I admin a Facebook group with just about 30k people in it. It used to be great, and over the past few years the enshittification has been too much. Lately there is an out of control Facebook AI bot posting constantly pissing everyone off that we can’t seem to turn off. I only use FB for the group, and don’t have their spyware - I mean, app - installed and wont. Admin abilities are severely limited on the webapp.
I’m stepping down as admin cuz I’m tired of this mess. But I’d like to offer an alternative community to members who are ready to jump ship. Is a Lemmy community the best option? It’s a photo heavy group so when Pixelfed launches groups that will be great, but I haven’t seen an ETA on that. I’ve read that Piefed has better mod controls. It can/should be public and accessible across platforms.
Thoughts? And before anyone points it out, I know most folks won’t bother switching. But I also miss when it was smaller and had more chill vibes so I can live with that.
I know that shitty AI bot all too well. Unfortunately I’ve tried and failed to get people to leave as well. I have a community of ~20k users. Sad reality is that not only does no one care but they will actively attack you for even suggesting such a thing.
Facebook knows what they’re doing. The only way to close the group is to remove each and every member, one by one, and even if you actually wanted to spend the time actually doing that (I have), they will “detect automated activity” and lock your account.
I created my own private Lemmy community. Even set up Photon as a frontend. Not 1 single user joined.
So yeah, we’re so fucked.
You should be able to “archive” a group as admin, which essentially shuts it down. I haven’t tried but I’ve seen it happen in other groups. And yeah, it’s really disturbing what people will accept from FB for the sake of inertia and comfort. I’ve told a couple friends about Meta using the localhost loophole for tracking and recommended they delete the apps and just use the web version if they need to, and they all still have the apps. Who even needs privacy, right? Sigh
It looks like at one time you could archive the group but not anymore.
I just took a peek and you’re right. But there is an option to “pause” a group, I didn’t explore enough to see if it could be permanent. The rule that you can only delete a group when it has no members is absurd, wtf
Only “absurd” in the context of a user. Not really in the context of a business with 3B MAU who will not leave no matter what.
Best option I know of is MeWe but it’s not a 1:1. Does have some pretty solid group features though.
I doubt many would jump ship tbh
Piefed has an option for gallery layout for photo groups. https://join.piefed.social/2024/01/21/optimizing-image-communities-introducing-grid-view-masonry-for-improved-image-display/
Piefed is like Lemmy and can federate with it
That’s interesting (a little chaotic with the different sized images but still). I’ve been using Interstellar for Piefed and it apparently doesn’t support that, so I had no idea
Pixelfed won’t launch groups anytime soon unfortunately, I’ve followed closely and it seems it’ll be out about the same time as Tesla’s full self driving.
I think the best way would be choose yourself piefed or Lemmy, and then you offer mastodon or pixelfed as places for your users to join and subscribe. So it’s a little more natural to them.
While your goal is noble, reality is that I would expect a very small percentage of people to migrate. Less than one maybe even. I think that even a few hundred more people joining the fediverse here is a great idea, but I don’t want you to be discouraged when it doesn’t turn out the way you hope. People love their platforms. (I also just read your last paragraph after writing this, my bad, glad you’re in the right headspace :)
I had a bad feeling about that with Pixelfed when I saw them repeatedly ignoring questions about when to expect groups, ha! I know you can follow / reply to Lemmy groups with Mastodon, but can you post to them from there? Or from Pixelfed?
You can from Mastodon! Not sure from Pixelfed but it seems probable? With mastodon it’s something like… you just @ mention the community, and have one separate line at the top to become the post title? I think?
Could try it out, for a migration this size I’d recommend testing it a bit. Try replying to this post via pixelfed
It seems only image containing content federates to Pixelfed, so text only posts are not visible
@JustOneMoreCat If all accounts use Lemmy, all images are also federated. But in the communication between Lemmy and the rest of the Fediverse there are still some restrictions regarding pictures in replies.
A #Friendica forum would probably be more suitable.
Here is an insight into what this could look like: peertube.stream/w/p/4K4MWYXMEY…
(an older version of Friendica is shown here, but in principle it is currently similar)Maybe I haven’t given it a super fair chance, but I was not impressed with Friendica. I only tried it on the webapp, but the interface was just depressing and not super intuitive. I keep hearing it’s a good substitute for FB but it needs some work before I would feel comfortable recommending that to people
Yes lemmy can serve as a good replacement for a picture sharing group
I’ve never used Facebook, but I’ve seen people say that Friendica is quite similar to Facebook (in case you care about that).
Assuming your group has a considerable amount of non tech savvy people, I would suggest Friendica just for the familiarity, since it’s supposed to be like facebook and it would be easier for people to use. I don’t know if it has groups though. You might also sacrifice admin/mod capabilities. I’m not familiar how good friendica’s admin tools are (if any).
It does have groups! And they’re even interoperable with Lemmy/PieFed/Mbin groups. The experience is definitely very Facebook like, and there are themes that make it even more so.
On the other hand, every instance I’ve ever been on has run into serious lag issues and/or collapsed entirely… Hoping that’s not universal or else gets fixed soon.
I think diaspora is more Facebook-like and more user friendly
Unfortunately Diaspora does not use the ActivityPub protocol and doesn’t even bridge to it. They have made the deliberate choice to not ever have a sizeable community.
It’s s closed or somewhat closed community yes. But it does communicate with Friendica and allows crossposts from e.g. mastodon. It’s actually a great place to get away from all the noise of the social media world without leaving social media
If you have the time for it I’d say run an independent site. Lemmy is ok for posting photos though.
I’d rather keep it part of a bigger social network where people can interact with it as needed while doing other social stuff. Plus I know most people won’t leave FB for it, and getting new different people involved would be nice. Just a bonus if people move to the Fediverse to see it and realize there’s more to explore.
Reddit probably beats Facebook but it’s getting worse all the time. If you want to use Lemmy you might consider running your own instance. Lemmy as far as I can tell has usable photo uploading. Maybe the new thing you mentioned will be better, but idk anything about it. There is also Threads which is a Facebook thing, right?
A hosting account and whatever forum software is these days is like $10/mo and you own the whoe kit 'n kaboodle. But no, Facebook users won’t come anyway so. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
