On Social Media

#SignalFlare https://bobquasit.dreamwidth.org/ (my personal blog; most entries aren't public, but I'd be glad to add G+ friends) https://www.reddit.com/user/BobQuasit (for cautious public posting) I'm on a bunch of others (Facebook, MeWe, Minds, Pluspora, Gab, Discord, etc.) but to be honest I don't use them. It seems that I can't download any of my communities. All those entries, lost forever...god damn Google to hell. I'll never trust them again. And they've lost my phone business, too. Good luck, everybody! Remember G+! https://bobquasit.dreamwidth.org/

Is it just me? The more posts I see from people proclaiming their love for MeWe, and urging everyone to get onto MeWe right away, the more I dislike MeWe. And I've been on there for years.

Would it be premature to suggest that this group make the following preliminary recommendations? 1. That G+ users continue to monitor G+ (at the very least) and if possible, this group. 2. That in any case, exodus members not commit solely to any one alternative at this time, but instead are urged to establish and maintain at least one centralized and one decentralized social media alternative? What do you think?

I just did something a bit interesting: I wrote a long piece and posted it on G+, MeWe, Minds, DreamWidth, LiveJournal, Pluspora, Blogger, and Ello (it's about the Diablo 1 HD Mod). I wrote it in a Google Doc. Interestingly, G+ did NOT display the formatting; boldfacing and italics. Dreamwidth did, with no problems. So did LiveJournal, which received the post as an automatic crosspost from Dreamwidth. No formatting came through on MeWe, Minds, Pluspora, or Ello. Blogger displayed the formatting, but eliminated text wrapping; I had to switch to HTML and abandon the formatting (although I could have recreated it; it would just have taken a long time). I find it interesting that the two Google products, G+ and Blogger, couldn't handle the formatting applied by Google Docs! Now I'll wait and see which ones get the most responses, if any.

If we do not manage to find a single ideal replacement for Google Plus (which seems very likely), what would be the maximum number of social media services that you would consider using as a replacement? If you have any specific requirements or thoughts, please feel free to use the comments.

If you're familiar with an alternative to Google Plus - particularly if it's a relatively obscure service - please consider posting an entry here to tell our members what that alternative is like. It would be great if you could include screenshots , and describe some of the details of how you use the service. Tell us what you like about it. You can certainly talk about flaws, too. If possible, please include the #WhatItsLike hashtag. Thanks!

I have been seeing a lot of social media sites mentioned, and there is no way that I have the time or energy to try them all out myself. So I thought it might be helpful to have some screenshots of various alternatives. This is the main page of my journal on Dreamwidth. Most of it is obvious, I guess. The Reading page contains posts from people and communities that I have designated. I can create many different views for my reading page, with different communities and individuals, of course. I have great flexibility and control for who can see each post, including me-only and public. Public posts can be shared with non-members and indexed by outside search engines. From the posting page I can also post to any community that I'm part of. The inbox allows private messages as well as containing copies of any comments made on my posts. I'll include a second screenshot with more detail in the comments. #WhatItsLike

I don't know if anyone here uses Gab, but if you do: Apparently Gab is going to be down for a while. Sounds like one of their users may have been involved in something infamous. I have (or at least had ) a Gab account, but haven't used it in a really long time. https://twitter.com/getongab/status/1056362626077220865

I've been thinking about the Alternatives spreadsheet. It seems to me that for the kind of data it contains, form entry would probably not be ideal. We'd get lots of duplicate entries, and the editors would have to spend a lot of time trying to reconcile them. That wouldn't be at all efficient, and I don't think it would serve the purpose of the sheet - which is to assemble an objective list of the features all all available alternatives. So I'd like to leave things as they are for that one. You can ask me for editing access by emailing me at my Gmail address, which is my first initial and my last name, with no spaces or other characters. However , what if I created a form to assemble impressions and feelings about alternatives? They'd feed into a spreadsheet that would be publicly viewable, and it would give people the chance to see how G+ users feel about various alternatives overall. What do you think?

Check this out - it's a screenshot that I posted from my Pixel today. I can't believe how bad the image quality is! Believe me, it looked great on the phone (and still does). Is Google downgrading G+ capabilities already? Originally shared by Peter Maranci Tornado?

Due to repeated instances of advertising and screwing with the G+ Alternatives spreadsheet, it is no longer open to public editing . I regret the necessity, but I can't keep working to fix the apparently malicious edits that are being performed by anonymous users. Everyone can still view the document. If you'd like to be able to edit it, please contact me. I appreciate the good work done on the document by members of this community; I'm just sorry that some anonymous bad actors ruined it for everyone.

Lately it feels as if there's been a mad stampede of users out of G+. More and more people are falling head over heels in love with one or another alternate service, pulling up stakes, and heading for the horizon. This troubles me. G+ users were an unusual community; more thoughtful than Facebook, and kinder than Reddit. You pretty much had to be an interesting person to stay here while the Facebook juggernaut rolled on. I have to admit something: I had pretty much given up on social media for the last six months or so. Facebook had become intolerable to me, with its frenetic shallowness and judgmentalism. Reddit was simply toxic. I couldn't help but see social media as a hollow replacement for the real-world, long-term social interaction that we as social animals have evolved to need: privatized, monetized, monitorable, and controllable. A roadblock to any chance of long-term human survival or a living decent human life. But with the impending shutdown of Google Plus, I saw ...

Here's a question: What won't you miss about Google Plus?

I posted this question to MeWe's CEO two days ago, and haven't received a response yet. I hope that I wasn't out of line! +Mark Weinstein I imagine you're sick of questions by now, but I have three that I think would tip the balance for many G+ users - if the answers are right. 1. Will public posts on MeWe be linkable and directly accessible to non-MeWe users? That is, will Facebook users (for example) be able to click on a link and go directly to a public post on MeWe? 2. Will search engines such as Google be able to index and search public MeWe posts, and link directly to them in applicable search results? 3. This one is tougher: obviously a lot of G+ users are feeling burned. We are being thrown out of our online home. What assurance (if any) can you give us that MeWe is here for the long term, and won't be sold or shut down?

Please use the comment area of this post to talk about your experiences with Cake, and how it feels to use it in comparison with G+. Also, if you know much about Cake please consider contributing to the entry for that service in the G+ Alternatives spreadsheet. At present, the entry for Cake is blank! No politics, please. Thanks! #GooglePlusAlternativeReviews. #Cake

I'd like to suggest considering a social media site that hasn't been talked about here, as far as I know: Dreamwidth. Dreamwidth has been operating for eleven years now. It has circles, communities, tags, and the separate options to follow or be followed without "friending". It has an active, mature, and generally friendly body of users. It's not swarmed with memes, or at least the parts that I see aren't. You can create different views that will allow you to see posts from specified groups of friends or communities. Privacy controls are outstanding, and the service as a whole is very easy to use. It's ad-free. There are free accounts, and there is no posting limit. There are also paid accounts; they get the additional option of searching their posts internally. They keep out spammers quite effectively. Their policies on free speech are enlightened; when the Russian government started enforcing restrictive and homophobic policies on LiveJournal, many use...

Please use the comment area of this post to talk about your experiences with Diaspora (including Pluspora and any other Diaspora pod), and how it feels to use it in comparison with G+. No politics, please. Thanks! #GooglePlusAlternativeReviews. #Diaspora #Pluspora

Please use the comment area of this post to talk about your experiences with Minds, and how it feels to use it in comparison with G+. No politics, please Thanks! #GooglePlusAlternativeReviews. #Minds

Quick question/suggestion for the admins (and everyone else): Will there be someplace permanent (or at least long-term) where G+ expatriates can get news about surviving G+ communities (I mean groups of G+ refugees) after G+ itself is gone? In other words, if two or three years from now there's (for example) a Kickstarter to re-create G+ as a member-owned community, is there going to be somewhere where we can go to hear about it? A "Google Plus news" site, so to speak? I'd think that the Plexodus Wiki might be a good place for that, but I don't know if there's a plan to maintain it. Is there? Thanks!

Please use the comment area of this post to talk about your experiences with Facebook (if you have any), and how it feels to use it in comparison with G+. I'm not looking for features or politics here . Thanks! #GooglePlusAlternativeReviews. #Facebook