On 9/29/20 12:11 PM, Lori Nagel 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 spralling topics, and things that either get out of date, or else there is 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.
Somehow there's a lot of confusion about "groups"; people doing a survey of social services, particular people who don't use Facebook, often mistaken "groups" as meaning "what other systems call `lists'", which really isn't the case; e.g. Twitter has "lists", which are just collections of 1:1 feeds, not conversation-topic groups or anything like the "mailing lists" that we're relaying these e-mail messages through right now. A lot of other systems are based on `the Twitter model', are built by/for people who have never used an e-mail list, and just don't even understand groups; IIRC there was an interesting article I read about this sort of mismatch..., I'll see if I can find it.... GNU social actually has *groups*; and if you don't want to invite the rest of the world to your groups, there are facilities for private groups--both in the "messages posted to the group are hidden to outsiders" sense and in the "joining the group requires approval" sense (IIRC those are two distinct flags that can be used together or separately). And it's actually pretty straightforward to just set up an entirely private/closed site with nothing visible to anyone without a login, if that's what you want (it's not clear from your description whether you're interested in federation / involving people from elsewhere on the internet at all, or if you just want a `closed community'). And GNU social even meets your `even Richard Stallman wouldn't object to it' and `doesn't need JavaScript' desires (there are some fancy javascript-based front ends _available_ for people who want them, like the one that we have enabled by default on <https://nhcrossing.com/>, and that I have enabled-but-not-by-default on <https://status.hackerposse.com/>, but "must work fine without javascript" is one of the project's requirements for the default UI). XMPP has MUCs; if you're tempted to think of this as "like IRC, just a chat channel"..., don't: XMPP and its MUCs don't have any of the IRC issues. There are hosting options for both GNU social and XMPP, so that you can have them without being "a professional system admin": * If you just want XMPP on your own domain, administered by someone who really knows what they're doing, the people behind the Conversations and Quicksy apps for Android, the XMPP standards-compliance tester, the OMEMO privacy extensions for XMPP), etc..., also provide professional XMPP hosting services (and the prices are pretty good): https://account.conversations.im/domain/ * GNU social can generally be set up on any shared-hosting service that lets you run PHP, and there are also actually a bunch of services that actually specialize in hosting GNU social specifically, e.g. (I can't vouch for any of these personally, I've just pulled this list from a quick websearch): https://www.a2hosting.com/gnu-social-hosting https://www.kualo.com/webhosting/gnu-social-hosting https://www.interserver.net/apps/gnu_social-hosting.html https://www.knownhost.com/gnu-hosting.html I've been using and administering both XMPP and GNU social for years (I administer nhcrossing.com as a GNU social + XMPP domain for granite-staters, for example), and I'm happy to try to help people get into them. -- Connect with me on the GNU social network! <https://status.hackerposse.com/rozzin> Not on the network? Ask me for more info! _______________________________________________ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
