Why use Freindica for U3A.social?
After watching @Peter Lord 's interesting presentation about using the Freindica platform for the U3A.social, I immediately created an account and started using it. So far, I am not enjoying the experience.
TL;DR I suggest that Freindica is not a good fit for u3a.social or the average U3A user.
I use Facebook, Flipboard and Reddit. I used to use Twitter but switched to Reddit when Elon arrived. My career has been in R&D Software Engineering, Windows programming and IT project & department management. I have experienced the success & failure of projects.
I would be pleased to support the development of this project but only if it has a good chance of success.
I know I'm late to the party. I may have missed previous conversations about the feasibility of this project.
Can we discuss this? Has a feasibility study already been completed? Am I the only one with doubts?
TIA
Peter Lord
in reply to Laurence Campbell • •Thanks for your comments.
Yes, there was a number of earlier talks, posts, discussions and a survey :
* Is it time to move to the fediverse ?
* u3a.social proposal
* Real time bidding
* u3a.social update (inc survey results)
* u3a.social is alive !
* How to use u3a.social
As mentioned in the talk, I went ahead with the idea on the basis of the survey results. A lot of comments I had back were of the flavour "start small and see where it goes". Its hard to predict where this might go, but you have to start somewhere I suppose.
The third age trust is aware of the project but don't seem to want to do much at the moment to enable person to person discussions (outside big corporation social sites). I did wonder if the u3a.social project might prompt the third age trust to do something (of course "u3a" is bigger than the third age trust).
Laurence Campbell
in reply to Peter Lord • •Peter Lord
in reply to Laurence Campbell • •Good question 😀. I'm (trying) to track numbers in homeassistant.
We had about 60 prior to the last meeting and now 87. I didn't note down how many attended the last meeting, but a bit of a jump.
Peter Lord
Unknown parent • •Yea I also gave up whatsapp when the terms and conditions changed and moved to signal (although I do also use beeper which wraps many chat protocols).
Aside from the lack of tracking, friendica is open source which has advantages over closed source alternatives (great segway to our next meeting !)
Barry Whenman
in reply to Laurence Campbell • •For example, I can't ever see myself leaving Facebook, because a large percentage of my local community are there, and I would stand to lose too much by leaving. On the other hand, I've largely moved from Twitter to BlueSky - BUT... I still pop back sometimes because much of the (fantasy football) content that I read is still there... 😬
The integration between the Fediverse and BlueSky will help to some extent, but I do think it is likely to lead to an increase in platforms rather than a complete change...
Did anyone mention LinkedIn..? 😱
Peter Lord
in reply to Barry Whenman • •Yes, I understand. I find this (moral) area really interesting.
For example, although I've been on one cruise holiday I will refuse to go on another now I understand how polluting and generally bad they are to the environment (earth.org/the-environmental-im…). I've made a personal moral choice, there are other types of holiday available.
Likewise, when I first found out about the cambridge analytical scandal (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook…) I considered it simply unacceptable behavour so I, and many others, left facebook at that point. Further research later and I don't regret that decision ... meta remains a bad company.
I have found, though, their are usually alternatives to be had. For example, I own an electric car and sometimes want to chat online about them with others. There are facebook g
... Show more...Yes, I understand. I find this (moral) area really interesting.
For example, although I've been on one cruise holiday I will refuse to go on another now I understand how polluting and generally bad they are to the environment (earth.org/the-environmental-im…). I've made a personal moral choice, there are other types of holiday available.
Likewise, when I first found out about the cambridge analytical scandal (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook…) I considered it simply unacceptable behavour so I, and many others, left facebook at that point. Further research later and I don't regret that decision ... meta remains a bad company.
I have found, though, their are usually alternatives to be had. For example, I own an electric car and sometimes want to chat online about them with others. There are facebook groups, of course, but also non-facebook forums such as speakev.com/. I mentioned in the talk some exceptions to this - some of the summer festivals I attend only use facebook groups, so I have to use fetchrss.com/ to convert these groups to RSS so I can still read them without a facebook account. Of course I try to pursuade the organisers to consider other platforms as well!
I expect its possible to use facebook and avoid most of the tracking (for example use a well configured & tested browser config, ditch the app, use tracker/ad blockers, use browser plugins like "facebook container"), but even then there are still issues.
Since you mention it, I left linkedin recently after it introduced using users data to train its generative AI (not that I was using the site that much).
I've never really thought of myself as overly "moral", yet I find myself making some choices like this ! Life is surprising. Sometimes you need to vote with your feet.
Having said all that, I'm still using some "E-rated" online services - for example google drive & docs. I hope to find an alternative to that this year.
But, yes, your point is well made ... not much point in having a social platform if you are the only one on it ! Still, I do feel we should try this out ... even outside of the u3a its working pretty well for me personally, I'm finding most things I need here, although it does require some effort.
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