[the_af]

Sadly.

The good news is that you'll have additional fragmentation with facebook groups and reddit, all overlapping your community so that no two groups are exactly the same!

If you want to post an update to the community for $thing, you must remember the Discord, Facebook group and reddit sub!

"Hey guys, we already have a reddit sub, do we really need a facebook group?"

"Well, if you don't mind I'll go create an unofficial $thing fb group!"

(Bonus points if you subscribe to all and get to see the same content being posted to every venue, with somewhat the same people reacting to it. It boggles the mind)

[BlueTemplar]

You are making it worse yourself by posting your updates on those walled gardens.

[bombcar]

It always ends up being a doomed if you do, doomed if you don't.

If you don't post on those groups or create them, they get created anyway, and now they exist and you have no direct influence on them; and that can easily result in a community misunderstanding and split.

And if you do create them, you've encouraged walled gardening and there will STILL be stuff not duplicated.

[BlueTemplar]

Splits can always happen, and are probably a good thing once the community gets big enough, and it is also a good thing that these splits are even easier if you're not using platforms.

Doesn't mean you have to support the people that chose to go elsewhere and tolerate those that are advertising platforms.

[the_af]

> and are probably a good thing once the community gets big enough

Splits are happening in small-ish communities too. People don't know why, but they have to have Discord, facebook, reddit, etc. And if you join all of them -- which you often do in case they are similar but not exactly the same ("Why are you asking this? The answer was posted to the facebook group! Oh, but we are in Reddit, never mind, here's a link to fb") -- you'll see some of the same people in all of them. The one caveat is that the "owner" of the community (say, the game devs if this is about a game) are likely to be more active in only one of the platforms; Murphy's Law dictates it likely won't be in the one you prefer.

Which really raises the question, if (almost) the same bunch of people is posting in Discord/fb/reddit/whatever, do we really need all those platforms? What purpose do they serve?

But indeed it's doomed if you do and doomed if you don't. You have no control. You can be sure someone will create that goddamn Discord.

[bombcar]

Yeah, the best you can do (as the "leader" or dev or whatever) is pick ONE and stick with it religiously. And "reddit" is probably the best of the worst available, at least it can be linked from elsewhere.

But for large groups of the world (who are not 'gamers' or 'computer literate' or whatever) Facebook wins because everyone has Facebook.

[BlueTemplar]

No, again, the best is no platforms at all, so probably phpbb forums (or maybe as other have suggested, newsgroups ?)

[the_af]

Yes. But I mean, these are not communities I created myself. Whatever the platform (phpbb, reddit, fb, etc) I always witness a sizeable portion of the community split away to something else (Discord, etc). It's maddening.

[tarotuser]

As much as I dislike Stallman's non-tech opinions and actions, I think his proprietary social media handling policy is probably the best:

https://stallman.org/facebook-presence.html

Assuming you must use proprietary solutions to reach your people, RMS's solution is to use the other platforms to convert to your open platform. Maybe that won't work for everyone, but at least it allows usage of cockroach motel systems to your open one.

[bombcar]

This is elaborated as POSSE in some places: https://indieweb.org/POSSE

[BlueTemplar]

Hmm, I don't know, social media is really good at addicting you, speaking from experience, even owning an account that you don't intend to use is "dangerous", and this seems much worse.

(At least Stallman's advice is targeted at organizations, where the official nature of communications might stop the person doing the job getting in the engagement trap...)

[tarotuser]

True, but if you're running a website like that where you pull people from, then you should also do some automation work via NodeRed to automate those social media flows.

Its hard to be suckered into a social media site if you never go there. Then again, HN is also a social media site too.

[BlueTemplar]

Oh yeah, and can be very addictive and a waste of time too, though thankfully it's very light on the "social" part...