Re: Privacy Respecting Replacement for facebook groups

[Jim Garrett]

For some time I've been keeping my eyes open for Free-Software platforms
that support group organizing.  Sorry for coming late to the
conversation; it's been a busy week.

I wouldn't negate anything that's been said already, but would offer
some additional possibilities.  Friendica perhaps most directly
resembles Facebook; there are open instances and you can also host your
own (requires a domain name).  Hubzilla is another platform with a lot
of potential, but would require some setup (by the admin, not the
user); it also requires a domain name.

Wordpress recently launched "P2" which appears to be sort of a cross
between blogging and messaging, which could be good for asynchronous
communication.  I've tried it a bit and it doesn't seem to be working
as advertised; has anyone else tried it?  Currently it's available
only from Wordpress but they say it will be released (under what
license?).

Nextcloud's latest release is organized to be a team collaboration
platform along the lines of Slack, Microsoft Teams, etc.

You might be interested only in group messaging, but others might want
to consider that there's more a group might want to do:
- Work collaboratively on documents
- Have a semi-static space for reference storage (as in a wiki)
- Collaborate on a web page, such as for an event, and then publish it
  to the public
- Manage invitations to an event
- Provide a calendar (for meetings)
- Store and present photos of an event or of group interest
- Same for documents
- And files
- And more, I'm sure

Lots of different systems offer one or more of these.  Figuring out
which does best, or how to get the most with the fewest different
platforms, is not an easy question to answer.  Friendica does many.

I think many platforms would be easy to use once properly set up, though
people would need to sign up, which is a barrier to entry.

We should probably create a wiki page with a table of functions x
available software.

-Jim Garrett

On Tue, 29 Sep 2020 16:11:53 +0000 (UTC)
Lori Nagel via libreplanet-discuss
<libreplanet-discuss@libreplanet.org> wrote:

> Hello everyone, I'm trying to figure out a privacy  respecting
> replacement for facebook groups.  I want something that is easy to
> join, (so no requirement that you learn email encryption, system
> administration or anything "hard"  but also something that even
> Richard Stallman wouldn't object to (not that I'm trying to recruit
> him to join it, just some people are really zealots about stuff, if
> it doesn't have javascript that is also a bonus.) I've also
> considered things like email lists, matermost, irc and forums, and
> I've dismissed them for the following reasons.1. Lots of people just
> ignore email thesse days, plus it isn't really very real time.2. irc
> is just a chat channel, too many bots and while it is real time, it
> doesn't really have any persistance of topics.3. Forums tend to be
> too public with just anyone can join it, and while you can have
> private forums or private sections of forums, you need to be an
> administrator to set that all up.  Plus forums tend to have things
> like spralling topics,  and things that either get out of date, or
> else there is no conversation about the subject (thread necromancy vs
> an empty forum.)  I want to create a small group that is highly
> engaged with the subject, chatting everyday etc. 4. Email messages
> from lists you need to get info from can end up in spam if you don't
> set up email right.  It is too easy to miss important messages cause
> you get consumed with marketing or things you inadvertantly signed up
> for and should not have. 5. Matermost is like discord, but then I
> would have to set it up, and I'm not a professional system admin. If
> i spend all my time learning professional system admin skills, then I
> won't get to do what I want, which is interacting with people. 
> 
> Just on a whim I also checked into Dissporia and groups.io, mastadon
> doesn't really have groups yet, and I don't think all the source code
> for groups.io is included.