Re: Privacy Respecting Replacement for facebook groups

[Jean Louis]

* Lori Nagel via libreplanet-discuss <libreplanet-discuss@libreplanet.org> 
[2020-09-29 19:17]:
> Hello everyone, I'm trying to figure out a privacy  respecting
> replacement for facebook groups.  I want something that is easy to
> join, (so no requirement that you learn email encryption, system
> administration or anything "hard"  but also something that even Richard
> Stallman wouldn't object to (not that I'm trying to recruit him to join
> it, just some people are really zealots about stuff, if it doesn't have
> javascript that is also a bonus.)

GNU Social allows creation of groups, I am not sure if it has
Javascript, probably yes, and it is free. Stallman is sending his
notices by using helpers over GNU Social software

Pleroma is also federated software with similar protocols, Mastodon,
those are all free software that allow similar activities as you asked
for.

XMPP protocol and plethora of clients also allow group work.

> I've also considered things like email lists, matermost, irc and
> forums, and I've dismissed them for the following reasons.

> 1. Lots of people just ignore email thesse days, plus it isn't really
> very real time.

That depends of the team and not of general circumstances, if you are
group leader, none of them will ignore the email. Email is today more
used than ever, and I make thousands and thousands of dollars sales by
using emails, so I cannot agree on that one.

> 2. irc is just a chat channel, too many bots and while it is real time,
> it doesn't really have any persistance of topics.

In that sense, you are free to self-host IRC and you are free to make
persistant topics, on public IRC servers, you can reserve your channel
and make persistant topics.

XMPP or Jabber groups are great, so you have Conversations for
Android/Replicant or LineageOS, and on Emacs there is jabber.el, there
are plethora of XMPP software, you can post images to XMPP in the
group, you can talk in the group, it is visual, you can exchange files
or videos, maybe videos are not so visual, depends of the client.

> 3. Forums tend to be too public with just anyone can join it, and while
> you can have private forums or private sections of forums, you need to
> be an administrator to set that all up.

That is right.

Facebook groups have privacy or authorization features, exchange of
images and videos, and status features, so very similar to that is
XMPP protocol, as I said.

> I want to create a small group that is highly engaged with the
> subject, chatting everyday etc.

I think XMPP is for you, just launch it, and try it. Sorry that at
time of writing this, I do not have Internet connection, so I cannot
give you references now, you would start from www.xmpp.org and review
clients, and there are many public XMPP servers, try searching on Internet.

> mastadon doesn't really have groups yet,

It has that I know. Please try using this instance
https://pleroma.gnusocial.club to test Pleroma version, see if you can
create groups. I cannot help now as I am offline.

I think that XMPP is excellent solution for you, but you need to use
some of public servers where you can create your own group.

I would invest $5 per month and use Digital Ocean Web Hosting:
https://m.do.co/c/564f4aeba6a8 and open up VPS and run my own XMPP
server, what I also do.

If you need help with the setup of your own XMPP server, let me know.

Later, all what you do is you assign username to your users, or you
could make it open server for everybody to subscribe. Beauty is that
you can communicate with anybody on any other XMPP server.

-- 
Thanks,
Jean Louis