this post was submitted on 28 Jan 2024
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I thought about this recently with Instagram, when I got linked there as the 'official' information page for an event. I could see the post with the general information, but couldn't read the comments to see if any more information or clarifications had been posted.
That was an event, where the organizers obviously wanted as many people as possible to show up, and Instagram was doing them a disservice in that. I wasn't going to sign up to Instagram to view those comments. And my parents couldn't sign up to Instagram. It's too complex for them.
Twitter has been gone for the non-Nitter using general public for a while. So, at this point, if you're not a techy, where can you still publicly post information? TikTok, I think? YouTube, I guess. Mastodon would be an option, but it's verging on being too unknown for non-techies, as does BlueSky.
We've gone from a time where everyone and their mother could publicly announce things on the internet, to a pretty big vacuum.
It's going to be interesting what fills this space. Theoretically, even personal webpages might have a bit of a comeback.
As a public, we've gone back to the days when the internet was a techies platform.
The difference now is it's a techies platform Vs. a corporate platform.
The more convenient FOSS social media is, the less techie it will be, and the closer we'll get back to the more open internet for all.
Until then we have an open internet for techies alone.
Thats really insightfull.
I don't see the problem with mastodon, people without accounts can't reply, but it can still be used as a message board. It's not much different from linking to a wordpress blog.
Yeah, for those viewing a link, it definitely works. I meant that it's too unknown for the non-techies that would want to publicly post something.
Which isn't to say, they've never heard of it, but well, if you're not excited about technology, it's likely at least an hour of work, to figure out how everything works. If they know people who are already on such a platform, they're more willing to invest that much work.
Most things haven't moved over there from xitter. So if I want to follow an author, a band, an event, or even a theatre or other venue, I have to rely on bot accounts reposting from xitter, which assumes that I even know how to do that. It isn't something my mom will do without instructions, and even then it's not something she's likely to check or keep up with because it is not as intuitive.
The place does not have the followers to convince entities like I mentioned above to move there or upkeep accounts there. The TLA isn't out there posting bookings and upcoming events/cancellations on Mastadon.
If you're a customer, sure. But if you're a seller, it's about as handy for the basic "I need some form of web presence but don't wanna make and upkeep a website" use case, which facebook, instagram and twitter are increasingly failing at.
So, honestly these businesses go where the people are and Mastadon also doesn't have the userbase of xitter.or Facebook even in their decline. My kids school doesn't update delayed openings on Mastadon. Because most kids, and a whole lot of adults aren't on there.
Businesses weren't advertising on Facebook when it was "theFacebook.com". It took a while to gain a userbase that was beneficial to businesses and entities to post there and maintain accounts.
They don't have to stop posting there. They can do both.
They could, but I pretty much guarantee they won't because most school admins have never even heard of mastadon.
I wish I could find the article, but when Musk first started breaking shit and locking everything down, local meteorological accounts realized people could start missing important public information like tsunami and earthquake warnings, and they had no other way to reach the public than through Twitter.
Twitter being accessible only via direct links to tweets is still not an acceptable solution, because how would I know what the URL is for the latest Icelandic volcano warning (for example)?
Mobilizon is the Fedi version of Facebook groups/Meetup.
I'll have to check that out. I help run a secular humanist group and we've been trying to get away from Facebook for event planning. More than a few of our members (myself included) aren't on Facebook and/or aren't active there anymore. Might be a good alternative.
Yes I'm starting to migrate a local organization as well. Currently we are on Meetup. I just added us on Mobilizon. I am only advertising publicly for Mobilizon but people can still find us on Meetup if they look there. They just added a Meetup integration also so it's fairly effortless.
Honestly, let's bring geocities back (not exactly in that form). Anything that isn't a throwaway post on social media goes there, and you can post links to it from all the social platforms for reaching a broader audience. Then there's a place for getting the most up to date information about an event, that doesn't require making an account, and the person putting the event on doesn't have to make sure posts across multiple platforms are updated with the same new information.
There's Neocities: https://neocities.org/
Pair it with an own domain name and it's a perfectly valid personal homepage.
Unironically Facebook is fairly reliable for what you're describing. It nags you with a login popup regularly, but beyond that everything important is readable even without an account.
For me, after scrolling just a bit, it always pop up asking me to log in and no longer lets me scroll on the page anymore. It happens to me on both mobile and desktop.
It's really annoying when trying to look at events or business pages.
Huh. I don't think, I've ever seen a public post on Facebook, but that's probably the case, because I've rarely ever intentionally clicked on a Facebook link...
Not really. There's a lot I don't see and can't access without having a FB account. It's been like that for years.
TikTok or any such other crap is not publicly.
It takes like, $0 and a cup of coffee at most to start a simple page in neocities for a simple announcement. Heck, in the absolutely simplest cases available you can literally upload your own announcement (a picture, a PDF or smth) to ufile.io and just pass around the link to that.
I've never once used Twitter, Instagram, or anything of the sort. I get by just fine without it. I learn about events the old fashioned way: Word of mouth, and posters hung in public spaces. Many places still use email blasts as well. It's a bit head scratching for me to read these comments hailing Twitter as some sort of irreplaceable necessity in life.
Well, I'm not saying that it's a necessity. Usually, it's not a necessity to hold or attend those events in the first place.
But that does not mean that people don't deeply want it. I've been part of the orga team for a larger event before and that was our biggest concern: If anything happens that makes it impossible to hold the event, how in the fuck do you tell people to not come?
We did have a whole homepage specifically for this event and, to be fair, the answer was still generally that you don't. People won't subscribe to your RSS feed or regularly check the webpage. Unless a catastrophe happens, you have to keep to the time and place. But if we could reach even just 20% of people in case of a catastrophe, that would have still been massively helpful.