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Comment by new_guy | Hacker News Reader

Facebook is a cancer, take this as a sign to start your own social network. There's lots of 'off-the-shelf' scripts you can use (see codecanyon.net)

You can rebuild your community in no time and make it better than it was.

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Very HN response. "My FB community got destroyed. Can anyone else?" "FB bad. Build your own."

Sorry OP. I don't know anyone who can help. It seems to me like FB would be able to reactivate the group if you can get a hold of someone. I don't think they purged their DB of your group.

It's not very empathetic that's right but it's still true. People have to stop building their livelihoods or passion projects on these platforms, if they want to have any control over them at least.

If you want a society where people do those kinds of things, maybe you should build your own society that fits your criteria.

I know it's not very empathetic to say but it's still true.

I rather try to educate the people I know about the consequences of relying on companies like Meta for things like that hoping it doesn't happen to them. That's all we can do. And I guess contributing to the technology that enables alternatives.

But saying build it yourself isnt educating. It's akin to saying, "You should have known better". Sure. They should have. They probably did. But when someone is asking for help and you say you should have made a different decision 10 years ago to prevent this you are not educating.

There are plenty of alternatives out there to build a community, sell things, etc. The bit about contributing was aimed at people like us who work in software.

Sure. If you want to make sure some big company doesnt control your group then you should build your own platform. But could this person do that? Maybe. Does this person have the capability to do that? Maybe. Most people wouldnt. I'm a swe and I wouldnt really know how to start my own website, get traction, and grow a community. But I know how to make a facebook group.

I guess its the right advice if you want to ensure nothing bad can happen but the likelihood of someone actually doing that for a project they do in their spare time is tiny. It's like saying, "You should only communicate with these people via telegraph because thats the only way you can be sure that no one can prevent you from doing so."

It's a solution. It's not incorrect. But it isnt a good solution for the vast majority of individuals.

I'm not saying people should build their own platforms. There are plenty of managed forums, shops etc out there for people to use. We should help our friends and family by steering them towards those instead of relying solely on FB and IG for instance.

Building your own carries it's own set of risks. I can't afford the infosec, IT, devops, etc. that a large tech company has. Sure if I build my own and get hacked, I may have more ability to directly effect the situation, but I will likely have to spend much more of my time wrangling tech and may end up being more likely to be hacked overall.

As I said in other places, I was more thinking of managed forums, shops, etc.

those carry their own risks.

I once created a pretty basic phpBB forum for my college.

Spammed by russian hackers within minutes.

This is good advice if you're technically savvy enough to be able to set up and maintain a website. If you're in the tech bubble long enough, though, it's easy to forget that most people aren't and don't want to be. You send them to a link to a bunch of scripts they can use to build a website and either their eyes will glaze over or they'll ask you to do it for them (or both).

I'm no fan of Facebook, and I absolutely believe that more people should make their own websites and communities on the Internet, but I'm realistic enough to know that most people just won't bother.

Best communities right now are old fashion, self-hosted forums.

Do you think there could be a universal social database that companies could build their platforms on?

People could control what they share based on a parent dashboard and changes would automatically cascade to platforms you added.

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