← Back to context

Comment by the_af

3 years ago

Sadly.

The good news is that you'll have additional fragmentation with facebook groups and reddit, all overlapping your community so that no two groups are exactly the same!

If you want to post an update to the community for $thing, you must remember the Discord, Facebook group and reddit sub!

"Hey guys, we already have a reddit sub, do we really need a facebook group?"

"Well, if you don't mind I'll go create an unofficial $thing fb group!"

(Bonus points if you subscribe to all and get to see the same content being posted to every venue, with somewhat the same people reacting to it. It boggles the mind)

You are making it worse yourself by posting your updates on those walled gardens.

  • It always ends up being a doomed if you do, doomed if you don't.

    If you don't post on those groups or create them, they get created anyway, and now they exist and you have no direct influence on them; and that can easily result in a community misunderstanding and split.

    And if you do create them, you've encouraged walled gardening and there will STILL be stuff not duplicated.

    • Splits can always happen, and are probably a good thing once the community gets big enough, and it is also a good thing that these splits are even easier if you're not using platforms.

      Doesn't mean you have to support the people that chose to go elsewhere and tolerate those that are advertising platforms.

      8 replies →

  • Yes. But I mean, these are not communities I created myself. Whatever the platform (phpbb, reddit, fb, etc) I always witness a sizeable portion of the community split away to something else (Discord, etc). It's maddening.

  • As much as I dislike Stallman's non-tech opinions and actions, I think his proprietary social media handling policy is probably the best:

    https://stallman.org/facebook-presence.html

    Assuming you must use proprietary solutions to reach your people, RMS's solution is to use the other platforms to convert to your open platform. Maybe that won't work for everyone, but at least it allows usage of cockroach motel systems to your open one.