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After having tried out many of the touted alternatives -- and finding them wanting in critical mass, or technical...


After having tried out many of the touted alternatives -- and finding them wanting in critical mass, or technical polish, or pleasant user experience ... well, to be honest, I'm thinking of just rolling back to my WordPress blog and Twitter, and follow along folk I am interested in through RSS (where available). That means I'm going to lose track of some people, but that's inevitable anyway, and I've yet to find something that really floats my boat.

Or, maybe, I'll feel differently tomorrow.

Comments

  1. I've had much the same reaction to the startup alternatives - I really don't want something less sophisticated than the Plus. And I have ... ZERO interest in being associated with any platform whose "free speech" policies attract neoNazis and the like.

    Happily, some of the photography communities that have been my main focus here have migrated to less worrisome spaces (purpose-built blogs, Flickr, etc.), so I'll be able to keep up with the Plussers I care most about.

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  2. Ive found MeWe to be the best alternative. Nothings like this place tho

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  3. I'm also exploring WordPress as an alternative and in fact is in the process of importing my 20k+ Google+ posts into a WordPress blog as I'm writing this (of course not all of them are 'intelligent' posts but I'll do some filtering to remove memes and shitposts and linkdumps after the import is completed).

    As someone who have used WP for over a decade I think the problem with WP as a standalone blog is it could be quite difficult to discover other people to socialize with. One possible solution for this is to join the 'federation' which will require the installation of some plugins. It's fine as long as the plugins are still being actively developed but once the development stopped the WP blog will be disconnected from the fediverse as federation protocol support is not built in it's core.

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  4. Your Handy Dandy Cumrag MeWe has a significant "too many Nazis" issue.

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  5. Greg S ive been using it for a while and have delved into the many communities it has. I haven't found one Nazi yet lol. That's all rumor bro

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  6. It's not rumor. The Nazis are there. You either haven't encountered one yet or haven't been around long enough. Just because you haven't seen one doesn't mean it's a rumor.

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  7. Halfey Halphstein what I was trying to say was ive been all over MeWe, and if the Nazi problem were as bad as you guys make it seem, I probably wouldve encountered one by now. Do you guys mean literal anti-Semitic Nazis, or are you guys just being trigger-happy leftists and calling the far right members Nazis?

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  8. Your Handy Dandy Cumrag Castle MeWe has rats in the walls. You may not see them but they are there.

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  9. On MeWe whether you'll run into a Nazi or not may depend on the communities you're in and with whom you're connected to. For example I haven't found a Filipino user there but I won't say there are no Filipinos on MeWe.

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  10. Yep. Nothing seems as good as GPlus. So, it may be time to say, it was nice as long as it lasted, and go forward. We'll just have to do the best we can with with what we've got.

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  11. A Blog + Twitter announcements has it's place, but I don't think we've solved the engagement and comments problem. You have to accept that most of what you post won't get in front of anybody and even if it does, they won't talk back. IMHO, there are very, very few blogs that have an active commenting community associated with them. It seems you have to get famous first.

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  12. The alt-right is definitely alive and well on MeWe. I stay away from those groups.

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  13. Are you exporting your old G+ posts there, and if so what format did you export your G+ posts as?

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  14. Halfey Halphstein Are there WordPress plug-ins that let you use fediverse logins for commenting? If not, someone should write one.

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  15. Brian Holt Hawthorne I'm not aware of any plugin that allows that. The closest I could think of is turning your WP blog into its own federation profile that people can follow in other federated networks. When your blog followers reply to your blog posts there it should automatically turned into a comment on your blog. In other words they should be able to leave comments on your blog without having to login into your blog.

    Anyway no matter how awesome the plugins are IMO they're just temporary solution. Plugins don't have the same resilience as the core software itself. We can't keep relying on them forever. I've seen many popular plugins die just like that for unknown reason.

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  16. Yeah, I'm doing blogger and Pluspora/twitter. Feedly is doing a lot more for me in terms of reading stuff.

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  17. Does anybody have thoughts on Reddit?

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  18. Scott Scowcroft
    Yep, I'll stay here until the end but alreasy set to re-home to Blogger as it best fits my particular use case. ;)

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  19. Your Handy Dandy Cumrag It's not about whether you "encounter" them or not. That's actually hard to do because of the lack of public posts. The founder of MeWe encourages them and supports their being there in the name of "free speech."

    plus.google.com - MeWe still considered harmful: "Too Many Nazis" - INFO GATHERING POST (UPDATE...

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  20. Greg S ok well that's good for free speech I guess. As long as they arent harming anyone I guess theyre fine

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  21. Your Handy Dandy Cumrag So basically you're saying that you're not in a group that is affected, which makes it okay? Must be nice. Not everyone has that luxury.

    And no, it's not "great for free speech." Look up Popper's paradox of tolerance to see why.

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  22. Greg S I didnt mean to offend you. I'm just a strong believer in free speech. Words dont hurt people if they dont take them personally like a whiny bitch. It is pretty nice, but being a mod on a Google+>MeWe community, if one came around, as long as he follows the rules of the community, I dont give a shit what he says. I'm Jewish and I'm the one not getting offended? You need to grow a pair.

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  23. I don't like to see any ideologies banned from discussion. Only with discussion can people realize how abhorrent those ideologies really are.

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  24. Sue H I exported my G+ to Blogger using the Friends+Me tool. It exports to WP as well.

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  25. Greg S obviously, white supremacy is a terrible ideology. I prefer not to name the people that way, for I do not fully know (although we do know a majority) their intentions and them as people in general. But just because white supremacy is a horrible ideology, does not mean they have no right to express themselves. Like I said, as long as its not physical harm, they have a right to speak their mind. We dont live in dictatorships that have the power to control what we say and know, so why not take advantage of it?

    Also, please do not use "white supremacy" and "Naziism" interchangeably. However bad either of them are, the plantation owners of 19th century Southeastern US were not Nazis. Nazis are debateably worse than them.

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  26. i read a while ago that Wordpress is a popular amongst russian trolls, but like everything there are always two or more sides to a story and plenty of nuances inbetween. There are russian artists,journalists and writers who have noble objectives as well. As someone once said generalisations are insiduous evils

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  27. Your Handy Dandy Cumrag Nazis are at this point in time a more specific type of white supremacist, and yes, the specificity probably makes them worse, but it's the difference between pneumonic and bubonic plague.

    And no, they have no "right" to express themselves on any particular privately-run system. You're thinking of governmental regulation, which generally does not apply to any private entity.

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  28. Greg S rights do not have to specifically be protected by the government. No matter what their beliefs are, it is their God-given right to be able to speak their mind. If the speech is calling for physical harm, that's when right to free of speech has been taken too far and must be stopped. However, as I have said now multiple times, if they arent physically harming anyone, they should have the right to speak their mind.

    Although I may disagree with such a choice, we cant stop the developers of these privately run systems from silencing them due to the fact that its their site. Nevertheless, it is their site, so if they think all people deserve a right to free speech, everyone does.

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  29. Your Handy Dandy Cumrag We can’t stop the owners of private systems from harboring Nazis, but we can refuse to patronize their establishments.

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  30. Brian Holt Hawthorne absolutely. All may have a right to speak. Unfortunately those with the most extreme values seem to think that criticism, arguments and restriction of access is impinging on their "free speech".

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  31. K. T. Given that Wordpress ostensibly powers a massive percentage of the sites on the Internet, it wouldn't be at all surprising if "Russian Trolls" found it popular (alongside "Archie Comics Collectors" and "People Named Bob").

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  32. Julian Bond Yeah, I expect engagement to go way down. I don't have an answer for that regardless of the platform I use.

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  33. Sue H I have been using the SM2WP plugin for many years (even since it was abandoned by the writer), so all of my G+ posts and comments were periodically imported shortly after posting.

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