I’ve been seeing this more and more in comments, and it’s got me wondering just how big this issue really is. A lot of people feel trapped in apps like Discord, WhatsApp, and Instagram, but can’t get their friends to leave.
It’s really annoying when you suggest trying something new, whether it’s a different app or just not using these platforms so much but sometimes it can feel like no one wants to go first.
So I’m curious, what apps do you feel most trapped in? And have you tried convincing your friends to leave them? What happened? Is it an issue for you, or are you just going along with the flow?
Looking forward to hearing if this is as common as it feels!
Get their parents to sign up. Feels like grannies sharing minion memes and Bible verses was the end of facebook’s cool era.
So just use something different yourself. Then ask your friends to communicate with you there. You don’t need them to quit the old, you need to ask them to use something new.
“privacy? Yeah whatever, they just use it to catch bad people right? I have nothing to hide. I don’t have the time to learn all this VPN stuff. Don’t forget to like my posts!”
People will still use discord even if it got entirely banned, there just isn’t a good alternative now that is clear
Not federated but a pretty good alternative coming up with Revolt - still has a good way to go though.
Revolt would be good, but they lack screen share, that really was the only reason why we didn’t keep using it
they lack screen share
While they do lack screen share, it is in active development. See https://github.com/revoltchat/backend/issues/313 Last work on that issue happened 4 days ago. I am not a dev of revolt.
Interesting.
What’s the catch? Is it all self hosted? If not, where’s the hosting cash coming from?
I can’t say for sure, but see this answer from 2022: https://github.com/orgs/revoltchat/discussions/309?utm_source=chatgpt.com#discussioncomment-2232628
currently we are running on donations which we have plenty of
Lol, what because you tried Matrix and it SUCKS on both client and server?
XMPP can have a whole ass facebook app built inside it called Movim and it can be accessed from any “homeserver”. It can be far more than Discord will ever want to be, if the cats can be herded
If you don’t use Matrix well I guess bc it’s ubiquitous among squishy Linux and leftist communities for some godawful reason despite being Israeli-developed, US state dept funded, and idiot-maintained. They even have a slot for it on these lemmy accounts
You talk like a prick
I’m still on Discord because everyone else is there. I’ve moved my direct social connections, so most of the things I’d use Discord dms for on a daily basis, over to dedicated direct messaging services, but communities are so much harder to move over. You can’t shuffle between a hundred and a thousand people over to another platform unless somehow most of the groups they’re in move over at once.
And to what? Matrix communities are not as convenient, Revolt’s voice chats are not as good and screen sharing wasn’t a thing at all last I checked and it doesn’t have a mobile client, and TeamSpeak is primarily voice-based.
SonoBus is utterly awesome for voice chat, specifically, unless it’s one of those ridiculous 50+ people rooms.
I’m in the same boat too
People don’t typically like change. It has to feel like it’s their decision to drive them there.
People can’t be convinced of anything, it’s a losing battle to try. The only way to get people to change is to live a certain way and if people admire it, then they ask you about it and you share.
So for example-I’m a minimalist and I really wished my sister would declutter because her place is overcrowded. But instead of trying to convince her, I just shared what my life normally was like. Eventually she asked me for help decluttering, and she felt a lot better about what I helped with. Now we share cleaning and organization tips.
For me, I just put in my insta bio I left for Pixelfed and to come friend me there.
I’ve told my friends I’m off insta because I’d rather be on a platform where I control my feed that’s ad free. And that I rarely see my friends content on insta so it doesn’t matter that much to me to have friends on there. If they get interested, great if not, I’m still happy.
People don’t just stop using an app until there’s very little activity.
Getting people to use a new app, especially one they have little activity on is inconvenient, especially if you’re already checking WhatsApp, wechat, signal, telegram, LINE, Zalo, and discord because you have to many different friend groups.
Discord for me. A bunch of my family and friends are avid gamers. Discord is the universal standard app they all use for general communication.
Not only do they use it for all their gaming related stuff, they have additional servers and channels for just chilling, chatting, off topic stuff, memes, politics, etc etc.
It’s the network effect. Even if there was an open source app that perfectly replicated all the functionality of Discord and was just as simple to install and run as Discord, most of them still wouldn’t switch to it, because all of their friends and family are still on Discord.
So they would have to have two completely separate apps with totally separate social groups to maintain, and nobody but hardcore advocates for FOSS and privacy are willing to do that.
Sure, I have Discord, Matrix, IRC, Signal, XMPP clients, and a Private Mumble server, all on my systems, but I’m hardcore about FOSS. None of my friends and family are willing to do that. It took all my energy to convince two of my most techie friends just to get Signal on their phones. And only One has been willing to install a Matrix client to chat just with me.
Because their other friends are on them, and the celebrities they follow.
I just cannot fathom how people use discord to communicate. Maybe if it’s a very small group like ten people tops. But anything bigger? Seems like chaos.
That’s not a complaint specific to discord though. You just don’t like large chatrooms.
Never been in IRC I take it?
what’s so complex about discord? Plus I thought it was made for big groups… I cannot fathom how you cannot fathom that it’s really easy to use?
It’s because our marketing sucks. People don’t care about their privacy, they like what is cool. So what does that mean? It mean we gotta make using open source app so cool that people can’t help but join because all the cool kids are here. You feel me? Preaching alone is not enough although it will benefit all of us
Threaten them with having to communicate with you using email - they’ll install Signal 😂
It’s Facebook Messenger and Whatsapp for me. I ditched the Facebook app a long time ago, but Messenger and Whatsapp remain on my device because no one wants to leave them. I try to keep my chats there as superficial as possible.
Also, this is my first comment ever on Lemmy, so hi everyone!
Welcome!
Some tips:
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You can block other users, other communities, and other instances yourself; you don’t have to wait for the mods or admins to do that for you
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If a mod or an admin of an instance choose to block certain things that you disagree with, you can sign up for another instance with your same name, assuming nobody’s taken it; you won’t be able to transfer your comments, votes, or posts though; there’s been feedback given to the Lemmy devs about this
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Search by Everything and Active to see new posts show up in your feed daily
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There’s lots of diverse opinions on Lemmy, but they tend to concentrate around politics and tech; maybe consider starting your own community or instance if there’s something here you want to see!
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To use the Discord analogy, Lemmy instances are Discord communities, Lemmy communities are Discord channels, and users are just users; we’ll often write c/Whatever to refer to a community, but due to the Federated nature of Lemmy, you may find a community like c/Politics on multiple instances (like lemmy.world or lemmy.ml); not sure if the Lemmy devs have a fix for this
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Welcome. A reminder for in case you don’t know, if it starts to feel stale, then it’s probably because of your viewing settings. If you switch it from Active (ironically, the least active), to Hot, 6 hours, Scaled, etc. after you’ve gone through all of the new to you posts, you’ll see a lot more action.
Thanks for the tip!
No one wants to leave because nobody is leaving.
You’re still on WhatsApp and Messenger, they can still contact you that way, so why would they bother changing?
Pick a date, a week, a month, whatever, from now. Tell those you message regularly that you will be deleting all Meta apps on that date. Make it clear that that includes WhatsApp and Messenger. Explain why. I just linked some articles instead of having a long explanation but it still made it clear why.
Let them know they can contact you via Signal/SMS/email whatever you use after that date.
If the informed don’t take the leap, the ignorant never will.
All your chat history has been published to the fediverse now. Welcome to Lemmy.
Welcome to lemmy!
SMS
Nobody wants to use a messaging app at all. At this point I’d rather be stuck on WhatsApp. But its all family. Big family and try to get them to agree on anything is like pulling teeth.
I even sent everybody a “contact card” I made with my links to signal, simplex, and even whatsapp (figuring that’s the path of least resistance) saying I’d prefer to communicate on any of those apps. ZERO people changed nor did they even ask about it, options, or my reasoning.
I did a similar contact card thing for (real) people I cared about from Discord. 2 people installed signal to keep up. 20+ invites went out before I nuked they account. One person already had signal. The other one that installed it now ghosts all my signal comma attempts.
