
Ask HN: What are open source, decentralized, social replacement applications? - olivierduval
Hello,<p>Following the last trends, I&#x27;m starting to be more independant from the &quot;big players&quot;. I already got some VPS and domain name, and use docker to host an email server (because... well... docker is far easier to deploy... and even to migrate to another server).<p>I&#x27;m using whatsapp... but it looks like I may have to leave it soon. And I got no FB nor twitter (but I miss it).<p>So I&#x27;m looking for social alternatives, open source, decentralized, self-hosted replacements.<p>Until now, I found:<p>- Matrix&#x2F;Riot to replace whatsapp&#x2F;IRC
- Mastodon to replace twitter
- Diaspora (?) to replace FB<p>What do you think of these? Pros&#x2F;Cons? Are the products &quot;simple enough&quot; and &quot;strong enough&quot; to ask to my non-geek friends to move on my server?<p>Or is there better, with more users, more stable alternatives ?<p>Thanks a lot for your advice and help! :-)
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altairiumblue
The network effects of everyone being on Facebook/Twitter/Instagram are huge.
You can't expect your contacts to move to your network of choice - even if
they set up an account, their behaviour and the content they post will be very
different. Most likely you will end up connected to a handful of inactive
accounts.

What I personally do - use signal/text/email (I wouldn't bother with hosting
my own email server) for 1-to-1 communication; no accounts on
Facebook/Twitter/Instagram/Snapchat - they're just not worth the time and
attention. Neither are Mastodon or Diaspora. I have an up-to-date LinkedIn
account that I don't really use - again, worth having an account but the feed
is a giant waste of time.

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morningmoon
Email/sms for messaging, a blog for posting stuff that supports microformats
and rss. A social feed reader for subscribing to other feeds/blogs.

