So I've spent a fair amount of time the past couple of days investigating the two most commonly identified alternatives: MeWe and Pluspora.
(Note that everyone's suggestions on the matter always start with "HELL NO, I'M NOT GOING ANYWHERE NEAR FACEBOOK …" and I feel largely the same way, so …)
Both have some positive aspects. Both have some drawbacks. Here's what I've noted:
MeWe
PRO
— Cleaner, more elegant interface.
— Feels like a professional, finished product.
CON
— Feels Facebooky. Lots of comment nesting and hidden stuff. Lots of white space. Narrow column of content.
— No "public posts" — posts go to followers, or into groups, which would seem to hamper discovery. Groups kind of act like collections, except someone has to find them, then join them.
— The Open Groups selection is largely full of right-wing / Randian / conspiracy theorist / anti-science / men's rights / Trump-and-guns whackadoodles of every variety. There are exceptions, but it's kind of crazy. (The chief of MeWe is a hyper-free-speech conservative/libertarian, so I have the sense a lot of groups that have been booted from Twitter or Facebook have staked out space on MeWe.)
— Almost all of the Open Groups I checked out because the descriptions were of interest were ghost towns, full of dubious posts, or both.
— To look at a group to see if it's worth your time, you have to join it. Then to quit it is a multi-step process.
— No help system I've been able to find.
Diaspora
Pluspora is a single pod of the distributed Diaspora network.
PRO
— Feels Plussy for some reason.
— Full Markdown formatting, so headers and bullets and numbered lists and blockquotes.
— Cross-post to Twitter
— Cross-post to WordPress (that one's huge to me)
— The "HQ" staff have seemed pretty responsive on at least some of the question threads I've seen.
— Preview your post
— The Recent Notifications bell doesn't get confused the way G+ did
CON
— Also feels like a "Loving Hands at Home" effort, and the v 0.7.6.0 version accurately portrays the sense that it's about 3/4 of the way to a full production release.
— It's a voluntary development effort with no real roadmap. If no devs are interested or have cycles to implement a given suggestion, it doesn't get implemented.
— It's a voluntary hosting and management effort, which concerns me about the longevity of any given pod, as well as how spam and abuse issues are going to be dealt with (h/t +Lauren Weinstein)
— The system is deployed in a federated multi-site fashion, which on the one hand makes it more robust for some purposes, but each server/"pod" and the federation as a whole seems fragile, the traffic between them sometimes gets constrained, and the federated aspect makes code updates more problematic.
— No Groups/Communities.
— Hashtags are critical for content to be found.
— No "Collections" – people follow everything about you that you post. So people who love my pop culture posts but find my politics problematic are kind of in trouble (they can follow a hashtag, but then they get everything in it). The Aspect (Circle) mechanism requires significant curation of followers by the content producer (not useful unless you are making an intentional walled garden).
— No post or comment re-edits. (Including to put in hashtags.)
— Twitter (and WordPress and Tumblr) seems to be a manual step during posting — but no backsies if you forget to do it.
— Blocking individuals is similar to G+, except you have to go to their profile and it does nothing to block their comments in other people's posts, only your own.
— Help documentation is scattered and difficult to navigate or search.
— Preview is accurate for text, but not for how links or images will be shown.
— No likes on comments. Which seems trivial, but really constrains feedback.
— Reshares don't allow you to do a preface to the reshare; you have to add a comment to it instead. (Better to post it with an internal link?)
— The WordPress integration isn't working for me, and I've not been able to get any clue as to why or how.
Both also lack something important to me: members that are something other than in individuals. Where's the Ars Technica or the NASA or the Atlantic or the WaPo or New York Magazine, among many other organizations and media outlets? They were on Google+ (even if many other orgs had fallen off), but they aren't on Diaspora or MeWe that I've been able to find. That means pulling info from other sources.
Which makes me think I might be increasing my Twitter use. Even at 280 chars, it's a constraint to meaningful posting, and the comment structure is a bit sketchy, but everything else is still out there.
So where do I stand on MeWe vs Diaspora (Pluspora)? At this point, it's still a toss-up.
— MeWe is by far the more polished product, but what it does is a bit more limited, the group model feels constraining, and the community as a whole isn't wowing me.
— Diaspora (Pluspora) has the potential to be a more powerful tool, and more like Google+, but it's still effectively in gamma testing, the distributed model is sketchy, and it doesn't do some things I really want it to (yet?).
I'm not ready to put my money (attention) down on either of them. I'll be sticking around here for a bit and see what develops.
I found an unofficial NASA and an unofficial WIRED. There may be others.
I've joined Diaspora, and am looking at Freindica. This has the ability to send posts to other platforms on the Federation.
https://friendi.ca/
Pluspora has more G+ refugee. Also hashtags on public posts makes it easy to find new friends and interesting posts.
FWIW the MeWe boss says there should be a means to post publicly before the end of the year. Hopefully that'll open discovery there.
I'm like pluspora more at the moment, but have both.
Another comparison, in a bit more detail than mine: https://plus.google.com/u/0/+DanievanderMerwe/posts/DTg98vCzfSf
I also have FB, Twitter, Instagram, snapchat, goldilocks and the 3 bears… Wait. What were we talking about again?
I wonder about the reason for the lack of editing. It shouldn't be hard to add, but maybe it has to do with the way posts propagate to other pods? But even then, you can delete posts, so an edit could be a delete + repost. Usenet style.
I I'm leaning towards Diaspora exactly because it's open source. I'm itching to join development and start adding some of those missing features, and a few more. I'm thinking it would be awesome to add an RSS reader so new posts of blogs you follow appear in your feed.
There's no decent app for diaspora/pluspora. They're all web pages wrapped into an app.
+Martijn Vos The D* team definitely needs more devs. Having gone through the feature requests portal, a lot of them (including Edit Posts) boil down to "Well, if some developer wants to take it on …" questions.
(There's also a lot of bizarro arguments that take place there — the threat on supporting emojis is pretty wacky.)
I look at it this way: We have 10 months, not need to decide right now.
That said, whichever one gives me multiple columns of posts when looking at my feed will get my vote. If Diaspora had groups/collections, it would also definitely tip the balance, as that would make it easier to tune in/out of things rather than relying on hashtags.
Has anyone looked at this yet?
https://google-rewritten.mn.co/?
https://google-rewritten.mn.co/
Thanks for keeping us updated on options.
+William Altman To some degree we may have 10 months.
I'm expecting, just from recent reaction, a lot of contributors to bail between now and then. At what point does hanging out until the end stop being a productive experience?
(I don't have an answer, but I'm scouting out things now.)
MeWe seems sketchy..
https://plus.google.com/+AndreasGeisler/posts/Q1omKS3N3Rb
Use Steemit.com it prevents this kind of shit. It's distributed.
http://Steemit.com
My problem with Diaspora is the same problem I have with Mastodon: The distributed nature. I worry if I join someone else's node and violate a rule I didn't know about then I'll get kicked and lose all my stuff so I would rather run my own node, but to do that it appears I would have to significantly upgrade my hosting plan.
+Dave Hill I always post with the thought that I don't really care who reads it. If that is no one then it's my diary.
+James Rendek I like to curate here on G+ between Collections largely as a courtesy. I know there are folk who I loved following for their tech or humor posts, but whose political writing drove me to distraction. Collections have made it easy for me to avoid that.
Aside from that, I tend not to curate for privacy purposes, except as a binary "is there anyone out there I don't want to read this? yes? then I won't post it."
Good post, this is my current feeling. None of the options out there seem very appealing to me and they are all significant downgrades from G+ in my opinion. I'm using Twitter for now but most of my posts end up long and I absolutely hate "Tweet storms" so it's a significant downgrade from G+ too.
I'm currently trying to become a Diaspora developer. I'm going to fix the edit issue. If that turns out to be doable, I will fix more stuff. If it turns out to be a painful headache and way too much work, then I'll declare Diaspora unmaintainable.
I keep seeing reviews like this and I have to wonder how much actual time has been spent at each site.
Diaspora gets a lot a rave reviews, but I can't really discern why
It's paradigm is so "unique" as to be frustrating. I don't know how the next flood of users in 10 months will find each other.
The UX is frankly terrible.
Add to all this that Diaspora seems to be intentionally spreading all kinds of FUD about MeWe and the politics of it's founders, seemingly to steer the Google Plus Crowd away from it. All while they ignore the participation and endorsement of Tim Berners-Lee in MeWe.
Twitter is a non-starter. I mean come on. It was never meant to be anything like Facebook or Google Plus. It's only use is for farting out news headlines, rage opinions, and celebrity vomit.
MeWe IS the closest thing to Google Plus in the sense of design and navigation paradigm. Yes there are issues, but the management has been amazing in their communication with users and their expressed desire to adapt the platform to user needs and requests.
MeWe's greatest asset is also it's curse. That being their attitude on free speech and privacy. MeWe has a phenomenal privacy policy, encrypted chat, and a hands off approach to censorship and free speech. So of course this means that many of the early inhabitants of MeWe are those that have been driven off of other platforms. Which leads people to have to face the fact that a real, anti-right bias does and has existed on the primary social media platforms. Fact. Deal with it and move on.
The stupidity of getting your undies in a bundle over this is that MeWe does an excellent job of isolating Groups from each other. If you don't join an Groups you object to, you'll never know that they exist.
The truth is that MeWe is right now like the American Land Rush of the 1800's. There is a lot of great land waiting to be claimed for free. The opportunity to become a leading, large, influential social media group exists there right now. Those that stake early claims and take the next 10 months building them will be positioned to OWN those niches come the Google Plus Exodus in 10 months. At that point they'll have the numbers to pull in users from other platforms. Including the inevitable failure of Pluspora.
As for the complaint of being able to find each other. WE the users have already handled that. From the day of the announcement of the Google Plus shutdown, the MeWe group "Google Plus Refugees" was setup with the specific intent of being a landing place for Google Plus users. The early response was frankly more that we could handle the first day, but with added admins we are planning for the next 10 months. We will be advertising the link and location of both MeWe and the "Google Plus Refugees" group so that even after Google Plus shutters, the links will be seen all over social media. This group was built with the specific intention of letting Plus refugees:
– have somewhere to go 10 months and one day in.
– Connect all these users so they can reconnect on MeWe (or other platforms)
– Hold their hands through the transition.
– Explain how MeWe is laid out and navigation and usage tips
– Point users to other groups on MeWe
– Help transition Plus communities in coordination with the admins of those Plus communities
– Help users create NEW Groups to replace communities that don't transition, or for their own new group ideas
– eventually, to help interface users with the MeWe team to let the platform's development be a dialog
– more as things develop
Ultimately "Google Plus Refugees" is the basecamp for all new explorers to MeWe where they are never left alone, confused, and lost.
The people there are already building an amazing new community and the early adopters have an enthusiasm I haven't seen since the opening of Google Plus. Add to that a staff willing to communicate and develop the platform in a user driven way and you have the potential for something amazing. Hell, when did you EVER feel like Google gave a damn about users?
+Christopher Gaul you made some great points there, you should make a post of that, so it can be reshared.
This move by Google is really disheartening. Because some idiots didn't secure the API, the whole service is shut down? And it wasn't even that personal of information: name, email, and DOB.
I mean yeah, data needs to be secure, but punishing the users further by shutting the whole thing down is just really cruel. I don't know if I even want to bother with another social network. I have too many online accounts as it is.
I'm honestly worried about site sign-ins now because I have several that are connected to my Google account and some I believe are connected to Google+. I don't want to lose access to those sites next year.
I really can't stand Google: they make some really awesome products/services and then decide to remove them a short time later. Hangouts losing non-Google-Voice/Fi SMS was another thing that was just plain dumb and didn't really seem to be anything but a dumb push towards Android Messages, Allo, and Duo. Why bother maintaining 3 apps when you can just update and log into 1? Google Reader (thankfully I never used) was shut down, too: by all accounts a great service but because less than 50 million people used it, they just shut it down.
+Adam Brown I'm pretty sure they are just using it as an excuse. They had already planned on killing it awhile ago.
+Dave Hill I agree. I was in on G+ from the beginning. But, if it's being shut down, better to migrate earlier and be part of making the alternative better, both feature and content wise, from the start. And just from a bandwidth perspective, I can't be effective posting and managing threads on too many platforms.
+Adam Brown well they fixed it back in March and no info was actually leaked.
Facebook leaks like a bloody sieve, and gives everyone's phone number to advertisers and yet it doesn't shut down and no one bats an eye.
My impression is that Google merely used the security problem as an excuse to end G+. It wasn't a terribly leak, and there's no evidence that anything actually leaked. Certainly nothing compared to what regularly happens on Facebook. They just took it as an opportunity to justify ending G+.
+Carl Draper thx. Done.
+Scott Jordan This looks very good. Is someone trustworthy behind it?
+James Rendek Yes, that's the question. It says it is made by Plussers, but who knows for sure? And even it it's true, that tells us nothing about their motivations or implementation. Too many questions. That's why I was asking if anyone had dug into it yet.
I have reason to believe G+ will re-emerge. G+ is the best that is out there.
Someone will figure how to re introduce it as a new hacker proof open forum.
+Danny it’ll never be completely hacker proof in reality. Some hacker will eventually find a way to breach the security.