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Ask HN: Organize local communities without Facebook?

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Re: Ask HN: Organize local communities without Facebook?

#381

Post by honestSysAdmin »

ecshafer wrote: post #14

> I live in a more rural community (moved from a big city). We have 5-6 small (~50k people) towns, all well connected. Everything happens on Facebook. I would like to move to a different platforms. Plus points for self-hosted, federated. Do YOU want to move off of Facebook for some reason, or do people want to move off of Facebook for some reason. MOST people in the US, especially in a rural are are not going to quit…

Rural USA is extremely distrustful and quick to show both that distrust and disdain towards any Silicon Valley based company. "Technology is bad" is the general sentiment. These are "fossil of America" places where privacy is highly valued.

This is just my anecdotal experience, overwhelming anecdotal data, and I won't mention the specific regions so as to maintain my respect for those regions by not "out"ing them for having their views.

Re: Ask HN: Organize local communities without Facebook?

#383

Post by mooreds »

cookie_monsta wrote: post #328
teeray wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Came here to suggest groups.io as a mailing list. I use it for my HOA--we need timely notifications (trash pickup delays, parking bans, etc.) and a lot of folks don't have (or want) Facebook. It has solid moderation tools, apps if you want them (you don't need them), and some useful bonus features (calendars, polls, wikis, docs, etc.) if you find yourself needing them.

We moved to groups.io years ago when yahoo groups folded. It's very feature-rich and completely free. I have been expecting some sort of monetization attempt but so far nothing. I have no idea how it makes money, which is sadly worrying these days...

Looks like they have premium plans

https://groups.io/static/pricing

Re: Ask HN: Organize local communities without Facebook?

#384

Post by rgbrgb »

bdangubic wrote: post #369
rgbrgb wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

investors are no longer investing in fb, they invest in meta

Re: Ask HN: Organize local communities without Facebook?

#386

Post by jaffa2 »

WhyNotHugo wrote: post #366
miohtama wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 explai…

Are there any Mail list servers i can use to organise a local sports group. Using Google map right now but it’s terrible

Re: Ask HN: Organize local communities without Facebook?

#387

Post by scarface_74 »

solid_fuel wrote: post #303
scarface_74 wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And what happens when he gets tired of managing all of that? With Facebook he can just give someone else admin access.

Organizing people takes work, and passing off a single set of credentials to someone else doesn't mean that work will still get done - whether its all in one place or not. Look at all the subreddits which are lost because of no moderation, even when they used to have a team. When they eventually get tired of managing all this, they will eventually need to hand the reigns off to someone else. Hopefully someone will st…

Which is easier - finding someone that can manage a Facebook group or finding someone that can manage his Rube Goldberg setup?

Re: Ask HN: Organize local communities without Facebook?

#388

Post by gadders »

ecshafer wrote: post #14

> I live in a more rural community (moved from a big city). We have 5-6 small (~50k people) towns, all well connected. Everything happens on Facebook. I would like to move to a different platforms. Plus points for self-hosted, federated. Do YOU want to move off of Facebook for some reason, or do people want to move off of Facebook for some reason. MOST people in the US, especially in a rural are are not going to quit…

"Hi everyone. I want to inconvenience hundreds of people because of my minority political beliefs."

Re: Ask HN: Organize local communities without Facebook?

#389

Post by helboi4 »

benatkin wrote: post #374
helboi4 wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you read my comment smartass? Do you think I don't know that?

Just agreeing with you but taking it farther for myself by not acknowledging the Altria-like new name

Lmao I just looked up Altria: "Altria Group, Inc. is an American corporation and one of the world's largest producers and marketers of tobacco, cigarettes, and medical products in the treatment of illnesses caused by tobacco." Absolutely hilariously ghoulish.

Re: Ask HN: Organize local communities without Facebook?

#390

Post by andrewlevver »

Maybe this isn't the right fit, but a company I'm invested in and have advised since its inception is https://app.getriver.io/home

It's built around managing a community, from the perspective of the community manager or head of community. It harnesses the power of hosts, the people who actually make the events happen and captures the free energy in the system of human to human community.

I actually think for your use case it would be perfect. In each town you can crowd source (or directly invite the facebook group admins as hosts) hosts to create events and then run them. The platform started from creating and scaling the All-In Podcast community and now have worked with Tim Ferris, Blueprint/Don't Die, and next week all the events for Utah Tech Week https://app.getriver.io/utahtechweek

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