unlike facebook or all the proprietary solutions).
        • fragmede 3mo ago
          Pidgin had it so good. Have you tried Beeper? https://www.beeper.com/ https://www.beeper.com/
          • rw_grim 3mo ago
            Pidgin is still here although I'm behind on the monthly updates... https://discourse.imfreedom.org/tag/state-of-the-bird/1 https://discourse.imfreedom.org/tag/state-of-the-bird/1
          • jjav 3mo ago
            Intriguing, thanks, will need to check it out.
        • inigyou 3mo ago
          Is your email not so full of slightly interesting FOMO junk that you don't find the energy to sift through?
    • bawolff 3mo ago
      I think there is less cost to being in multiple chat platforms than multiple social media platforms.
    • baby 3mo ago
      Whatsapp, that’s the one everyone uses
    • wolvoleo 3mo ago
      WhatsApp is paramount here in Spain. Telegram a strong second. The rest non-existent. Though I use discord for global reach interest groups. Never for local communities. Small ones are always on WhatsApp. Big ones usually telegram.
  • deleted 3mo ago
    [deleted]
• SkyPuncher 3mo ago
  I think we’re seeing a similar thing pan out with AI. When the barrier for something is too low, people realize that it’s not actually worth the other party’s effort to communicate it to them. For me, physical communication is quickly becoming a signal that someone actually put effort into things.
• adjejmxbdjdn 3mo ago
  The terminology explains what happened. The Zuckerberg movie was called The Social Network. At the time we saw the likes of Facebook as networks intended to build 1-1 communications. Since then, it’s become social Media. It’s now about centralized structures broadcasting messages to subscribers and followers. The only difference from the past is who the broadcasters can be, but it’s no longer about building networks between people.
  • codedokode 3mo ago
    [flagged]
    • asdff 3mo ago
      More so that they are more prolific.
      • FireBeyond 3mo ago
        And they often don't mind ads attached to their every post. Especially if they earn a little bit from each.
    • adjejmxbdjdn 3mo ago
      Yeah, that’s absolutely true. And thats exactly my point. Social media is about “generating content”. Social networks were about connecting with people, not about consuming the content they generated. Heck, the original version of Facebook didn’t even have content. The only interaction you could have with someone else was giving them a “poke”.
    • marssaxman 3mo ago
      The blogosphere was all about random people writing whatever they felt like: blogging died after the professionals took over and tried to make money at it.
      • watwut 3mo ago
        It died when google made it impossible to find those blogs. At some point, it stopped returning blogs that did not SEO hard and normal writing people just were not doing SEO.
• Eric_WVGG 3mo ago
  This is what the Bluesky “AT Protocol” is meant to solve, though I fear it might be a bit too late.
  • dbingham 3mo ago
    Except AT Protocol can't do the very thing that made Facebook the commons: privacy. There's a proposal to add privacy to the protocol (private posts, private groups), but I don't think anyone has solved the real root problem with trying to implement privacy in a federated system (as opposed to P2P), which is the bad administrator problem. The proposal I saw still relied on trustworthy app administrators to respect a post's privacy settings. And that's a huge flaw. Friendica and Diaspora both have the same problem, and to my knowledge don't have a good solution for it. They both just sort of hand wave it away. I'm waiting to see if someone comes up with a good solution for the unsafe admin problem, but so far I haven't seen one.
    • codedokode 3mo ago
      For privacy you should be using Matrix private chat with E2EE, no? So maybe we just need to add channels like in Telegram to Matrix?
    • inigyou 3mo ago
      Privacy works fine in Fediverse. The admins of both servers can read your messages, but you should expect that. Fediverse is email with gratuitous JSON and HTTP. ATProto is trying to implement privacy on top of global public pub/sub which just obviously doesn't work.
• varispeed 3mo ago
  > Part of me hopes that we got back to the late 1990s dedicated websites/forums. That seems to be the Discord model but let's see. Well, thanks for lobbying, that's got regulated away. One must be mad today to run a forum.
  • jafitc 3mo ago
    "thanks to lobbying". if you use "for" it sounds like you are adressing the OP and he did the lobbying that you don't like.
    • varispeed 3mo ago
      Yes, I meant "to". Thank you.
  • inigyou 3mo ago
    Believe it or not, police do not show up and take you to jail because someone on your forum is a terrorist. They may show up and ask you questions.
• rustcleaner 3mo ago
  I always hated how everything moved off independent forums and onto facebook. Zuckerberg was right about with his early idiots comment.
  • tim-projects 3mo ago
    It's a friction thing. Managing a messaging perform takes effort and technical understanding. Facebook groups won by default ten years ago.
• 1659447091 3mo ago
  Why not group emails? There's a guy that runs multiple sports teams at a local recreation center, in multiple adult divisions (wide age/culture rage), and he has been using email to great effect for over a decade that I have known him. I get 2-3 weekly emails about teams that need a sub for a game and those spots continue to fill up quickly. He probably has the majority of regulars (in the hundreds) at that sports center on his various email list. It just works. They tried chat groups once and that was a disaster.
  • deleted 3mo ago
    [deleted]
  • wiether 3mo ago
    I've never seen "group emails" working, even when amongst technical people. Part of it is just how emails work, part of it is how each clients work, part of it is people not knowing/caring. You'll have: - the guy that don't use the group email address as recipient, but personal email address - the guy that change the subject which starts a new thread/discussion - the guy that include all previous emails in their answer - the guy with a signature that takes two screens to scroll - the guy with an awful text font/color - the guy that CC their whole address book, including the group email address, for personal stuff - ... I can go on. I went through this mess many times during the years, in various contexts; always the same result.
    • LoganDark 3mo ago
      Subject lines shouldn't be relied on to identify emails. In-Reply-To / References exists in most clients if the mailing list specifies a Message-ID...
      • brudgers 3mo ago
        Subject lines have always been the best way and most emails could be nothing but subject line if blank bodies were allowed. But because subject lines are more work and people who love sending email tend to love it because it is very low effort, the venn of email senders and those who write subject lines is small.
• mmsimanga 3mo ago
  South African here. Just about all notifications have moved to WhatsApp. Most school classes have a group for the parents, extended family group, immediate family group, residents association group, high school classmates group, gym class group, home town group ... the list goes on. Sounds like a lot but most groups tend to have few messages.
  • kimos 3mo ago
    Canadian here. I have a WhatsApp account and the app on my phone with zero contacts in it. Nobody here uses it. But every time I leave the country I need it for some service or business or who knows what. It seems like the rest of the world all agreed to use this app and Canada (and I think the US) just said “naw thanks…” and have no common app or method.
    • deleted 3mo ago
      [deleted]
    • MikeNotThePope 3mo ago
      What are people using in Canada? SMS?
      • unixhero 3mo ago
        Costco membership meetups
      • ishouldstayaway 3mo ago
        Apple Messages.
      • optimalquiet 3mo ago
        If Canada is similar to the US, a mixture of SMS, Discord, and iMessage. The kids use Snapchat, your aunt uses Facebook messenger or iMessage, and occasionally someone might be into Telegram although mostly scammers. Teams or Slack for official workplace or college chat groups. GroupMe was popular for college groups when I was an undergraduate though that’s long since gone by the wayside. Most importantly, if you show up as a “green bubble” person you will be lightly teased about it, including on a date.
• DANmode 3mo ago
  ?! The commons became the commons again, instead of being partially or completely trapped on Facebook, and you’re upset? Bulletin boards are awesome. Physical assembly is awesome.
• bobthepanda 3mo ago
  for events specifically, Partiful seems to be the thing in my area finally displacing the Facebook events model, and it's a lot less bloated.
  • fragmede 3mo ago
    It comes from Palantir though, so some people don't want to use it for that reason.
• kevin_thibedeau 3mo ago
  Google Groups still exists. Easy enough for organizations to use for sharing announcements.
• wolvoleo 3mo ago
  True. Here in Europe WhatsApp is the new social media. Especially WhatsApp groups. In that sense it was a smart decision of meta to buy it. Most of my friends are on Instagram too but nobody really communicates there. The chance of missing something important is way too high.
• zug_zug 3mo ago
  Today it's discord, we just don't call it social media because it's private by default with no intent to force you into a networking & self-disclosure hell hole
• 1vuio0pswjnm7 3mo ago
  There is nothing wrong with the bulletin board at the student center It works It's kinda sad that members of a club have to share their private details with some remote third party focused on surveillance, data collection and targeting ads in order communicate with other members or potential members. Not to mention the possibility of "age verification" When used for public notice, the benefits, if any, of "social media" over the bulletin board at the student center are probably not worth the hassles
  • sysworld 3mo ago
    I love bulletin boards. We had one in the apartment I used to live in. There is something about getting help/helping out super local people.
  • advisedwang 3mo ago
    Some reasons why a computer system is beneficial: * Can send out updates quickly, e.g. changing rooms when you discover your secretary forgot to book the usual one that week 5 minutes before the club meeting. * Folks can see/post updates without going in to the student center in person. This is particularly helpful if there's any club members who live further away and/or down come by the student center regularly and/or aren't highly engaged enough to go check a board. * An archive of messages can be valuable. I have dug though club archives to find the name of a guest speaker from several years prior. Physical records make this difficult, especially in a college club where leadership changes frequently and papers get lost. Of course... email can do all of that. The lesson is to be judicious with technology, not abandon it entirely.
    • butlike 3mo ago
      Email really is the superior choice. You subscribe to the ads you want to see (then unsubscribe from them later). You are your own targeted advertiser with email. No need for a third party to collect my blood type to get me more relevant ads, just have every retailer have a little checkbox "would you like to subscribe to our ads?" at point-of-sale.
  • 1vuio0pswjnm7 3mo ago
• hadlock 3mo ago
  The other big problem is, group notifications went from 100% success rate, to nearly 0%. I bought a budget model sainsmart/genmitsu cnc thing to goof around with, as a hobby/assist other hobbies, and 98% of their user community is on Facebook, but Facebook doesn't show me their posts most of the time, because sainsmart isn't paying to promote their group. This group would be a wealth of information every time I opened the fb app, but unless I explicitly remember to go visit their "community" by searching for it, I'll never see those posts. There's an enormous Cyclekart (vintage-ish go karts with proportionally correct wheels) community on fb as well but unless that's the ONLY thing you use their app for, they won't show you that stuff. TL;DR FB is worthless for social networks, because if they showed you the groups you were there to check on, nobody would pay to promote their own things. Once an avid user, I go 1-2 weeks at a time with the app uninstalled now unless there's something specific I need to check on.
  • soco 3mo ago
    I have Facebook and follow about a dozen of journalist accounts. Almost daily I'm asked "should we show you more of this" for their posts - darnit that's THE reason I'm here, why asking me continuously??? And what's the alternative, bimbos doing little content creator dances?
• frollogaston 3mo ago
  I was in college at the time when people had stopped using Facebook to post random personal stuff and started using it for pages, groups, events, and messaging. I had avoided it before, but it was actually useful then.
• TacticalCoder 3mo ago
  > Part of me hopes that we got back to the late 1990s dedicated websites/forums. That seems to be the Discord model but let's see. Dunno: people in my circles all have Telegram (Europe here but I think they have 1 billion MAU now: they're not just successful in Europe). I've got Telegram groups depending on my interests. I just got invited to try ball trap (clay pidgeon shooting) tomorrow. Then another group set up a beer after work on wednesday. And on thursday, another group, another after-work meetup. It's not because we don't use WhatsApp that we use SMSes: nope, we're all on Telegram. People can lament Telegram is proprietary, russian (is it, I forgot?), etc. but at least it's not the Zuck's FaceBook/Instagram/WhatsApp exploitative ecosystem. And people love that fact.
• coffeefirst 3mo ago
  Better yet, maybe a bulletin board and an email list is all you need? I have some extremely useful Discords and Signal group chats, but not everything ought to be an always on chatterbox.
  • tanseydavid 3mo ago
    >> but not everything ought to be an always on chatterbox Nothing deserves to an "always-on-chatterbox" unless the end-user truly chooses it because that is what they want or need. This is part of the larger problem. How many "always-on-chatterboxes" competing for one's attention before it becomes close-to-impossible to concentrate on anything that requires some actual thinking.
• susiecambria 3mo ago
  Bulletin boards! They are such a great thing. When I started doing promotion of public events sponsored by a small nonprofit in rural Virginia (USA), I was handed several pieces of paper with notes like post office, banks, dry cleaners, lumber yard. Over time, I've built a spreadsheet of places to share event and other community information. There's churches, HOAs, social media groups, IRL locations, media outlets, and so on. I am constantly referring people to the list to use (share information and seek information0 and edit. I knew very few people would make edits but I expected a couple of folks to use it for outreach. About a month ago, I started thinking that my small neck of the woods could use something other than FB to share info. I'd love for electronic discussion groups to fill the void. Of course there are downsides, starting with slow adoption. But I feel like it's a lift anyone can manage given that it's based in email. Of course, what will be shared is stupid stuff and not what I want (public opinion on state and local policies) and particularly information relevant to people with low incomes.
• inigyou 3mo ago
  Discord, it's Discord.