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by el_dev_hell 2174 days ago
I hope that's the case, but I have trouble seeing a future where centralized applications (mostly Facebook, Instagram, and iMessage) will be thrown aside by the masses.

People still use Facebook after multiple proven privacy scandals. If that doesn't push people off the platform, what will?
1 comments
lozaning 2174 days ago
An alternative with a strong existing network effect. I dont really use FB at all anymore, but Im not on Mastodon et al because no one else I know is.

It's a bad catch 22.

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peterburkimsher 2174 days ago
BeWelcome.org is trying hard to get that "critical mass". I won't explain the whole history of CouchSurfing demanding membership fees and locking people out of accounts, because I don't want to complain. The focus within the community is about volunteering and building a new future together. It's primarily about letting people stay in each others' houses for free, yet there's more to the community that just hosting and being a guest.

It's a very international group, with real-life weekly meetups in several cities. The management structure is like Wikipedia/Wikimedia. The website itself needs a lot of work though.

If BeWelcome gets the network effect it needs, I'm very hopeful that BeVolunteer could start more projects. (BeBook? BeMail? BeChat?)

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sixhobbits 2174 days ago
It says its open source, but the only link to this in the faq says you should "get access" to the source via some developers circle(?) which goes to an apache "it works" page
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peterburkimsher 2174 days ago
Sorry that the link is wrong! This is the Github project:

https://github.com/BeWelcome/rox

There's no closed "developer's circle", it's an open group that anyone can join - I just made an account about a month ago.

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