Is friendi the only one? I want to move and try getting other people off of fb that are sick of its bullshit, but I need to make sure the alternative is a good one and we dont all have to hop around 5 times to get to a good one…
Keep in mind 98% of them are tech illiterate.
You’re going to have to do what I did and just leap off of FB for your own sake. If nobody wants to follow you or reach out elsewhere, then it’s their loss.
Sure, there are fediverse versions of FB out there, but they’ve yet to gain ground yet steadily are. But, people are going to be glued to what they use the most and people are stubborn so it’s a matter of you jump or stay.
I run a humhub instance. It is very similar to fb from years ago. I cannot get anyone to use it though, just me posting for myself. I kinda use it a journal now, with pics and short paragraph or two about what I’ve been up to.
For group messages, I had a hard time getting people to move off of fb messenger. Tried good old text messaging, but everyone has iphones and can’t figure out the difference between I message and text. Also a few of them don’t even have a cell #, so they just can’t text.
I was successful in getting most of everyone over to signal, and I created accounts for my sister and her kids that don’t have phone #'s.
I use kijiji here in Canada, instead of marketplace. It had higher quality buyers and sellers anyway. Less annoying people.
Where is a similar place?
Hell.
Or Minneapolis
Do you need an alternative? Less time behind a screen does wonders for mental health.
I totally agree, but people are addicted. And they want to keep in touch which is understandable. Id rather give them an alternative because they will go back to corpo net the second anytbing gets too hard.
Texting, emailing and calling all help you stay in touch and don’t involve Fuckerberg or his shitty software.
I just straight up abandoned Facebook a decade ago and haven’t looked back. I keep up with the friends that bother to put in the effort, and acquaintances that don’t weren’t super important anyway.
That’s a journey the individual must take on their own. That’s the challenge of addiction. The reason people come back FB isn’t their friends and family. It’s the incredible force of dark patterns that convince them they are missing out on the world without it.
Since joining Lemmy, I haven’t felt the same pull to browse for hours on end. I usually get about 10-15 minutes in, get bored, and go do something else. Even Reddit would keep me hooked for hours.
With an algorithm purpose-built to drip-feed an endless cycle of dopamine and shock, it takes a few days or even weeks to get used to the slower cycle of information. Our brains want more information all the time, and they use this to their advantage.
On the note of trying to convince someone anyway, focus on the fact that the Fediverse does none of this and that there is no profit incentive behind the platform, meaning they have no incentive to make you feel worse in exchange for more ads.
For a direct, but still early Fediverse replacement, maybe consider Friendica.
I totally agree and I wish people understood that. But many are just like animals hooked on TikTok shorts and endless slop content and its the “norm”.
A big reason I am on fb still is for community events and band stuff. There is no other place for that sort of thing. If you dont post on fb, no one is coming to your show/event.
Friendica is the fed Facebook.
Phone numbers still works
(if encryption isn’t a requirement)
Self host friendica
There is NO ONE on Friendica. You might as well print your posts and tape them to people’s doors at home.
Every new platform has to start somewhere.
No one is on any platform until they are.
Outside getting people to join a fedi platform, Matrix instance, or Signal, all a non-trivial ask, you could see if they’re on Discord or WhatsApp already, which while neither is great at least its a step away. You could do a simple SMS group, if you are okay with the privacy risks - almost everyone still had a phone number.
Post mail surprisingly is still a thing too if you are okay with delayed messages and there being cost.
Honestly, I miss e-Groups/YahooGroups.
I had 4 listservs with hundreds of subscribers on my main art group.
there’s no equivalent that has all those people in it. maybe instagram or twitter but it’s not any better obviously :(
Friendica actually happened to be a decent one (as it looks like Facebook), but there’s this:
