Looking for focused alternatives to Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, etc Not just for myself but for my family members and friends who I wish to keep in touch with… any other threads going on about this? Maybe have a general thread and subsequent migration movements, we really need to act on this social life fascist monopoly we’ve became hostages to…
What’s App : Signal.
Instagram: Pixelfed
TikTok: loops
YouTube: peertube
Xitter: Mastodon (pleroma, akkoma, etc …)
Google maps: open street map
Reddit: Lemmy 😉
Google search: duck duck go, startpage
I’ll let you Google the names of the different apps.
Facebook: friendica
I kind of liked hubzilla last I dabbled in one of those type apps.
Haven’t heard of that. If it’s centralized it’s a hard no for me though so hopefully it’s not
https://hubzilla.org/page/info/admin_guide
Similar to Friendica, personal page style fediverse software.
On phone instead of google maps I recommend Organic Maps! Best way to use open street map.
OSMAnd is another option, it’s better in some ways, but worse in others.
Adding in yt-dlp. Not a platform but a useful tool to download youtube videos for archival or redistribution.
Matrix for discord as well.
Hotel: trivago…
Ok jokes aside, add to that:
Whatsapp: SimpleX, Matrix Google Photos: Immich Reddit: Lemmy, Mbin, and Piefed
Google search: duck duck go, startpage
DuckDuckGo has a history of working with Microsoft to track users. Startpage is straight up owned by advertising company.
Use a search engine proxy like 4get, or a full meta search engine like SearXNG or MetaGer that pulls its data from multiple sources at once.
Signal: SimpleX
No love for Bluesky as a Xitter alternative?
Bsky is just another corporate venture, it is probably better than any other commercial alternative but it will inevitably go the same route as the others people are fleeing.
Bluesky isn’t a twitter alternative, it’s staged opposition. It’s backed by the crypto industry. It’s going to follow everything else that’s supported by the tech bros.
Bsky seems like a good alternative now. Though unlike Mastodon, it does come with an expiration date until it turns to shit. I use it alongside mastodon as that is where most Twitter folks fled to. Just, I would not put all my eggs on the bsky basket.
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Use mastodon and bridge your account to bluesky and ask people who you follow to please follow the bridge (or just join mastodon) so you can interact.
Bluesky is slightly better than twitter in that it’s distributed and does technically have federation. But federation on bluesky means you just mirror the entire network which makes it non-feasible for self hosters and small communities. Not to mention that once they do enshittify that they will probably pull some tomfoolery to keep people from migrating their PDS, to whatever relay they want.
It’s a good temporary alternative. Will probably enshittify down the line, but for now it’s okay.
Corporate, VC-funded bullshit
Didn’t bsky turn on federation last year?
You are thinking of Threads
90% of these apps are doing nothing good for you. You don’t need to replace them, you need to quit them and start touching grass. I’m also talking to myself here.
Talking all day to people you never see physically is damaging your brain.
Touch grass? It’s -20C/-4F and there is snow outside :-(
Ah, then it’s obviously take all of your clothes off and go roll around in the snow
Touch that frozen grass then :)
To touch grass I open https://quwhack.itch.io/touch-grass-simulator
Sure but not what OP asked about
Not what OP asked, but what OP needed to hear.
I think you’re right but my only issue is permanently loosing contact with old friends from different countries… If there’s a change of phone numbers then I might not be able to contact them ever again…
Mastodon, Pixelfed, Signal.
Pixelfed is currently experiencing massive growth so that is a good Instagram alternative to focus on at the moment.
Messaging: Signal
Social Media: Mastodon, second choice Bluesky
Instagram: Pixelfed
Also, there’s loops.video for reels, since Pixelfed only does images. Loops is running on the Pixelfed platform, and there appear to be plans to integrate the two at some point further down the road.
The biggest issue with Loops right now is that account verification emails seem to be sent out manually by the admins, so it can take a day or two to arrive after you initially create your account. And you can’t use the platform at all until that email arrives. So it’s not exactly the most friendly onboarding experience.
Why flock anywhere? Lemmy is the extent of my social media sine the reddit API changes.
You don’t need social media.
Remember… when you’re killing time it’s killing you back.
Being productive is an effective way to waste one’s life.
Maximize wasting time. None of your or almost anyone’s works will be remembered.
Everything in moderation. Including moderation.
Fucking awesome quote. I’m going to keep that one in my back pocket.
I have wasted time, and now doth time waste me
There are lots of Fediverse alternatives to social media, including Lemmy (which I guess you know about?) and the ones people have mentioned here already (Mastodon, Pixelfed, Loops, PeerTube). The advantage of the Fediverse is that it can’t be co-opted by a single bad actor, in the way that Musk took over Twitter and made it into a Nazi bar.
There are some interesting ones that have already been mentioned here. But just be aware that they’re ghost towns, when compared to the networks they’d be leaving. Their fav creators probably aren’t on them, and neither are most of their friends or family.
They have a chicken and egg problem where people aren’t on them because people aren’t yet on them.
I describe to friends as “internet rural life”: things go slower, for now.
That’s how all these things started though. People at church over 50/60 are asking me about bluesky. That’s a good sign for me.
I’d argue that in some ways they are more active. Posting on Reddit was like farting in a hurricane.
In Lemmy there seems to be more interaction. You don’t have to get a million up votes for anyone to see your post.
That’s true. It’s very often I’ll get actual replies to things I contribute, which is cool!
I think a lot of the ghost town effect is because other platforms focused on superficial things you don’t really see much here. Big sparkly notifs when you get an updoot and meta-currencies and that sort of thing.
I don’t get a lot of upvotes on stuff, which sometimes gives the impression nobody’s seen it. Furthermore, I find if I respond to something posted older than a few days or a week? That convo is dead. Haha.
Facebook is a bad idea. All of those that link back to your real identity seem to get so bad so fast. I have never had one and just text people, email them, visit them in person. I don’t need everyone to know everything all the time and can’t understand why anyone does.
US Postal Service
Consult privacyguides.org for guidance regarding new messaging and email solutions. I imagine you’ll probably want to ask your family to sign up for signal.
The only alternative to social media is the fediverse. The bad news is that the fediverse is not private. The good news is that frankly social media as a concept just isn’t mandatory, so if you need privacy, you can just…not. Once you break the addiction, you realize how unnecessary it all was.
Thanks for the suggestions, whats the issue in making pms within the fedivese e2e encrypted?
Honestly I don’t know what the issue is on a technical level, I just know they are not encrypted and won’t be for the foreseeable future.
WhatsApp -> Simplex
I recommend Simplex over signal because its not tied to your phone number and has no identifiers.
The first messenger without user IDs
Though I agree with it being a good recommendation, Signal is BY FAR easier to set up and have people use. I think that’s what will help adoption.
Discoverability is the issue. It is one of the main reasons Signal sticks with phone numbers.
Everyone in my contact list is a potential Signal contact. That’s useful. Chat is still private.
If I want secret chats, I use Simplex.
But simplex seemed just as easy as signal to set up?
Pretty much the same in use IIRC.
If all you want is a place to get memes, hello, you’re in the least bad place on the internet, the indie web/fediverse.
But to keep in touch with family members and friends, who are likely not techy people?
… I guess you could get them on Signal?
I mostly talk to my folks through Telegram, but that’s as far as I could take them (still consider it a win over using WhatsApp, because Telegram might be full of fascists but at least has an open API and a competent Linux client)
You’re already here.
Yeah and I love it but this is still very tech niche and looking for an instant messaging solution. I don’t want to become a pariah socially isolated in regards to my friends and family…
Yeah and I love it but this is still very tech niche and looking for an instant messaging solution.
For friends and family I use my phone’s IM. For total strangers on lemmy I just use Reply.
Facebook: Friendica
instagram: Pixelfed
Whatsapp: Signal,MatrixWhatsApp: Matrix.
