Chat groups in WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram etc fulfills part of it but that's only a subset since people in one chat groups know each other to a certain degree.
In the beginning when I left Facebook over ten years ago it felt alienating. Then it felt too quiet. Then whenever I met people, months apart or even years for distant family, I realised it didn’t matter. We connected like it had been days since our last meeting. Eventually more and more of them have also quit social networks entirely, though most use group chats for their immediate family — parents and kids to orchestrate activities etc.
It feels paradoxical to say that, but I think it's true both that social media is bigger than ever in terms of flurry and activity, and that normal people participate less (outside scrolling the feed passively). A few people are semi-professionalizing in it now, influencers with sponsorships, local celebrities and trendsetters etc., while normal people's normal life updates are dwindling. The Pareto split is sharper.
I'm always surprised at how HN folks are either unable or unwilling to admit that the fediverse exists beyond Bluesky or Mastodon. I far prefer lemmy to reddit, and Friendica is essentially that the author is describing. This stuff exists already, and it's the perverse incentives of social media such as walled gardens and a critical mass of people that are what keep them alive.
One thing many forget when presenting new ideas for social media platforms is that we've been burnt by Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Reddit, Imgur and even LinkedIn to some extend. I'll never trust a social media platform again because of people like Mark Zuckerberg. There's nothing you can say or do that will convince that your new platform won't turn to shit just as fast as Facebook did.
The business model doesn't work out, because not enough people will pay and you cannot run these platforms on ad revenue and be trustworthy.
Most everyone is on facebook that I know of and they're not going anywhere and I'm not. I actually missed that an old coworker had died recently. Frustrating.
Email, phone, text.
I have a few friends who won’t communicate outside of Meta products and I just don’t interact with them any longer.