So just use something different yourself. Then ask your friends to communicate with you there. You don’t need them to quit the old, you need to ask them to use something new.

“privacy? Yeah whatever, they just use it to catch bad people right? I have nothing to hide. I don’t have the time to learn all this VPN stuff. Don’t forget to like my posts!”

People will still use discord even if it got entirely banned, there just isn’t a good alternative now that is clear

I’m still on Discord because everyone else is there. I’ve moved my direct social connections, so most of the things I’d use Discord dms for on a daily basis, over to dedicated direct messaging services, but communities are so much harder to move over. You can’t shuffle between a hundred and a thousand people over to another platform unless somehow most of the groups they’re in move over at once.

And to what? Matrix communities are not as convenient, Revolt’s voice chats are not as good and screen sharing wasn’t a thing at all last I checked and it doesn’t have a mobile client, and TeamSpeak is primarily voice-based.

Find new friends in Russia. These are banned there

Because their other friends are on them, and the celebrities they follow.

People don’t just stop using an app until there’s very little activity.

Getting people to use a new app, especially one they have little activity on is inconvenient, especially if you’re already checking WhatsApp, wechat, signal, telegram, LINE, Zalo, and discord because you have to many different friend groups.

I just cannot fathom how people use discord to communicate. Maybe if it’s a very small group like ten people tops. But anything bigger? Seems like chaos.

People don’t typically like change. It has to feel like it’s their decision to drive them there.

People can’t be convinced of anything, it’s a losing battle to try. The only way to get people to change is to live a certain way and if people admire it, then they ask you about it and you share.

So for example-I’m a minimalist and I really wished my sister would declutter because her place is overcrowded. But instead of trying to convince her, I just shared what my life normally was like. Eventually she asked me for help decluttering, and she felt a lot better about what I helped with. Now we share cleaning and organization tips.

For me, I just put in my insta bio I left for Pixelfed and to come friend me there.

I’ve told my friends I’m off insta because I’d rather be on a platform where I control my feed that’s ad free. And that I rarely see my friends content on insta so it doesn’t matter that much to me to have friends on there. If they get interested, great if not, I’m still happy.

Discord for me. A bunch of my family and friends are avid gamers. Discord is the universal standard app they all use for general communication.

Not only do they use it for all their gaming related stuff, they have additional servers and channels for just chilling, chatting, off topic stuff, memes, politics, etc etc.

It’s the network effect. Even if there was an open source app that perfectly replicated all the functionality of Discord and was just as simple to install and run as Discord, most of them still wouldn’t switch to it, because all of their friends and family are still on Discord.

So they would have to have two completely separate apps with totally separate social groups to maintain, and nobody but hardcore advocates for FOSS and privacy are willing to do that.

Sure, I have Discord, Matrix, IRC, Signal, XMPP clients, and a Private Mumble server, all on my systems, but I’m hardcore about FOSS. None of my friends and family are willing to do that. It took all my energy to convince two of my most techie friends just to get Signal on their phones. And only One has been willing to install a Matrix client to chat just with me.

For the same reason it’s difficult to turn people away from communism. Phlegmatic ignorance.

Threaten them with having to communicate with you using email - they’ll install Signal 😂

It’s because our marketing sucks. People don’t care about their privacy, they like what is cool. So what does that mean? It mean we gotta make using open source app so cool that people can’t help but join because all the cool kids are here. You feel me? Preaching alone is not enough although it will benefit all of us

I tried to get friends to use Signal. It’s hard because it’s a new app they e never used. One flat out refuses to use anything other than SMS and one messaging app to avoid bloat, and the others it’s just hard to get buy in when you’re the only person they know using it.