lmemsm

Once again, I'm searching for discussion forums and decent social media options online. I've never been a fan of Facebook, but started using their forums quite a bit in the last year because the forums I used to frequent either disbanded or migrated to Facebook. It can be very hard to find a good discussion forum these days except on major social media platforms. Most social media options are designed similar to blogs. You can have two way conversations, but they're really oriented more for one person sharing something he or she knows. It's much harder to find options that let you ask questions and learn from others.

One of the reasons I'm so eager to find Facebook alternatives is not due to their outages, but due to the fact they seem to be cracking down on censoring posts. I recently posted a recommendation that if someone wanted an alternative to a systemd Linux distribution, he should try the AntiX Linux distribution. I was told I violated their policies with that post. If that violates their policies, I'm not sure at this point what can be worded in a post that won't violate a policy. Also, I joined some of the bereavement groups on Facebook. In some cases, people were posting that they're so depressed they're thinking of things like suicide. I didn't see Facebook do anything about posts like that. I have a bad feeling their monitoring of whether something violates their policies has a lot of automation involved. So, if you use the wrong keywords even though they're being used in a harmless way, an algorithm would flag something like that. However, they don't seem to be catching on to when something is really critical or distressing either.

After the issue with Facebook, Meetup suspended my account. They said I was spamming. I posted to the computer groups I belonged to about a free (as in no charge to anyone interested in attending) event for computer enthusiasts known as Software Freedom Day ( https://www.softwarefreedomday.org/ ). Ironically, I do this every year and have for several years now. My previous annual posts were still visible on Meetup at the time. However, this year, the same information was considered spam and enough of a reason to remove my account with Meetup.

I've been noticing an overall increase in censoring in commercial social media. Ironically, it's not to block what some, including me, might find offensive such as foul language or adult material. It blocks other viewpoints. The censoring also promotes a corporations monetary interests. Why allow promotion of free resources that cost people nothing when a corporation has paying customers who want to promote their own businesses and pay that corporation for the privilege? I've noticed that many people automatically assume that when you share a URL, you're promoting some commercial service and your sending them spam. For years, I've curated lists of free resources on programming and a wide variety of other topics. I am very careful as to the quality, decency and legitimacy of the information I share. It's distressing when someone has an intention of wanting to help others who may be in a similar situation, yet people automatically assume sharing what you know and find helpful is being done for personal gain. The situation is only made worse by the fact that many of the social media corporations are monopolies because people willingly use the service and refuse to make the information they share using that service accessible outside of their chosen social media platform.

One alternative to the more popular social media options out there is to use a distributed system approach such as the Fediverse. The idea of Free and distributed social media is a very good one. The main issue is that they simply don't have as many users as the popular social media sites. Lots of mainstream companies push contacting them through social media forums rather than directly. Some don't even bother with their own web sites. It's frustrating when you want to contact them for tech support and they refer you to their Facebook chat. It's disappointing when they offer you a free gift for buying their product and you find out you need an Instagram account just to access it. Religious institutions often run their services through popular social media sites like Facebook instead of streaming the services on their own sites. Even school districts got on board with using tools like Facebook, Twitter and Youtube. Our local district blocked these sites for a long time. However, they unblocked them after they started using them for communications with the public. Kind of difficult to use a site to disseminate information when you're blocking it internally in your organization. I wish they had chosen better options for communications though. The situation leaves people without Facebook accounts or other popular social media accounts out in the cold. It's really another division in our society between those who have access to popular social media platforms and those who cannot or will not access them. That's just one more unnecessary rift in our society.

archive.org recently shared their WayForward machine which warns about digital freedom and paywalls and censorship. They show a future online with "walled gardens". There's a digital divide but not due to lack of hardware or infrastructure. It's a divide stemming from who is allowed to have access to information. Some might think it's a funny or exaggerated science fiction take on Internet usage showing a possible but unlikely future. However, when I watched, I started crying. As someone in the technical field, I knew the things they were talking about seemed all too real and likely to happen to some extent. You can check it out for yourself here:
https://wayforward.archive.org/
https://wayforward.archive.org/ia2046/

A recent NatickFOSS Linux Users group meeting recommended Mastodon as a Free alternative for social media. The NatickFoss user's groups article introducing Mastodon is available at:
http://runeman.org/articles/natick-foss/mastodon/
I also ran across an introductory article on github:
https://github.com/joyeusenoelle/GuideToMastodon#an-increasingly-less-brief-guide-to-mastodon

As an experiment, I gave Mastodon a try. However, I was disappointed to find, they're just as likely to censor posts as Facebook and Meetup. In this case, the owner of the instance or someone who maintains the instance would have to censor or delete the post. However, it is not uncommon. They also remove users from an instance if they have issues with them. I often enjoy posting about software and I was censored for posting and recommended software that I like to work with because someone maintaining the instance did not like the group that created the software. From a user's standpoint, I really see no difference in Facebook censoring my post because I discussed an alternative to systemd or Mastodon censoring my post because I recommended the programs from sbase as an alternative to GNU core utilities.

Since my first Mastodon try, I did try Misskey and then later gave Mastodon a second try. One's experience with the Fediverse really does depend on what server you join. You can take your profile and posts and move to another server without too much effort. However, finding the right server does make all the difference in whether you'll enjoy the experience or not.

I've always preferred mailing lists for discussions, but after Yahoo Groups went down, there weren't too many options left. Google Groups is still available, but tends to have a lot of spam in many of its groups. I have a list of other mailing list options here:
https://lmemsm.dreamwidth.org/11107.html

A commercial option, DelphiForums https://www.delphiforums.com/, has been around for a very long time. Many of the forums have little or no traffic. However, you can find some wonderful groups there even to this day.

If you're a Linux user, LinuxQuestions.org https://www.linuxquestions.org/ is an interesting forum. They run a poll for best operating systems and best FLOSS software in a variety of categories every year.

I recently stumbled upon a HSP (highly sensitive person) forum:
https://funhsps.forumotion.com/
The posts are very enjoyable. It's just as good, if not better, than any of the HSP forums on Facebook or the commercial HSP forums that you have to pay to join. Unfortunately, it just doesn't get the same amount of traffic as Facebook. Situations like these could be improved if people knew about alternative options like this one and joined in. On the other hand, when groups get too big, they typically aren't as fun anymore. You can easily get lost in the crowd or there may be so many replies that often have nothing to do with an original post or question that you can't find relevant information. So, now is a good time to enjoy some of these lesser known forums.

Other computer and tech related forums and mailing lists I find interesting include:
https://forum.osdev.org/
https://forum.puppylinux.com/
https://suckless.org/community/
https://forum.videohelp.com/
https://forums.tomshardware.com/

There's also Mudcat Cafe which is a wonderful forum for sharing information about folk music:
https://mudcat.org/

I found Lemmy which is a Fediverse link aggregator with communities:
https://lemmy.ml/communities/

Similary to lemmy, there's also kbin:
https://kbin.social/

I'd also like to mention GetTogether https://gettogether.community/
This would make a great free alternative to other social media meeting software or sites like Eventbrite if more people were to use it. You can let people know about your club or group events for free. You can also use free tools like Jitsi for online meetings. I keep hearing people complain that you can't sing as a group online using Zoom. You can with free options such as Jamulus and Sonobus.

Another interesting free alternative for event sites is Mobilizon:
https://joinmobilizon.org/en/
You can find a list of Mobilizon servers with events from around the world here:
https://instances.joinmobilizon.org/instances

Two other Fediverse options for sharing events are Gancio a shared agenda for local communities and Gathio which allwos to make and share events while respecting privacy.
https://gancio.org/instances
https://gath.io/

Also, check web sites such as your local library system and your parks and recreation department for their community events.

If, for whatever reason, you're tired of mainstream social media outlets, check out lesser known options and distributed alternatives. They're less likely to have outages at the same time. You can help promote privacy, freedom of choice and improve handling of censorship and avoid corporate lock-in by using other options for connecting with people. You can also help improve the current situation by letting organizations and companies know directly that you would like other options besides the major social media choices as ways to contact them. Your voice is important. Join in on the conversations in alternative social media outlets and groups and share your knowledge with the world. Please let others know there are alternative options out there. If we work together, we can make these online groups much better than the mainstream options most people choose today.

Know of some great social media alternatives that are being overlooked? Do you have favorites I haven't mentioned? Please post about it and let the rest of us know about it too.