[mxuribe]

I'm sorry that this happened to you. What i am about to propose is not a solution for you for now unfortunately. But maybe something to help for the future...Have you considered starting a new presence for yourself and your community on the fediverse (e.g. mastodon, pleroma, diaspora, friendica, etc.)?? This will take work and time of course and maybe not all members will follow you over, but if you start a new community on one of the existing fediverse instances - or even better and more resilient, start your own instance - then facebook or other entities will not be able to let this happen to you/your community again. (Granted you can of course get hacked in your new world, encounter negativity, etc...But you will likely be in better position to do something more for yourself than what FB is/isn't doing.)

Step 1: Research the topic of the fediverse, and specifically find options for you to sign up for accounts...Yes, plural acounts...so you can get a flavor for the differnce in apps, instances, existing communities and so on. "Try" before you "buy". See also site like: https://fediverse.party/en/fediverse

During this step, if you can still access the legacy FB community/page as a participant, inform your peers that you're trying this fediverse thing out, and if they're interested in experimenting with you. The more that can go along for the ride, the merrier!

Step 2: Sign up for a couple of different accounts, join some existing communities. No need to be shady nor too secretive, be honest with folks that you're testing the waters...and of course be respectful; that helps new members. Get familiar with using the tech (since there are nuances and differences to how conventional social media typically operates, new vocabularies, etiquette)... Do not research about setting up your own instance...just get comfy being a regular user, and understanding the rhythms of the fediverse. And, if some members from the legacy FB page did in fact join you in this experiment, ask them what they think so far.

Step 3: Decide which community to stay with in the fediverse (maybe re-create your "true"/"final" account), and then start inviting community members from legacy FB page. I should clarify that like FB, you are not restricted to only 1 community...you can join as many places as you wish.

Optional Step 4: After some time, if you're really into the fediverse, want more freedom, etc...Research setting up your instance/community...or look for providers that you pay for managing the infrastructure for you. Nothing is free - you either invest time/money managing system yourself or pay someone else to do it for you.

Good luck, and again, sorry that this happened to you in the first place!

[Jolter]

I think you have too high hopes for the possibility to get non tech-geek users to try the Fediverse. If Heavy Metal Community A on Facebook disappears overnight, I think the users will simply join Heavy Metal Community B (on Facebook).

[mxuribe]

You might be correct. I do not know the community in question nor the desire of the community leader here nor their background for interest in what i suggested. But i figured, i just provide a proposal, that's all.

And, separately, while the fediverse is vastly dwarfed in participation numbers by convenional social media...at last count there are several millions of users engaged within the fediverse...Now, that number fluctuate wildly depending on sources from single digit millions of users to double digit millions of users, etc...But there are still quite a large number of people nowadays on the fediverse. I happen to know many users (that i ineract with constantly) on the fediverse who are most definitely not tech-geeks. I win nothing if this community leader listens to me or not...again, i was just proposing a suggestion.

[metalised]

There is no "legacy FB page" to join as a participant. That's the problem. The hackers deleted the page.

I mentioned it to another poster here, but essentially I tried to inform my subscribers about the hack before the page was deleted, as part of a high-profile post (the end of year best metal albums post, which is the yearly highlight of the page, and always gets a lot of visibility).

Unfortunately, not many people seemed to notice or act on the 'hack' stuff in the post, even though the post itself did actually get a lot of votes and 'thank you' replies from bands. But only a handful of people subscribed to the 'backup' page that I mentioned in that post.

Unless I manage to get the page restored somehow, the best I can hope for is that next year, anyone who "actively" looks for the end of year list and notices the page is gone, might decide to google 'metalised', end up on my blog, see what happened, and subscribe to the backup page ... but that already feels like it would be too much effort for the average facebook user, even if they did get value from that community. To be honest, it's more like the commenter below says. If my Heavy Metal community A disappears overnight, chances are people will simply jump over to Heavy Metal community B rather than start looking for 'fediverse' stuff (I don't even know what that is, to be honest, and I doubt many of my subscribers would either).

[mxuribe]

> There is no "legacy FB page" to join as a participant. That's the problem. The hackers deleted the page...

Yeah, the lack of the page does hamper things greatly. I'm sorry again that this happened.

> ...To be honest, it's more like the commenter below says. If my Heavy Metal community A disappears overnight, chances are people will simply jump over to Heavy Metal community B rather than start looking for 'fediverse' stuff (I don't even know what that is, to be honest, and I doubt many of my subscribers would either)...

My hope for you is that you and your fellow community members can in fact continue - whether it is on something like Heavy Metal community B, etc. Obviously, your call if you are or not interested in researching other options like the fediverse...Although, you (and other community members) should start thinking of plans for what to do if another hacking incident happens. (I sincerely hope that this kind of thing does not happen to you and your community ever again.)

[tqi]

How would a distributed system help? Being on a distributed system wouldn't keep hackers from taking control of your self hosted page and hosing it.

[mxuribe]

You're correct that by itself distributed systems - like the fediverse - do not automatically prevent hacks/security events. Although diversity of nodes (and decentralization of nodes too) does help because if one node is struck, then others can still operate; not foolproof but does offer some level of resilience. Also, to clarify, my proposal was more about sovereignty and added control of one's comunity and by extension content/voice. Certainly, if the relevant community lived on the fediverse, perhaps there could have been more that might have been done to continue even after some hack...maybe.

[tqi]

Hm I see - but in the case of bad actors hacking accounts, being on the fediverse seems neutral (relative to being on facebook) to worse? At least with (some) centralized systems there is an authority that can be appealed to (not FB obviously).

> Certainly, if the relevant community lived on the fediverse, perhaps there could have been more that might have been done to continue even after some hack...maybe.

As far as I can tell, the community members of this page still exists, the page itself is just gone? Not sure there is an advantage either way.

[mxuribe]

> ...At least with (some) centralized systems there is an authority that can be appealed to (not FB obviously)...

Yes, but...and, mind you, this gets a bit philosophical and scenario-specific...but, if we trace the incentives all the way through, some central authorities will only help if your/your community's goals are aligned, right? FB has a goal of creating just enough of a community to get paid by someone, and sadly not by community members but by ad buyers. In the fediverse - which let me clarify is far from perfect - it really is as close to you/someone setting up their own stuff and yelling into the void just because they want to...and it happens that others might want to join in without a similar agenda to FB, etc.

> ...the community members of this page still exists, the page itself is just gone...

Agreed...but in a scenario where such a meeting place ("This page") is not centrally controlled, access to it or its existence or its members can not so easily be controlled by a single entity - be they benevalent or indifferent or malevalent. The fediverse is not perfect, and may not be perfect for the relevant community or its members or even the OP here...i merely offered it as a possible suggestion...my proposal may not be suited to everyone; and that's ok.