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Ask HN: Organize local communities without Facebook?

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Re: Ask HN: Organize local communities without Facebook?

#231

Post by lowercased »

briandear wrote: post #190
coldpie wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good question, let's try to answer it. Suppose OP believes they have a serviceable replacement in place. What arguments could they use to convince their communities to switch to it? Here's some ideas: - No ads. - Free, even for business-use. - No algorithm interfering with visibility. - It's usable by community members who do not have a Facebook account, for whatever reason. - Allows for more free-form content. - Mor…

Who pays for it?

I'd suspect the 'free' and 'no ads' would be somewhat mutually exclusive. Perhaps a particular group organizer pays a modest amount - $19/year(?) - to manage/moderate groups up to X000 members.

Re: Ask HN: Organize local communities without Facebook?

#233

Post by darthrupert »

Zolomon wrote: post #196
bko wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doing something personally is fine. But trying to convince an entire community to ditch something that works and is likely incredibly valuable to them to stick it to some billionaire you don't like is just wrong.

We all helped our families and loved ones to ditch MSN for Google Talk for Skype for WhatsApp for Discord etc. It might happen again. :)

You're being sarcastic when you're implying that any of those switches were worth it, right?

Re: Ask HN: Organize local communities without Facebook?

#234

Post by nitwit005 »

I'd echo others that you probably won't succeed, but there is still an action you can take, which is to create new communities elsewhere.

The success of newer social platforms like Discord is mostly people creating new groups there, rather than wholesale migrations. Facebook itself followed that pattern in earlier days.

Re: Ask HN: Organize local communities without Facebook?

#235

Post by [deleted] »

scarface_74 wrote: post #205
coldpie wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone agrees this is an uphill battle. What I'm saying is that's a boring reason not to do something you believe in.

It doesn’t matter what the poster believes. He is doing something for the benefit of a community that doesn’t care about whatever ideological battle he is trying to fight and inconveniencing them in the process

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Organize local communities without Facebook?

#236

Post by robertlagrant »

malfist wrote: post #155
robertlagrant wrote: post #116

Does Nextdoor have anything useful for you? They have community events and so forth.

I don't know about your nextdoor, but my nextdoor is complete trash. Half the posts are people asking for trades people recommendations and the other half are "this [minority] person walked by my house twice, anyone know if they're a criminal?" Community building on that platform seems like it'd be really difficult with it's current atmosphere.

Oh, it's the pettiest platform. I used to like going on there and imperiously reminding everyone that we're all neighbours when things got heated.

Re: Ask HN: Organize local communities without Facebook?

#237

Post by gabruoy »

jf22 wrote: post #110
latexr wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tell that to Jadav Payeng, who planted a forest by himself. He accomplished, on his own, more for the good of the world than most communities on Facebook ever will. https://interestingengineering.com/science/jadav-payeng-the-...

Eh, that's improvement, but the world didn't change because of a small forest.

He very literally did change the world. There wasn’t a forest there and now there is. In fact the conception of “the world” as an abstract global concept is much less impactful than what people see outside their window and in their city/community.

Re: Ask HN: Organize local communities without Facebook?

#238

Post by robertlagrant »

coldpie wrote: post #226
pixl97 wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hello, it appears you've never even ran the most basic internet platform before in your life. Simply put you have to ask the most important questions first, then build an app backwards from that 1) How will it be paid for 2) How will it be moderated. So, you've already failed number one. You have no means to pay for it. Then you failed number two. If it gains even a modicum of popularity it will be completely and tot…

I agree it's unlikely to succeed, but I find thinking about our problems and trying to fix them much more admirable & interesting than just rolling over and accepting things as they are. You can't improve things if you never even try.

These aphorisms also don't improve things. There are actual barriers to trying something; if your suggestion doesn't clear them then yes, it's no point trying that suggestion.

Re: Ask HN: Organize local communities without Facebook?

#240

Post by PaulHoule »

davidw wrote: post #175
PaulHoule wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first thing that comes to mind for me is https://nextdoor.com/ which is very much about community organizing but it has an aura of "people spreading rumors about bicycle thefts at the movie theater downtown (why don't they call the cops?)", the woman who radiates creepy signs of precarity (is cleaning up and looking for the phone number of the people who are suspected to run an illegal landfill) and then posts sc…

I wonder if a subreddit would work? Nextdoor dot com is actually even more toxic than a lot of Facebook is and I would avoid at all costs.

My problem w/ a subreddit is that reddit would show you a lot of stuff that is off-mission for the group and surrounding community. Also I'd expect such a page to be focused around getting people to show up to events rather than having discussions (e.g. the moderation problem is much easier if discussions are only for the purposes of the group; off-topic rants about divisive subjects are easy to squash; you don't have the problem of the rumor mongering about crime which I think is toxic on nextdoor but doesn't cross the line)

I wouldn't mind ads but I'd want to see ads of the old-school sponsorship variety (the running club could see ads for the local running shoe store, one of the local grocery stores, an overfunded non-profit like the United Way, etc.) as opposed to the auction-based, personalized ads that you'd see on reddit. Similarly if a sidebar on the running club had a link to a local board game or ham radio club I'd think that's OK but the mission on my mind is to get people to join the ham radio club where they're going to do comms for the running club, not to maximize time on site.

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