Most social platforms have open source and federated alternatives now:
YouTube -> PeerTube
Instagram -> Pixelfed
Reddit -> Kbin / Lemmy
Twitter -> Mastodon
Facebook Groups -> ?
Friendica is the only alternative I’ve heard of for Facebook Groups. I haven’t had enough time with it to see if it works as well yet, though. I’ve watched the very few videos about it online. So I have 2 questions.
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Does anyone have another suggestion besides Friendica? I’m a little surprised that FB Groups don’t have an equivalent. Maybe Lemmy / Kbin serve the same purpose anyway but I did find FB groups a little more user-friendly for people who are less technical.
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Am I fooling myself in thinking that some platforms are more ethical than Meta/Twitter/Google? They might not profit off of genocide, but they probably can’t moderate massive disinformation campaigns should they arrive on their shores. Telegram, for example, seems to be rife with dodgy channels that go unchallenged.
The truth is that for something like Facebook groups the biggest feature is that everyone is already there, and by that metric there is no alternative
True, but the format is unique. The post format breaks up the flow of chatter into easily discernible units of conversation.
IRC, Discord and others have the continuous stream of thought with no beginning or end. On the other extreme, Instagram and TikTok require an image or video to post at all.
So I would say that FB groups have a distinct utility / identity separate from just other users being there.