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Ask HN: Organize local communities without Facebook?
361–370 of 401 posts
Re: Ask HN: Organize local communities without Facebook?
#362Everything I do is either a Whatsapp group or a Telegram group these days. Whatsapp is owned by Meta but is at least encrypted, private and free from the bullshit of a real social media. Telegram is a better alternative if you really want to leave Meta behind. People will suggest Signal but in my experience literally nobody uses it except radical organisers. I have only one group on there and its for a protest group.…
It’s owned by Facebook
Did you read my comment smartass? Do you think I don't know that?
Re: Ask HN: Organize local communities without Facebook?
#363Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're correct, but this is quite a boring response. If no one tried to make the world a better place, the world would never get better. It is an uphill battle, but I wish the OP luck all the same.
> If no one tried to make the world a better place, the world would never get better. This is kind of a cost-benefit issue though. The benefits of having a local community outweigh the negatives of the platform having its own issues. If your issues on the platform cause you to ditch it, which ruins your community, than what have you actually done? I believe when it comes to anything that is not-for-profit, that the p…
Well, they asked about ways to do something, not whether to do it.
Re: Ask HN: Organize local communities without Facebook?
#364Earlier quoted context omitted.
When you’re trying to move a significant mass of people from something that works to another platform for ideological reasons, you’ll be met with resistance. Every time you fail you’ll be met with more until you can move no one. “Innovation” doesn’t matter at all here, that’s not in question in the slightest, you’re conflating concepts. I’m giving specific advice, not making a general statement.
> When you’re trying to move a significant mass of people from something that works to another platform for ideological reasons, you’ll be met with resistance. Every time you fail you’ll be met with more until you can move no one. That's not actually how it works. People try time and again, sometimes over decades or centuries, before achieving change - or achieving anything at all. One thing you do by trying and fail…
> That's not actually how it works.
Yes, it is. And your next sentence demonstrates how you’re still missing the point.
> People try time and again, sometimes over decades or centuries, before achieving change - or achieving anything at all.
Do you think OP has decades or centuries to move their community out of Facebook? That is patently absurd.
Again, I’m offering specific advice. Specific, as in to this situation, not making a general point.
I agree with you on the broad philosophical level, but that is absolutely useless advice for this situation. Good advice for the macro doesn’t always apply on the micro. Don’t get blinded by ideology, this thread is about solving OP’s specific problem.
> Of course they will laugh at you and ridicule you at first. That just means you have left the starting gate.
People like to believe that “if they’re making fun of you, you’re doing something important to change the world”. That is not necessarily true. Many ideas are ridiculed and do turn out to be wrong and stupid. Like alchemy or NFTs. There are many more ridiculed bad ideas than ridiculed good ideas, the only reason you know more of the latter than the former is that the bad ideas everyone thought were bad are quickly forgotten, and the others are remembered because it makes a good story. It’s survivorship bias.
Re: Ask HN: Organize local communities without Facebook?
#365Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think "techno fascism" is a term people are using to describe tech company CEOs operating as unelected oligarchs embedded within the new US government. If you're looking for a better term, we could call it "technocratic anti-liberalism" to perhaps cover all the bases. People are attempting to describe the current situation in which the wealthiest humans in all of history are supporting an anti-liberal executive by…
I'd say categorically that fascism is not a helpful term to describe movements outside the 1900-1945 period in Europe. (e.g. Japan's movement was anti-colonial if anything, Tokugawa Japan would have been happy to be left alone to gaze its navel, if that wasn't possible it wanted the asia-pacific region as a buffer zone) Today it is "Keir Starmer is a fascist" (Sci-fi writer Charlie Stross), "the local people departme…
To me the more defeatist part here was the claim that OP shouldn't even try moving off Facebook, than using "techno fascism" as a shorthand for the situation we're all familiar with in a reply arguing going the path of least resistance (going along) is destructive in the long run.
Re: Ask HN: Organize local communities without Facebook?
#366Earlier quoted context omitted.
The best feature of FB is reach. You can't replicate that without a global social media platform. So don't. Just build local communities that thrive _despite_ the fact they are started on FB. More in-person social interaction might upend FB and social media, but we currently play this game so these are the rules we must follow.
It's reach and UX. Normies can use it. People who were in early days of Internet remember who bad email mailing lists were for organising anything. Mailing list, Usenet, IRC, are all now dead because no one could invest to UX in these early open protocols. In theory you can reach all users using a mailing list but oh boy, good luck with that one, unless all of your peers are kernel developers.
> People who were in early days of Internet remember who bad email mailing lists were for organising anything.
Most of us miss the simplicity of mailing lists.
I lived in a new (at the time) neighbourhood back in 2008, and we had a neighbourhood mailing list which was very convenient. Nobody had issues with using it, because there’s very little to learn if you know how ti read and reply emails. Sure, we had to explain “reply to one” vs “reply to all” to a few people, but that’s entirely it.
Mailing lists fell out of fashion because of marketing and trends, not because of any inherent limitations.
Re: Ask HN: Organize local communities without Facebook?
#367Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sad you got downvoted. Signal UX is 100x worse than Telegram and I probably can calculate it to prove this exact number. I’m dreaming about Telegram client and Signal-like openness.
I have used both Signal and Telegram for years and I'm not seeing much UX difference. What's better for you on Telegram?
Right clicking on a conversation on signal does nothing. On telegram is shows the menu that if expect.
Signal takes many seconds to render the main window. Telegram opens in a reasonable amount of time.
Chat bubbles in signal reveal some hidden icons when you hover them, but have a separate right click menu when you click them. You basically have to guess which of both menus contains the action that you need.
Copy paste of images often doesn’t work on Signal. The voice clip button does nothing. It simply doesn’t work, but doesn’t show any errors or log anything.
I want to like Signal, but the clients are simply terrible, have bad UX and are full of bugs.
Re: Ask HN: Organize local communities without Facebook?
#368Earlier quoted context omitted.
> You don't have to use their platforms. Yes, but you can reach far fewer people if you do not. This is well on the way to arguing that you are free to say what you want in a sealed room.
You don't have the right for anyone to care about what you say, and never have. Your argument seems to be that the New York Times has no choice but to publish my op-ed, because otherwise how will anyone find it?
No, its more like arguing that telecoms companies (especially ones with monopolies) should not be able to refuse service on grounds that they do not like views people express in their phone calls.
The NYT is a publication, social media are platforms.
Re: Ask HN: Organize local communities without Facebook?
#369Earlier quoted context omitted.
"In my orbit" there 100% of the people play racquetball which means there are roughly 350 million players in the USA - hence it is the most popular sport on the planet and owner of my local team is richer than all NFL owners combined /s :) Also see https://www.statista.com/statistics/408971/number-of-us-face... just for kicks :)
ok well at least that's the number that was being discussed. maybe i sound like i'm wearing a tin hat but i don't totally trust their active user numbers or believe that facebook is growing active users in the US. like am i in there bc i have a facebook acct from years ago to run ads and accidentally clicked a fb link once last year? what if i viewed a facebook ad. at some point somebody is deciding what counts as ac…
maybe i sound like i'm wearing a tin hat but i don't totally trust their active user numbers or believe that facebook is growing active users in the US
it is not their numbers :)
i have a facebook acct from years ago to run ads and accidentally clicked a fb link once last year?
you won't count
in my experience it's good to poke at numbers that don't match your intuition. that's how you get to reality.
except what you are doing is not looking at numbers but drawing from either your personal experiences or "oh, I've heard no one is on facebook these days"
always follow the money - investors would RUN FOR THE HILLS if Facebook was what you are thinking Facebook is. maybe this will be different in 10+ years when boomers die off and GenZ, GenA are in their "prime" but at this point Facebook is the ruler of social media
Re: Ask HN: Organize local communities without Facebook?
#370Earlier quoted context omitted.
> You don't have to use their platforms. Yes, but you can reach far fewer people if you do not. This is well on the way to arguing that you are free to say what you want in a sealed room.
And? If you are on a platform and depending on random people finding your message, how are you going to get above the noise? You have to put in the work. Major changes happen by people getting thier voice out before social media
> Major changes happen by people getting thier voice out before social media
But they did not have to compete with social media. There are more third spaces (as is often discussed on HN) and local ways to get started.