You need a certain amount of "social capital" to do so which you won't have if you are "a Mum of two who has just moved to a new area".
Furthermore, what else is there to move to that has the same UX as Facebook but none of the drawbacks? Proprietary solutions are paid (and too expensive for casual usage - Slack's lowest plan starts at around 6 bucks/month), free solutions are going to have the same problems as FB, FOSS solutions lack the UX and care more about the tech than the UX and solving the actual problem.
>FOSS solutions lack the UX and care more about the tech than the UX and solving the actual problem.
I read this sentiment all the time here but I am not sure it's true. Element works just fine.
My family has moved from facebook to instant messaging over the years, the great thing about IM vs social media is that all IM is the same so there is no real switching cost platform-to-platform, whether you use whatsapp or matrix or whatever
Element for me occasionally says it can't decrypt my group chat messages. It doesn't exactly hold your hand through the setup, one of my non techie friends had to ask what to do. Logging in on new devices is needlessly complicated. And if you bridge Element to Slack, all element users have the element logo as their profile picture. A good example of the lack of UX polish in open source.
I agree the Matrix UX is a little rough, but I think it's more than just Element being unpolished. Matrix is solving a hard problem: it's federated, E2E encrypted, bridged to other protocols, and designed to allow multiple clients. It's much easier to have a smooth UX in a monolithic system with no security.
I don't want to defend the FOSS solutions here; indeed they could benefit a great deal from more love^Wtime spent on their UX.
It's rather that I find the facebook UI really annoying and frankly uninspired. Still looks like 2000s web design for essentially a database, but constantly trying to nudge me into doing stuff against my own interest. Not a high bar to clear.
In some ways, someone starting afresh has a greater ability to decide exactly how they are going to build their new life, than someone who is already entrenched in their existing one.
For that matter, the vast majority of people don't have much "social capital". That's the very effect that Facebook so ruthlessly capitalises on - individually we don't have much power, and formerly we would have to expend considerable effort to maintain our social position and our local community. Personally, I see it as my moral responsibility to do my very best to be an engaging and interesting person in real life, and not to contribute any of that to the social quagmire of Facebook.
Also - moving to a new area, especially if you don't know anyone, is *hard*. Back in the bad old days before Facebook, leaving your community and anyone you knew was a huge decision that was not undertaken lightly. Is it essential that we have digital tools to make that easier?
> In some ways, someone starting afresh has a greater ability to decide exactly how they are going to build their new life, than someone who is already entrenched in their existing one.
They can rebuild their life alone. They can not rebuild social network alone.
> Also - moving to a new area, especially if you don't know anyone, is hard. Back in the bad old days before Facebook, leaving your community and anyone you knew was a huge decision that was not undertaken lightly. Is it essential that we have digital tools to make that easier?
Back in the day, if you wanted to build social network, you would went to places where existing people go to. You would introduce yourself in way customary for times and place.
It used to be knocking to neighborhoods door uninvited to introduce yourself. Nowadays it would be super odd unwelcome behavior.
Furthermore, what else is there to move to that has the same UX as Facebook but none of the drawbacks? Proprietary solutions are paid (and too expensive for casual usage - Slack's lowest plan starts at around 6 bucks/month), free solutions are going to have the same problems as FB, FOSS solutions lack the UX and care more about the tech than the UX and solving the actual problem.