So like, this is always seemingly done from a content CONSUMER point of view.

How can we provide content creators a safety net whom we as fans enjoy their content but said artists need to have their name and face out in the open? Particularly music artists/DJs/independent artists/etc?

I swear, anyone wanting privacy, just start calling yourself an artist and boom suddenly nobody can find any information about you! You don’t even have to be serious about it, just take a crayola to a bar napkin… /s

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!”

Get their parents to sign up. Feels like grannies sharing minion memes and Bible verses was the end of facebook’s cool era.

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

People don’t typically like change. It has to feel like it’s their decision to drive them there.

People will still use discord even if it got entirely banned, there just isn’t a good alternative now that is clear

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.

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.

Probably the idea of “all my other friends are on the mainstream platform so why would i move to another platform specifically for you?”

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.

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.

I less have an issue with people getting trapped in software they understand is insecure, and more with people who will push shit like telegram and pretend its the most private and secure thing ever invented. If they want to use discord, sure, fine with me. As long as they know not to do their activist work on discord I’m fine with it. People doing activist work/planning over telegram will never make me not cringe.

Signal isn’t something I personally want to use, but its tolerable, and it was doing a good job of replacing telegram in activist spaces I felt, but I’ve recently seen a few different groups using telegram again because they don’t trust signal.

xmpp with omemo is what I wish I could get people to use but uh, well, that just will never happen.

Threaten them with having to communicate with you using email - they’ll install Signal 😂

I ditched meta platforms entirely for signal in 2019, lets say I dont have many close friends anymore haha, my social life is kaput, even my work groupchat is on facebook