Question for the group:, do you want to take a chance on another big corporate platform such as Yahoo's new Slack...
Question for the group:, do you want to take a chance on another big corporate platform such as Yahoo's new Slack knockoff called Together or an open source alternative such as Mastodon
I’m staying here. $50/year for a G Suite account.
ReplyDeleteSay no to corporatism. GNU.
ReplyDeleteStan McCann You might want to say that message over on Gnu+ instead of here.
ReplyDeleteBrian Holt Hawthorne I am saying it in this group because as I understand it, this group is about a replacement for g+. The best replacement would be under the GNU model. Not run by a corporation. I'm not here for business, just personal.
ReplyDeleteI would like to focus on something that will live longer than G+ did. I don't think anything but Facebook can do that... because it has ads and your data. I don't mind the GNU comment. I would prefer something that didn't require me to buy/sell to join and that means looking at possible open source alternatives.
ReplyDeleteI am only interested in non commercial self hosting to a larger decentralized network with end to end encryption in and out of the databases, fully functional integrated events and calendars with news feeds, industry standard compliance, free to users... it would be nice to be able to port G+ contacts, collections, and communities... put the control in the hands of the users so corporate efforts cannot turn you off when they find it not profitable.
ReplyDeleteMy first preference would be Google spinning off G+ as a nonprofit, with its source code becoming public and user interaction history getting transferred over. Yonatan Zunger may know somebody who knows somebody in that regard, I suppose.
ReplyDeleteI don't like Facebook's stink, and Twitter's shininess is too distracting for my constitution. So, failing the appearance of GNU Plus, I think I'll take a new look at Mastodon and Diaspora. Some people I follow here, such as Woozle Hypertwin, Edward Morbius, and dozens of others, have already began migrating there, and I suppose I'll try to fit in somewhere relatively close to the people I find most interesting, but it's looking likely that different people will go to different networks. Our future is probably in a myriad of relatively small social networks, perhaps partly federated in some sort of Neo-Usenetian way, so I'll need to figure out how to manage that herd as a user without excessive fragmentation at my end. (In that regard, G+'s end might end up resembling Giskard making Earth radioactive and forcing the second wave of Terran exodus in Robots and Empire.)
In particular, I have a slight aversion to corporate hosting, but not an absolute one. I haven't minded Google running G+ because Google has a history of behaving in relatively benevolent and trustworthy ways. I don't quite have a similar trust for Yahoo, but my impression of them is still better than of Facebook.
ReplyDeleteJohn Foster: I'm pretty sure the Mozilla Foundation would be able to run a hypothetical free software based GNU Plus. It is not exactly its core business, but it has the technical knowhow, the organisational infrastructure, and the social capital to pull it off.
ReplyDeleteDebian or FSF, or possibly a consortium of free software entities, might also be able to provide the non-profit platform support.
I would prefer the entity not running ads if at all feasible, and I'd be willing to donate something around 10 euros a month to keep the squirrels in the servers fed and their administrators properly lubricated.
I don't trust corps, at this point.
ReplyDeleteThink platforms, protocols, and code, not owners.
Andres Soolo Diaspora and Mastodon seem to be the way everyone who wants an open source alternative is heading. I'm also looking at Gab.ai (mainly for their low censorship policy) and Marc Cuban's Dust App, which deletes your posts after 24 hours, as corporate alternatives. I still haven't found anything with a clean UI like G+ on Android though. The visual appeal is hard to replicate in very new alternatives.
ReplyDeleteI opened an account on pluspora. It is not corporate.
ReplyDeleteJohn Foster: Forced post deletion seems to run counter to the purpose of a social network to me. But thanks for mentioning Gab.ai; I hadn't heard of it before, and will take a look.
ReplyDeleteSo, as to corporate hosting: I don't think it's a feature to be seeking. I see it more of a possibly necessary evil. Other things being equal, nonprofit hosting is preferable to for-profit corporate hosting. But if the network has enough interesting people in it, as was the case with G+ since its beginning, and the corporate entity is not too evil, one can outweigh the other.
ReplyDeleteOnce G+ is gone if not before, I intend to divest use of Google services completely - no gmail, no Chrome, no hangouts. The only reason I used any of them was for G+.
ReplyDeleteShelenn Ayres Oddly enough, G+ was about the only remaining hook for me as well. I nuked Chrome a couple of weeks ago.
ReplyDeleteEdward Morbius The one thing that will keep me in Google territory is Android. If I could find an open source cell phone OS, Google could ...
ReplyDeleteStan McCann itsfoss.com - 6 Open Source Mobile OS Alternatives To Android in 2018 | It's FOSS
ReplyDeleteBrian Holt Hawthorne Cool. I haven't followed the link yet. Thanks.
ReplyDeleteStan McCann Keep an eye on Purism:
ReplyDeletehttps://puri.sm/
(I am. No relation / association otherwise.)
puri.sm - Purism – High-quality laptops that protect your freedom and privacy
Brian Holt Hawthorne Hmm. We aren't there yet. :(
ReplyDeleteEdward Morbius: I find it a bit strange that TPM chips would be even an option in purist laptops.
ReplyDelete