When attempting to enforce real name policies in online foras discussions tend to get dumber.

I guess because real name policies work better against smart and nice people than against trolls.

When accounts are short lived or ephemeral discussions seem to get less civilized

I also wonder if, just like how people in nice cars on average seem to behave badly more often, people who have little to fear (powerful, has correct opinion) has a tendency to behave badly online more often. But I don't have data (yet at least).

I think I can remember hearing about wt.social mast fall sometime but I never gave it a try back then.

After seing it mentioned again today I created an account and logged in.

It looks

• kind of promising,
• some ghost town vibes
• feels buggy
• kind of like Wikipedia. This makes we wonder if this project will also get curated to the point where I cannot get myself to contribute anymore. Previously I've given up Wikipedia (sometime after the Russian ex-spy was murdered with polonium) and stackexchange (I haven't enjoyed posting or answering there for years and now I even dread logging in to vote.)

I should probably go back someday to test it again.

Background: I am always looking for an alternative to Google+ (the social network, not the identity feature).

Over the two last years or so I've tested: – writefreely/write.as (kind of works. Really slow sometimes. Lacks a bunch of features, particularly some kind of comments, preferably from the Fediverse I think, but I am still a happy customer.) – mastodon, more specifically mstdn.io (it is more like Twitter, a nicer Twitter but still built on the same paint-yourself-into-a-corner ideas as Twitter.) – pixelfed (Instagram clone with a focus on creating good software instead of focusing on making Mark Zuckerberg happy.) – MeWe (kind of similar, but far from as nice) – Minds (my impression last time: polished, some interesting features, but between neo-nazism, plain old racism, lunatics and lunatic racists it almost set a new standard for both dumbness and unpleasantness. Unfortunately it is hard to beat certain chan sites at their home turf though.) – Hubzilla (seems really promising but despite experimenting with my own hub, trying to join a number of others etc I haven't been able to connect to a single human being that was online and posted in English. FWIW Norwegian, Danish or Swedish would have been OK too. Still it is one of the most promising ones in my opinion.) – Matrix (Also on my list of promising messaging solutions I want to try on a day when I get some uninterrupted time. I really want to like it.)

But many of us thought it was the best social network that existed in its time.

Here are my thoughts, both on technical advantages and community:

The first of my planned articles about messaging and social networking

Google plus had circles

... so unlike with twitter I didn't have to spam everyone to reach those two followers who'd actually care about that topic.

Example: I could add Norwegians I knew to my “Norwegians” circle so I could share links to Norwegian pages only to people I knew could read Norwegian.

Google plus had collections

... so unlike Facebook and Twitter, people who were interested in some of the same things as me wouldn't have to follow everything I ever posted.

Example: I had collections for:

• Java (links and comments)
• local stuff (my pictures from my town etc)
• retro stuff (c64 etc)

Google plus had groups

... kind of like Facebook groups but without having to deal with Facebook. (I now trust Google less than before as well, but Facebook has worked harder to earn their position as untrustworthy.)

They worked kind of like forums with topics, threads and members but:

• with good ux
• without signing up and in to 15 different places, all with their own ads for “their own app”.

Design and ux

The design was so much nicer, ux so much smoother than everything else.

It never really became mainstream

Google plus was really nice. So many nice posts. So little political spam. (A lot of other would-be spammers but we killed them within seconds every time it seems.)

Google forgot to add ads to it

: )

It is going away anyway so it doesn't matter if I say it now.

Filed under: #socialnetworking #googleplus and #messaging

I'll plan to make this post a sticky one and come back and write a few words about a few topics. As a start and as a reminder to myself I've also written a few lines below on some of the topics I want to write about: (and if you have feedback or have already written about this and wants me to link, message me at @eitland@mstdn.io )

• WhatsApp: I was a huge WhatsApp fan until Facebook bought them, in fact I even gave them the benefit of doubt even after that. I later moved. I'll try to write a bit about why I was so enthusiastic for it early on and why I moved.
• Telegram: After WhatsApp I went to Telegram. I'll try to write a bit about what they got right, what I don't like about it and why I'm still staying, that possibly includes a bit about alternatives as well.
• Google+: Compared to Facebook and Twitter Google+ seemed to be a nobody. I'll try (edit: done, link here) to write a bit about what I think made it great, possibly a bit on the biggest reason I see for why it failed as well as why that might be a good thing.
• Me We: The only thing I've seen that currently compares to Google+. I'll try to compare them and look at similarities as well as differences.
• ~At some time I might want to write something about federated networks but I'm not yet familiar enough with them to start writing about it.~
• I might start writing something about federated networks at some point. Many interesting things going on:
  • Mastodon still works
  • Pixelfed still works
  • Write.as now mentions a user if I add their address in a post it seems.
  • Plume looks really nice and might very well be a good alternative to write.as
    • repo here: https://github.com/Plume-org/Plume
  • Lemmy, an open source, federated reddit alternative, was release the other day
    • test instance here: https://dev.lemmy.ml/
    • repo here: https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy
  • btw: someone should make a stackoverflow alternative that federates
  • Matrix is developing nicely:
    • There now seems like a healthy plan to fund development without compromising the open source aspect: https://modular.im/

Notably missing from the list above: Twitter and Facebook. I really never “got” any of those. In fact I seem to have the opposite problem of everyone else: I figure I should try to read more on Facebook to keep up to date with friends and family and then I forget about it. Days, weeks or even months may pass between each time the combination of these two happen: I want to check Facebook and I have time for it.

For Twitter I've tried repeatedly: it is supposed to be great but all I can see it spam and shouting and it kind of makes sense, who wants to talk reasonable in a place where everything is visible to everyone?

Looking at this, here is a few more things I'd probably want to write about as well:

• ecosystems (bots, integrations, stickers and what not)
• encryption, what it helps for and not
• threat models and reasons for wanting to hide (many people have good reason to be much more afraid for close friends than for three letter agencies)
• what could have been the biggest advantage for closed networks like Facebook and how they messed it up
• a bit about why I'm both very positive to local police and at the same time don't want to increase their or others rights to monitor people online.

Filed under #socialnetworking and #messaging