I joined Facebook years ago not long after it took off from its college roots. I also quit it years ago when my feed became full of junk.
The one thing I miss is contact with my friends, family, and ex-cowokers. Most of them weren’t technically inclined so that was the only platform they were on. Some of them did move to Instagram, which I did as well until Facebook bought it.
I then tried wt.social shortly after it started up. It seemed like a great alternative, but its growth is very slow, It has 450,000 users according to wikipedia. Now there’s a version 2, Trust Cafe. The same article also mentioned that they’re looking into connecting to ActivityPub.
What do you use in place of Facebook to stay in contact with friends and family? Mainly, I just use text messaging apps. I use Lemmy and Mastodon for news and information.
Nothing like Facebook. Signal, Discord, Email, SMS otherwise.
Signal. We just have a group chat. No idea what the extended family is up to anymore though.
Same.
Nothing I’ve found is a true replacement to the good, original Facebook. Even Instagram is filled with ads and random BS nowadays. I made it a point to add all the birthday information I could to my calendars, and then keep up a bit with people on Instagram, but that’s about it.
I also added birthdays to the contacts on my phone. I found an Android app called Birday that reminds me when someone’s birthday is based on the dates in my contacts. Birday and the clock are the only two widgets on my homescreen. People seem to like that I reach out with a text or phone call to talk to them on their birthday over the FB “click to send happy birthday” thing (which is still better than forgetting, to be fair).
For friends and family? Texting, discord, etc.
The only social media I use outside of that has been reddit since like 2011.
Exactly. Why do I need to see where cousin Jerry has been for his latest fishing trip? I couldn’t give less of a fuck.
I am ex-Facebook user since November of 2017. So far nothing but I recently learned about Friendica. I am curious about it.
Nothing. I never stayed in contact with people and regularly downsized my friend list. I found that I was keeping people as friends but hadn’t talked to or messaged them in years. People I actually talk to have my number and I have theirs. Scrolling through people’s lives kept me from reaching out and having real conversations with people so…yeah.
This. Ever since I quit facebook, I find myself reaching out to friends who I care about rather than just following their feed. I also find when we hang out, there’s more for us to discuss and we cherish each other’s company more because we no longer have the convenience of staying hyper updated about each other. It’s the whole idea of absence makes the heart grow fonder. My advice to everyone is to stop relying on social media to keep up with people and go have some real relationships with those you care about. You’ll find yourself much happier.
Exactly. I remember I used to try to have the most “friends” possible but at some point it was like “yeah I don’t actually talk to these people and I don’t think I will.” Used to also keep FB for certain groups I was part of but in the end, there was just no point.
Nothing. Out of all the ‘friends’ I had on there, only a handful were ones that are irl mates and I have their numbers. We text occaisionally.
My grandmas and I are pen pals. I text my parents.
I got on facebook to meet girls at university, not to keep up with family. I slowly got off facebook when my friends from university quit posting anything useful.
My other sort of anonymous social media stuff was on reddit and now Lemmy.
@curt Friendica
The only thing Facebook has is people, and to get the people elsewhere you need to have more than what Facebook has. So I think there is no alternative.
I’ve had FB since 2004 or 2005. I never deleted it. I visit once a week. It is a wasteland for me. The only person who ever posts regularly is my brother.
When I stopped using it regularly I switched to… Nothing. While I do have Mastodon most of my chatting takes place through Signal. I have 2 contacts on WhatsApp. I am awful at keeping in contact but people know how to find me if they need me. I send out birthday emails to close friends.
I had a Facebook for about a month or so back when it first started getting widely adopted. I got one too many unwanted friend requests and deleted it.
The true benefits are so few and it brings out the worst in people, I don’t really need to see that. I also find the weird, impersonal dynamic of voyeurism and exhibitionism to be off putting, that’s not how social relationships should work. None of it feels like actually connecting with those people. I get connection by hanging out with people, text, voice, games, email etc.
If someone is important to me and I to them, we’ll always find a way to stay in touch. I have a friend with whom one of our main means of casual communication is trying to one-up eachother with terrible postcards that we find in shops and the like. That feels more personal to me than a FB post.
So I’d say, rather than finding a FB replacement, find personal ways to sustainably communicate with the people who actually matter to you.
I quit it years ago (I think almost 7 years or so). The thing is I didn’t really look for a replacement. I realised that I wasn’t really keeping in touch with loved ones as much as I was looking at the heavily curated feeds showing me how “perfect” their lives were. The worst thing about this is I could look at a post from a cousin or friend showing me their kitchen remodel or their beautiful holiday pics and meanwhile the gossip from my family contacts told me what was actually going on (but they had maxed out their credit cards for the remodel and holiday couple were actually in the middle of a divorce). Rather than trying to get my family and friends to be more truthful I decided to give my sanity a a time to recover.
- Discord with irl and online friends
- Twitter for fandom stuff and random opinions
- Real Life dates with close friends
Basically this place. I got fed up with all the negativity on Facebook and how everything is about interaction and not positivity. Facebook and other (social) media thrive on getting people agitated because that gets the most views on their ads. However it is slowly setting up humankind against each other and killing us.
