1y ago

Ex-Facebook Users, What Do You Use Now?

I joined Facebook years ago not long after it took off from its college roots. I also quit it years ago when my feed became full of junk.

The one thing I miss is contact with my friends, family, and ex-cowokers. Most of them weren’t technically inclined so that was the only platform they were on. Some of them did move to Instagram, which I did as well until Facebook bought it.

I then tried wt.social shortly after it started up. It seemed like a great alternative, but its growth is very slow, It has 450,000 users according to wikipedia. Now there’s a version 2, Trust Cafe. The same article also mentioned that they’re looking into connecting to ActivityPub.

What do you use in place of Facebook to stay in contact with friends and family? Mainly, I just use text messaging apps. I use Lemmy and Mastodon for news and information.

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Nothing like Facebook. Signal, Discord, Email, SMS otherwise.

Nothing I’ve found is a true replacement to the good, original Facebook. Even Instagram is filled with ads and random BS nowadays. I made it a point to add all the birthday information I could to my calendars, and then keep up a bit with people on Instagram, but that’s about it.
- I also added birthdays to the contacts on my phone. I found an Android app called Birday that reminds me when someone's birthday is based on the dates in my contacts. Birday and the clock are the only two widgets on my homescreen. People seem to like that I reach out with a text or phone call to talk to them on their birthday over the FB "click to send happy birthday" thing (which is still better than forgetting, to be fair).

I quit it years ago (I think almost 7 years or so). The thing is I didn’t really look for a replacement. I realised that I wasn’t really keeping in touch with loved ones as much as I was looking at the heavily curated feeds showing me how “perfect” their lives were. The worst thing about this is I could look at a post from a cousin or friend showing me their kitchen remodel or their beautiful holiday pics and meanwhile the gossip from my family contacts told me what was actually going on (but they had maxed out their credit cards for the remodel and holiday couple were actually in the middle of a divorce). Rather than trying to get my family and friends to be more truthful I decided to give my sanity a a time to recover.

Signal. We just have a group chat. No idea what the extended family is up to anymore though.
- Same.

8 years ago I posted on facebook that whoever is interested in keeping in touch should text me and I deleted my account a week later. 4 people texted - all 4 were my high school friend. I'm very good friends with them still. We have a tiny discord server for communication. Since then I had maybe 4 more people who I thought "huh, I wonder what are they up to now" over the years, but my curiosity wasn't big enough to start facebook again. For the rest I didn't really care.

For friends and family? Texting, discord, etc.
The only social media I use outside of that has been reddit since like 2011.
- Exactly. Why do I need to see where cousin Jerry has been for his latest fishing trip? I couldn't give less of a fuck.
  
  I have cousins like that.

I am ex-Facebook user since November of 2017. So far nothing but I recently learned about Friendica. I am curious about it.

I've had FB since 2004 or 2005. I never deleted it. I visit once a week. It is a wasteland for me. The only person who ever posts regularly is my brother.
When I stopped using it regularly I switched to... Nothing. While I do have Mastodon most of my chatting takes place through Signal. I have 2 contacts on WhatsApp. I am awful at keeping in contact but people know how to find me if they need me. I send out birthday emails to close friends.

Nothing.
I hate Facebook. I spent most of my time on Twitter until Elon Musk pulled that stupid stunt with the sink, then I moved to Mastodon, which I love.

Nothing. I never stayed in contact with people and regularly downsized my friend list. I found that I was keeping people as friends but hadn't talked to or messaged them in years. People I actually talk to have my number and I have theirs. Scrolling through people's lives kept me from reaching out and having real conversations with people so...yeah.
- This. Ever since I quit facebook, I find myself reaching out to friends who I care about rather than just following their feed. I also find when we hang out, there's more for us to discuss and we cherish each other's company more because we no longer have the convenience of staying hyper updated about each other. It's the whole idea of absence makes the heart grow fonder. My advice to everyone is to stop relying on social media to keep up with people and go have some real relationships with those you care about. You'll find yourself much happier.
  
  Exactly. I remember I used to try to have the most "friends" possible but at some point it was like "yeah I don't actually talk to these people and I don't think I will." Used to also keep FB for certain groups I was part of but in the end, there was just no point.

Other than a couple of recommendations for Friendica, it looks like everyone hasn't bothered to find a replacement that does all the same things.
Friending all your relatives on Facebook was like attending a family reunion that never ends. At first, it was great catching up with everyone you hadn't been in contact with. Pretty soon after that, Uncle Bert would start on some political rant, Cousin Stan would try to get you to invest in some sketchy startup, and Cousin Sally would go on about a new cult she joined. The same thing would hold for an endless high reunion.
Facebook made sense for its original membership of college students. It was a great way to meet other students. You all had similar goals, experiences, and questions. Once you graduated, you all went your own way.
Social media is in its infancy in regards to how we use it. We're still learning about what works and what doesn't. For many of us, Facebook doesn't, more selective, less overall encompassing communication does. It's probably why we're all here on Lemmy and Mastodon.

The only thing Facebook has is people, and to get the people elsewhere you need to have more than what Facebook has. So I think there is no alternative.

Nothing. Out of all the 'friends' I had on there, only a handful were ones that are irl mates and I have their numbers. We text occaisionally.

Mastodon has been a fun replacement for twitter, but I don’t really use it to keep in touch with real life friends, I use it to meet new internet friends and keep up on niche topics/hobbies. I have no interest in a Facebook replacement tho. The format of Facebook is lost on me at this point and anyone who I want to keep in touch with since leaving Facebook has my phone number. As for family, I see them for holidays and it’s more than enough for me.

@curt Friendica

My grandmas and I are pen pals. I text my parents.
I got on facebook to meet girls at university, not to keep up with family. I slowly got off facebook when my friends from university quit posting anything useful.
My other sort of anonymous social media stuff was on reddit and now Lemmy.

Family group chat and shared albums in iOS. Solve 90% of the needs.

I walk the streets holding up memes from last week on TikTok, asking people to like them. I mutter vaguely racist epithets too, and all the pink coloured men with Union Jack tattoos all agree with me.

Pretty much just this. Well, and LinkedIn, but I don't post personal stuff over there. I moved from Facebook to Reddit about eight or nine years ago, and with Reddit circling the drain, am currently rudderless. Tried this Mastodon thing when it first got popular a few years ago and had no good experiences with it; this time around seems to be different with all the fresh blood. Just hope it keeps on keepin' on .

Same as you. SMS and phone for most, email and phone for my older relatives. Lemmy and Mastodon for news and information. I have gotten some friends and coworkers to use Signal Messenger, but really, I am kind of done trying to convince people to change their habits. I do feel left out of some conversations that I know happen on Facebook and Apple iMessage, but not really worth "the extras" of having those accounts.

They can come visit me if they have something to say. Or email. I've invited them to XMPP and fedi many times and they've ignored it. I interpret this as them not wanting to talk to me.

Discord with irl and online friends
Twitter for fandom stuff and random opinions
Real Life dates with close friends

Basically this place. I got fed up with all the negativity on Facebook and how everything is about interaction and not positivity. Facebook and other (social) media thrive on getting people agitated because that gets the most views on their ads. However it is slowly setting up humankind against each other and killing us.

I got into Facebook pretty late (around 2010) and it never grabbed me. I caught up with old friends, but the window into their lives that it provided me with just made them seem annoying. I fiddled with it for a bit and then switched to Google Plus for the brief window between it coming up and Google sucking all of the joy out of it. After that, it was Twitter and then Mastodon around five years back.
As for keeping up with friends and family, it's mostly email, phone, and the occasional Signal group chat.

Text messages.

contact with my friends, family, and ex-cowokers
Whenever I wanted to keep in touch with someone growing up, I’d ask to exchange phone numbers. This habit meant I didn’t really need to use social media to honestly keep in touch with most people. At most the social media would hand me a quick life update (e.g. vacation picture lets me know to ask you how your vacation was) that I could use to start a conversation. I think this worked because most people my age had cell phones that they accessed the social media from.

Quit FB back in 2015, but still use messenger to keep in contact with friend and family.

Nothing I’ve found is a true replacement to the good, original Facebook. Even Instagram is filled with ads and random BS nowadays. I made it a point to add all the birthday information I could to my calendars, and then keep up a bit with people on Instagram, but that’s about it.

Text messaging apps for one on one or group chats. Lot of my friends use discord and set up a channel for us when playing games or watching shows together.
I don't use any type social media where people are actively encouraged to associate their real identity with and share personal photos or videos on a public feed. Those always made me uncomfortable, so I was very resistant to them from the start.

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