Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Organize local communities without Facebook?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 401 posts

Re: Ask HN: Organize local communities without Facebook?

#221

Post by scarface_74 »

latexr wrote: post #216
scarface_74 wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

50K people is a limited community to move to another platform???

Yes, yes it is. By definition. “Limited” means “restricted in size”, not “an arbitrary number a random person thinks is small”. From the moment OP defined “this is for this specific community of this size”, it is limited. It will be abundantly clear when they have moved no one, or every one, or a critical mass, or not enough. Because it’s limited, bounded, constrained.

Well in that case so is the total population of earth.

Re: Ask HN: Organize local communities without Facebook?

#222

Post by lsllc »

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…

This. After WhatsApp was acquired by Facebook (this predates any of the current political stuff, it was entirely about privacy), I tried to get friends and family to switch to something else -- Signal in fact as iMessage was a no-go because of the lack of Android support.

Out of ~30 people, I got precisely 3 people to switch. No one else cared, no one else wanted the hassle of switching. I even got a few comments along the lines of "but no-one I know is on Signal" etc. I ended up re-installing WhatsApp because I decided that the loss of contact with so many people was worse than any privacy worries I had at the time.

Re: Ask HN: Organize local communities without Facebook?

#223

Post by caycep »

RegnisGnaw wrote: post #203
caycep wrote: post #200

This is salient given policy moves by the CEO. My thoughts: -most of what you need is basically something similar to Facebook Groups (nowadays, I bookmark Facebook Groups for the 3 groups I follow, and skip the main feed, which is basically all ads and random memes these days) -you need a platform with mass adoption - FB got it w/ free accounts back in the day, connecting old classmates or whatnot. So a new platform…

More question, how are you going to deal with SPAM and moderation?

yeah I suppose that is also a main issue - i.e. whatever monetary model behind it needs to fund teams that addresses that point

Re: Ask HN: Organize local communities without Facebook?

#224

Post by pbhjpbhj »

zer8k wrote: post #138
dingnuts wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ok so where do those who have been consistently mad at the people variously in power going back to 2016 or even 2008 go to complain? non-partisan free speech believers exist

People are gonna stay upset for quite a while. The billion dollar election manipulation campaign spanning Reddit/Tiktok/Youtube/Television was extremely effective. It convinced a very, very specific kind of person that the by-the-numbers worst candidate in modern history was going to win in an absolute landslide. It will be years before these people realize how much the media was controlled from 2020-2024 specificall…

>being so insanely partisan to the point of calling one party Nazis

Do you mean the party who just used the inauguration to have a senior government member throw nazi salutes? The party whose presidents first actions included pardoning dozens of members of fascist groups?

You can't really be choosing this moment to complain about calling these people nazis??

Re: Ask HN: Organize local communities without Facebook?

#225

Post by khrbrt »

A club I'm active with posts everything to Meetup and Facebook. Meetup is the "official" source of truth for posting events and photos and limited chats related to the events themselves ("Where are we parking?" type questions). Facebook for social chat and announcing "unofficial" hangouts/parties.

Re: Ask HN: Organize local communities without Facebook?

#226

Post by coldpie »

pixl97 wrote: post #208
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…

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.

Re: Ask HN: Organize local communities without Facebook?

#227

Post by paride5745 »

geor9e wrote: post #178

My local communities are on (in order of popularity): facebook, telegram, discord, facebook messenger, signal. Some attempted to migrate to mastodon and bluesky but those were all failures, since getting a large and diverse group to sign up for something new is a herculean task. You just need one popular poster to refuse to leave a platform for everyone to refuse to leave. I personally just use burner accounts under…

Similar experience for me. Facebook groups, WhatsApp groups and telegram groups. Some years ago somebody tried to move people to signal groups, but it went nowhere… and this is Germany, where there is no sympathy for Meta and in general people are quite privacy aware.

Re: Ask HN: Organize local communities without Facebook?

#228

Post by jf22 »

latexr wrote: post #216
scarface_74 wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

50K people is a limited community to move to another platform???

Yes, yes it is. By definition. “Limited” means “restricted in size”, not “an arbitrary number a random person thinks is small”. From the moment OP defined “this is for this specific community of this size”, it is limited. It will be abundantly clear when they have moved no one, or every one, or a critical mass, or not enough. Because it’s limited, bounded, constrained.

Mincing words and splitting hairs again.

Re: Ask HN: Organize local communities without Facebook?

#230

Post by hallman76 »

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…

> because say the CEO of a company is friendly to the President

OP didn't give say politics had anything to do with it. Let them nerd up if they want to.

Centralization around specific platforms has plusses and minuses. Having alternatives drives innovation.

Post reply on HN