[morkalork]

Group chats are: free, have no ads, and sharing is with exactly who you intend. When I want to send a photo to direct family and in-laws I don't blast it on social media, I send it to the group chat that has direct family and in-laws in it. That's it, easy-peasy. Even my 70-something mother in-law participates in it.

[gwd]

...but you have to share it specifically with each separate group. When I take a cute photo of my son doing something, I have to share it with the family group for my side, and that of my wife; and none of my friends or random extended family get to see it. If my wife's fam shares a photo of my son that I think my fam wants to see, I have to manually port it over. Back in Facebook's heyday, I could just share it; or if my wife's fam tagged me in the photo, my family & friends would see it as well.

And, of course, in group chat, your different friend groups never interact. One of the coolest thing about Facebook in its heyday was when two of your friends who didn't know each other had a cool conversation on your wall and then became friends themselves.

Unfortunately there really doesn't seem to be a proper replacement -- BlueSky and Mastodon are replacements for Twitter, not Facebook. Group chats aren't as good, but they're the closest thing going.

[parpfish]

i actually think it's good that you need to explicitly share the photo with each group. people like getting a message that they know you decided you wanted them (or their little group) to see.

if i see a photo that a friend broadcasts out once on a social feed, i see it and move on.

if a friend puts a photo in a text/group chat, i know that it's something they wanted to share with me

[Kalabasa]

I think this was what Google Plus was going for.

Instead of friend graphs (mutual) or follower graphs (directed edges), they had Circles.

Circles sound a lot like group chats.

I guess "social circles" may be a better way to model social relationships than follower graphs.

[morkalork]

IMO it absolutely is the better way to model it. There's a reason that verbiage already existed in English. The other commenter is right though, there are the rare interaction between social circles that are lost but honestly I remember seeing just as many poor ones on FB back in the day as spontaneous positive ones.

[frollogaston]

Circles was basically an ACL system, which isn't fun. Even if you do care exactly who you're sharing things with, it's not easy to tell with a Circle who that is.

[xnyan]

>...but you have to share it specifically with each separate group

For me personally, this is a feature not a bug. I want things I see to be things that somebody wrote just for that channel. It's why I use group chat over social media.

[esafak]

Facebook had and still has visibility options, but as it grew in features people forgot about it. A lesson in discoverability and product complexity.

https://www.facebook.com/help/233739099984085/

[simonask]

Isn't it pretty common for the "share" function to allow selecting multiple recipients, including multiple groups?

[esafak]

Yes, but who remembers that? There are so many features.

I'd like to see the usage history of that feature. I bet my bottom dollar it's decreased over time.