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Fediverse alternative to Facebook is what's really missing (sh.itjust.works)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/fediverse@lemmy.world
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I do a presentation of the Fediverse to my college students and will soon be giving short workshops to organization as well. I realize that a viable, decentralized altenative to Facebook is IMO the biggest missing piece of the puzzle. We need something that offers some kind of central platform for networking, events, groups, etc. For work related stuff I present Nexcloud. Mastodon, Lemmy, Pixelfed and Loops are getting really interesting and working alternative to their counterparts. I believe if we could get a massive movement of people to adopt an FOSS alternative to Facebook, everything else would easily follow. What do you people think, what would you recommend? I haven't tried Friendica yet.

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[–] 7 points 1 year ago* (10 children)

I'm pretty much forced to use Facebook and Messenger because of school. Some teachers will grade you only if you upload your work and tag them on Facebook, sometimes you have to repost or like videos because your project is a video and there's a group competition based on those metrics. Messenger is the default mode of communication between students and teachers, as well as a way to contact people for your graded surveys.

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  • [–] 15 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    I've avoided Facebook for so long, the idea that it's required as part of an 'education system' bewilders me. Wow.

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  • [–] [S] 7 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    You have no idea how deep the education system is now into gafam. To study in Quebec now, you absolutly need a cell phone with ms authenticator, teams is basically mandatory, etc. I'm one of the only teacher at my college that cares enough to show use and show foss alternative to my students. For example Moodle is the most powerfull tool a teacher could dream of for grades, quizz, file sharing, assigments, etc. Yet most teachers prefer ms bullshit suite for everything...

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

    GroupMe (Microsoft) and Discord isn't required for pure learning purposes, but 99% of clubs at my school use them, so I'd be unable to participate in a lot of shit if I dropped them.

    Instead we just get stalked by Canvas for any assignment/classwork related purposes. Oh, and lockdown browser for online tests...

    But I could totally believe teachers forcing students to use some shitty app to communicate with students and submit work.

    Edit: Not necessarily social media, but AWS exploded today and so Canvas (school learning platform) is down and my classes literally can't do online assignments until it's fixed lol. So yeah dependency on big tech can suck sometimes.

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  • [–] 8 points 1 year ago (5 children)

    Report those fuckers to the school board and files complaints.

    People need to protest social media as part of education and fuck schools that vendor lock in their students to M$ bullshit as well.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    It is not feasible unfortunately, and if I were to put that as a complaint, I would most likely be called unhinged, out-of-touch, or trying to discard a perfectly usable system. We can only raise questions and influence people as of now. Besides, the reason why Messenger is popular is because of the freebasics service which allows people to use Messenger for free.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    lol fuck that apathetic attitude.

    We all need to be sand in their oligarch machines.

    Schools need to teach that “FREE” does not mean free. Might be another good thing to bring up with the school board cause clearly that’s a lesson they didn’t learn.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

    Apathetic attitude? Not everyone has the privilege of having ever been under an authority figure who actually cares about their job. My university can't even bother to fix their drainage system, my city has had its reputation dragged in the mud on national TV for its shitty (literally) garbage collection system (btw, I still see NOTHING came out from the publicity), even though people have been complaining about these for months. Do you seriously think they'll take my opinion seriously? If I try to rally people to my cause, which would most likely be on Facebook, people would just snarkily say I'm overreacting and that I'm a hypocrite for using Facebook (which is the only way I could reach them in the first place). Even when I complained about the drainage system I was being name-called and insulted by someone who thought that making any demands to a school as a student was being entitled and what did I get out of it? Nothing! Do you think the geriatrics at the upper level even care about privacy or information? They still admire Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg goddammit! Have you ever had to really fight for a cause? Because you are painting an unrealistic landscape that I've never been able to see my entire life.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (1 child)

    Sorry to hear about the situation you’re in but that doesn’t mean you should stop. Means you are targeting the wrong people and doing this alone.

    A broken drainage system is something you could get a few people behind and go at it as a group.

    Don’t crumble or think because as a student you can’t do anything. You have to get organized and get others involved. One person calling you names won’t matter at that point.

    I’m actively part of multiple groups working on what we can to throw sand into their machines. Sometimes it’s small victories but at least it’s getting the message out there.

    I understand that’s not safe to do in every country, but these things need to be addressed. Cause if we don’t, nobody will.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago*

    I'm sorry for blowing up on you. It's just that I feel powerless and I feel like it's hard to change anything if I do things more directly. I've been trying to get people involved but it's so hard to get the momentum going that it tends to fizzle out (kinda like c/Philippines). I really wanted free internet to be a thing here in my country (not only that, we pay more for lower quality internet cmp to other countries due to underdeveloped infrastructure) so that it would break the monopoly of facebook but I'm not sure if they're doing their promise. I'm just used to my actions not having an impact unless it was supported by some external circumstance. Like how Lemmy became popular because of an external event.

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