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Going old school: how I replaced Facebook with email

blog.chaddickerson.com

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Re: Going old school: how I replaced Facebook with email

#91

Post by kkarakk »

astrobe_ wrote: post #86
zapzupnz wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It may be sufficient, but sufficient isn't the same as ideal. What people have come to expect of social media, of forums, etc. does not translate particularly well to email. Yes, it can be done, but it's not going to be how people, _ordinary_ people, expect. The world has had 10 years to get used to the Facebook and Twitter workflow, they're not going back just because we think email is sufficient.

Also people have been been trained to misuse email. My coworkers, who are all in IT, can't quote correctly. I am bewildered by the level of ignorance of what email has to offered shown by some comments here. How to stop receiving messages? Well, just make a filter if you don't want to hurt the sender's feelings. I blame it on the webmail wave that offered to the newbie Internet users of the nineties poor interfaces t…

and they're not going to untrain themselves because you want them to. you're just going to get tagged as the email spammer

Re: Going old school: how I replaced Facebook with email

#92

Post by veddox »

sm4rk0 wrote: post #3

Being in the same situation as the author (deleted FB account few months ago), I was just thinking how it would be nice to have a mailing list with friends&family in it but didn't know where to start, when this article hit top 30. I would appreciate if someone would list few Mailchimp's pros and cons and/or maybe few alternatives, from privacy/freedom perspective.

Here's their privacy policy: https://mailchimp.com/legal/privacy/

Their service is good, but as far as I can see, they're willing to sell just about everybody's data to just about anybody.

Re: Going old school: how I replaced Facebook with email

#93

Post by bigbugbag »

baroffoos wrote: post #49
rubidium wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here’s the fundamental thing. We don’t need digital social networks. Email, just like mail, is sufficent.

Pretty much. There is simply no reason why I need to know what all my friends are doing and how they are feeling every single day. I just wish we had a good alternative for event organizing because that imo is the greatest value in facebook.

Good news is that the people behind the "De-google-ify Internet" who gave us many alternatives including peertube are currently working on this.

The solution is called Mobilizon, it was initiated at the end of 2018, is currently at prototyping stage and is scheduled for release in late 2019 as stated on the official website: https://joinmobilizon.org/en/

Re: Going old school: how I replaced Facebook with email

#94

Post by SmellyGeekBoy »

kkarakk wrote: post #89
bigbugbag wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's how facebook onws you and keeps you from leaving: fear of missing out. AFAIK most people who removed facebook from their life got an improvement out of it and fromt he feedback some of them gave, they did miss a few of those events but it did not matter much to them and the others they got invited or learn about through their newly rebuilt social links and did not miss.

how to become a social recluse 101: miss a couple of these facebook events, start getting known as an awkward anti-social person because you went to someone's launch event but not to their birthday party(coz bday invites only go out on facebook,no email or other discussion except maybe a text asking you where you are day of,hour of when you can't re-schedule another commitment) Congrats, now you don't get invited to…

Your friends don't sound like very nice people

Re: Going old school: how I replaced Facebook with email

#95

Post by a3n »

I once took a picture, and offered to email it to my younger co-worker. (I'm old.) He paused, and said "Email? I don't remember the last time I used email. Why don't you text it to me?"

There are people who just don't use email, and not because they're not tech savvy.

Re: Going old school: how I replaced Facebook with email

#96

Post by railton »

wyattpeak wrote: post #61

There's one aspect of Facebook which seems to always be ignored by these "deleting Facebook" posts and it confuses me. I've never really scrolled through the frontpage, I don't look at people's posts and photos, happy to message them through text or WhatsApp, but I absolutely need the events. Without them, I'd lose so much touch with all but my closest friends. People tend to respond to this concern with "if they don…

Blimey, you've made me realise that without knowing about and then going to a Facebook event of a not-great friend I never would have met my husband.

I agree that the low friction (and also low expectation) invites for Facebook events are a really great feature.

Re: Going old school: how I replaced Facebook with email

#97

Post by locklock »

wyattpeak wrote: post #61

There's one aspect of Facebook which seems to always be ignored by these "deleting Facebook" posts and it confuses me. I've never really scrolled through the frontpage, I don't look at people's posts and photos, happy to message them through text or WhatsApp, but I absolutely need the events. Without them, I'd lose so much touch with all but my closest friends. People tend to respond to this concern with "if they don…

Facebook is a very good contacts app attached to a very good events app. The problem is that these things are attached to a massive surveillance advertisement network run by what appears to be a very shady company.

Since deleting FB of course I've missed out on some parties, and I've lost touch with a couple of people I only spoke to on Facebook. But the upside is that I'm no longer on Facebook and I think that's an extremely fair trade. If you're worried about it, slowly move your contacts onto another messaging service and have them contact you through there.

Personally, the upsides are much greater than the downsides. If I run into an acquaintance at a party it's actually a nice surprise, and I don't already know everything they've been up to since we last met, I have to ask questions to find out.

Re: Going old school: how I replaced Facebook with email

#98

Post by a3n »

I send an email every few days to a small handful of friends and family. They're all on Facebook, I'm not. I put them all in the To: list. Some of them reply all, some only to me. It's all good. No software was written, no permission was asked.

This doesn't replace Facebook. It doesn't have to. Facebook is nuclear overkill for this little part of my life.

Re: Going old school: how I replaced Facebook with email

#99

Post by bigbugbag »

samatman wrote: post #60
abrichr wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I just wish we had a good alternative for event organizing There are many alternatives, see: https://blog.thefetch.com/2013/05/28/10-cool-sites-for-event...

Sadly, the very fact that there are many alternatives means that none of them are good. The goodness of an event planning platform comes from everyone using it. Metcalfe’s law in action. I say this as a non-Facebooker, fyi. Events kept me on the platform well after the rest of it became net-negative. I do maintain my social graph and as a result use Messenger sometimes. If someone really wants to talk I go elsewhere…

Does not necessarily means they're not good though. If those several alternatives are federated through activitypub and part of the fediverse, as Mobilizon will be when released, then strength is in the number of alternatives.

Then again Metcalfe's law has a flipside relative to the cost of exclusion from the network to those included and society, and this costs grows bigger as the dominant network grows bigger. Among the effects of such exclusion is the existence of parallel networks such as the alternatives mentioned here, and what makes them very good is that they cater to some of those excluded from the dominant network. Dark side of Metcalfe's law in action.

Had facebook not been an antisocial closed network preying on its users but open and federated as the internet has been deisgned then things would have been different, right now the problem seems to be that facebook captured a majority of internet users in some geographical areas and does everything possible to keep them captive.

Re: Going old school: how I replaced Facebook with email

#100

Post by bigbugbag »

davesque wrote: post #5

For me, it's more like, "How I never replaced email with Facebook."

Same here. Though I had not foreseen that email would be replace by mobile number among the younger generations who often now do not even have email or do not use it or do not expect email to be used for actual people to people communication.
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