![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
My wife is playing a small virtual concert tonight and tomorrow night, holidays and space themed. I know she's a vocalist and plays ukulele, but I have no idea what else is planned. https://www.facebook.com/events/1001726336988379
2020 Facebook Alternatives Roundup
Dec. 30th, 2019 01:19 pm I will once again be adopting the New Year Resolution to read and post to other social networks before coming to Facebook, in an attempt to lessen its hold on my life and by extension the lives of my friends. I strongly encourage everyone else to do the same, at the very least so that you already have alternatives ready when Facebook goes down or gets blocked in your country or bans you or just starts censoring your posts.
You can find me in the following places:
https://www.reddit.com/user/sparr/submitted/ /u/sparr Add me as a friend and then you can use https://www.reddit.com/r/friends/ to see a "news feed" of everything your friends have posted.
https://mastodon.social/@sparr @sparr@mastodon.social Mastodon is a federated open source social network that functions vaguely similarly to Twitter.
https://sparr.dreamwidth.org/ Dreamwidth is a fork of LiveJournal, my oldest and favorite platform for long form writing, with some of the best privacy and anonymity options of any platform.
https://joindiaspora.com/people/98ece344da783437 sparr@joindiaspora.com Diaspora is a federated open source social network that functions vaguely similarly to Facebook.
https://nextdoor.com/profile/16322983/ Nextdoor is a neighborhood-based site where you can interact with people who live close to you. Some neighborhoods are pretty toxic, but others are chill and helpful... pretty much like real neighborhoods.
https://wt.social/u/sparr-risher Wiki Tribune is an attempt to build a social network around wiki concepts of people being able to collaboratively write and edit content.
https://beta.sociall.io/u/5e0a6372c9afde0cb4010981/feed A newcomer to the field, blockchain based, supposedly security-focused, can import friends and posts from Facebook.
https://www.minds.com/sparr/ I tried Minds a couple of years ago and it seems to have grown since then.
https://mewe.com/i/sparr MeWe is focused on interest-based communities.
https://twitter.com/sparr0 It's twitter.
https://sinblr.com/@sparr @sparr@sinblr.com This is another Mastodon instance ("federated" means it works like email; anyone can host a server, many people can use one server, and one person can have different accounts on different servers for different purposes) dedicated to adult themed content.
https://fetlife.com/sparr Fetlife is the most popular social network site for adult topics, functionally very similar to Facebook.
https://keybase.io/sparr Keybase is a service for secure identity management and verification that also offers file sharing and chat.
https://facebook.com/sparr0 @sparr0 I am also still on Facebook for now.
You can also find me on various instant messaging and chat platforms. In descending order of frequency, I use... Google Hangouts, Facebook Messenger, SMS, RCS, Signal, Telegram, WhatsApp, Keybase, Steam. I am also active on Discord and various Slack instances, and can be reached via email at sparr0@gmail.com or my first name at protonmail dot com for more secure concerns.
#facebook #nextdoor #mastodon #dreamwidth #diaspora #reddit #internet #privacy #socialnetworks #keybase #wikitribune #sociall #mewe
A mid-year resolution
Aug. 6th, 2019 09:07 amTL;DR: I'm going to write more long form stuff to post various places, and I'm going to post less negative and controversial stuff.
Starting today and going for at least a month, the precise duration TBD, I'm going to make some changes to my interaction with social media and online discussions.
First, the positive. I am going to do long form writing more often. I will probably use 750words.com which is a writing challenge site my ex introduced me to, and which I've used successfully for a month before. If anyone out there uses another site or app to track their writing commitments, maybe something designed around NaNoWriMo, I'm open to recommendations. Other than this post, it is likely that some of the first few things I write will be re-writes or updates of things I've written in the past about my life and world and outlook. At least one upcoming day will be a slight cheat day, where I post the ~5000 word document describing myself that I've been working on recently, although not much cheating since I will probably do at least 750 words of edits to it that day.
Next, I am going to stop making unfiltered top level Facebook posts that are entirely negative ("this sucks", "that is terrible", "you are dumb", "I am sad", etc). I will try to stop making them at all, although I am wary of this because I have felt positive support come out of some of those posts. If I feel the need to make those posts, I will create a mostly-opt-in filter for people who want to know this sort of stuff and/or who want to be there to offer support. This change is mostly inspired by observing the posts and interactions of a few specific people, including Victoria (my wife).
Finally, and probably most importantly, I am going to stop making unfiltered top level posts on Facebook about controversial topics, and I will not be the first person to make controversial comments on those posts on other people's or groups' walls. I have gotten direct feedback from a few people that they intentionally disengaged from me because of these sorts of posts and comments. As usual, it was not clear whether it was my positions they objected to or any discussion of those positions or my style of discussion, but I can address all of those possibilities by just not letting them see those posts int he first place. A lot of recent discussions about the feedback loop that my reputation is stuck in have included an element of the impact of new posts that I am making. While I believe that this impact is no longer significant[1], I am willing to make a good faith attempt to eliminate this factor to see if things get better. One reason that this experiment is of indefinite length is that it may take months or years to see a result on this front, but I may not have the patience to wait that long. Hopefully I can be patient and the results become apparent sooner rather than later.
I feel compelled to disclose that these changes to what and how I post are intended to be almost entirely for my own benefit. My ethical and value systems tell me that I am hurting other people by making these changes. I've written at length about the absolute and net positive outcomes of my approach to controversial topics, and no one has ever come close to convincing me that those positive things aren't happening. I am going to convince fewer people to behave in less harmful ways. Fewer people are going to come for me for support, inspired by my posts on the subject of whatever they need support on. People are going to commit consent violations that they would have known not to if I had kept posting where they could see it. What these changes represent is the success of the large number of people who demonstrate that their lives are more fulfilling when the people immediately surrounding them are happier about their presence and interactions, regardless of what the long term or widespread effects are. I am sorry for the harm that this change will cause, and I wish more people could see the consequences of their actions.
I am open to feedback on what I am doing here. None of this is set in stone, and I am open to making small modifications to each of these plans. Maybe someone has a compelling argument that I should only make controversial comment replies instead of making my own comments after someone else does. Maybe you want me to create the support-seeking negative posts filter now instead of waiting until I think I need it. Surely there are other things of that sort that you can think of that I cannot, and I would like to hear them.
[1] I believe the impact is not small, but also that eliminating it will not have much impact because other factors outside my control have much larger impact. The people who vehemently dislike me put a lot of effort into spreading rumors and lies about me. Those efforts are effective and tend to multiply, regardless of what I am doing and whether I ignore them or attempt to address them. Stopping all the negative things I am doing isn't going to stop people who I have never met, or who have never even heard of me before, from hearing those things, believing them, and then spreading them or making up new ones.
Wiki sneak preview
Dec. 27th, 2018 10:34 am
Day 1 of setting up my new wiki is done. Mostly configuration and template stuff so far, but I’m finally starting to dip my toes in the water of actually creating content.
If anyone out there is interested in helping catalog ways people communicate, including social networks and chat rooms and dating sites and parliamentary procedure, and the features that make them similar and different, hit me up.
Why should I use Facebook less?
Dec. 25th, 2018 10:01 amAfter announcing or discussing my recent resolution to use other social networks and communication channels more often, people keep asking me this question. I am often momentarily dumbstruck, not knowing where to start. My general assumption is that people know at least some or most of the problematic (or even terrible) things about Facebook but choose to use it anyway because it is convenient. Of course, for people who get most of their news from Facebook, I guess I should not be surprised that they have missed a lot of important negative news about Facebook. And for people who mostly or even only use Facebook for online communication, I am not surprised they are blind to its failings. With that in mind, here is a list of reasons to rely on Facebook at least a little bit less than you do now:
( Read more... )MeWe and October are the first sites/apps to be eliminated from my attempt to use new social network / posting / communication platforms. They both have some novel ideas, but not nearly enough features or users (even strangers) to make it worth my time to be an early adopter. I might check them out again in the future, but for now my "sites to visit / read / post to before or in addition to Facebook" bookmark folder is down from 8 to 6.
With Facebook and Tumblr taking further steps to alienate their users I expect now to be a great time to re-explore other social networks. My almost-new-year resolution is that I will only load the Facebook news feed on my laptop via a bookmark folder that also opens other social network feeds, to encourage me to read content outside my FB filter bubble and to post to other audiences on other sites. While none of them offer everything that Facebook does, all of them offer something(s) that Facebook does not. That folder currently contains (my profile name/link in parentheses for each):
( Read more... )
( Read more... )
Hello again, Dreamwidth
Dec. 7th, 2018 09:21 pmAs a new wave of migration away from Facebook begins, I am looking at old and new platforms to maybe use again. I spent a lot of years having a lot of great interactions with friends on LiveJournal, but as people left due to the Russian connection I never really saw much of them here or elsewhere.
Should I be trying to get people to come to DW? Are there apps or tools that make it easier to use / better / more modern in terms of interface?
Are there other social network / blog / discussion platforms I should be considering?
Should I be trying to get people to come to DW? Are there apps or tools that make it easier to use / better / more modern in terms of interface?
Are there other social network / blog / discussion platforms I should be considering?
I want to invite people over to play board games frequently but irregularly and on short notice. This could extend to movies or dinner plans, but for now it's just board games. I want to invite 10-30 people, so that hopefully 1-5 people show up. I do not have a good way to accomplish this.
I can use a FB Group. I can Post to that Group's Wall. FB will make sure most members of the group never see the post.
I can use a FB Group. I can create an Event in that Group, and Invite people to that Event. FB seems to also filter those invites from some people (which is news to me), and I don't think most of my friends use FB event invites in a real-time manner.
I can post to my own FB Wall. More people will see that than the Group Wall method, but it will also reach up to a thousand people who don't care, and it may be delayed in reaching people.
I can tag people in my FB Wall post. This reaches people more quickly, but is also tedious and manual, and is still visible to a thousand people who don't care.
I can filter that FB Wall post to a list. This solves some of those problems, but not the delay and FB filter shenanigans issues.
I can create an email list. My primary objection to this is that I do not think that most of my friends use email for realtime communication. This particular kind of invitation expires after an hour or three, and that's more quickly than most people check their email, I think.
I can send individual IMs and FB messages. This is, by far, the most *effective* solution, but it also requires the most work (although a third party IM client might be able to fix this) and would lead to more people opting out as the notifications became too frequent.
I can send group IM/SMS/FB messages. This is unacceptable because of the forced-reply-all and opt-out nature of those messaging systems. People seem to almost universally hate these systems.
Help? Feedback? Suggestions?
I can use a FB Group. I can Post to that Group's Wall. FB will make sure most members of the group never see the post.
I can use a FB Group. I can create an Event in that Group, and Invite people to that Event. FB seems to also filter those invites from some people (which is news to me), and I don't think most of my friends use FB event invites in a real-time manner.
I can post to my own FB Wall. More people will see that than the Group Wall method, but it will also reach up to a thousand people who don't care, and it may be delayed in reaching people.
I can tag people in my FB Wall post. This reaches people more quickly, but is also tedious and manual, and is still visible to a thousand people who don't care.
I can filter that FB Wall post to a list. This solves some of those problems, but not the delay and FB filter shenanigans issues.
I can create an email list. My primary objection to this is that I do not think that most of my friends use email for realtime communication. This particular kind of invitation expires after an hour or three, and that's more quickly than most people check their email, I think.
I can send individual IMs and FB messages. This is, by far, the most *effective* solution, but it also requires the most work (although a third party IM client might be able to fix this) and would lead to more people opting out as the notifications became too frequent.
I can send group IM/SMS/FB messages. This is unacceptable because of the forced-reply-all and opt-out nature of those messaging systems. People seem to almost universally hate these systems.
Help? Feedback? Suggestions?
Social networking is fun
Oct. 16th, 2008 10:13 pmI used a graphing app to chart my facebook network (I'll probably do the same for LJ soon, just harder to mine the data). The results show predictable patterns, but is interesting nonetheless.
