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Comment by da02 | Hacker News Reader

What do your social groups use nowadays?

Similar experience for me and it’s just been replaced with… nothing. My gaming buddies talk on Discord but I just don’t really hear from my aunts and uncles and cousins anymore. It’d be a hassle to even figure out how to contact them. Only 13 people showed up to my high school reunion last year from a graduating class of ~400.

Same. Idk how college communication work now; we had class groups and planned everything over FB events/pages back then.

For friends, I started a few text group chats to stay in touch. It's really annoying because someone has Android and RCS is broken on someone's end. Some also use FB Messenger, but nobody 2 years younger or older than me is on that.

When I finished my undergrad a few years ago, we were relying heavily on GroupMe chats, with the occasional Slack and one or two LinkedIn groups mixed in. Discord was just starting to exit the gaming sphere and hit the mainstream though. I'm willing to bet it's absolutely dominating the space now.

How long ago was that if you don't mind me asking? I was in college 2014-2016, and GroupMe existed but was on its way out. I asked our college interns around 2022 what people use for class groups, and I think they weren't sure what I even meant, but the answer wasn't Discord.

2019-23.

It's worth noting that GroupMe sticking around was honestly probably a byproduct of my own circles and the specific campus culture to a certain extent.

> I started a few text group chats to stay in touch.

This is the space that WhatsApp fills, for better or worse.

"…I just don’t really hear from my aunts and uncles and cousins anymore…"

Yeah, actually why I left Facebook a decade ago: finding out what horrible people my relatives were.

This applies to “friends” also. And discovering how many of them are actual idiots. Oh, these people can’t put 5 words together to form a coherent sentence and their spelling grammar suck to top it off? I don’t miss it at all.

It’s returned to nothing. Losing touch with people you didn’t contact regularly was the norm until the mid 2000s.

For someone who grew up in the ‘golden years’ of social media, it’s kinda weird to see.

The thing is, before social media, we did have a culture of periodically reaching out and calling people. Those muscles completely atrophied though, so when we fall off social media, the result is even less connection than we had before Facebook et al existed.

It just keeps tumblring down, tumblring down, tumblring down. I just keep logging me out, logging me out, logging me out.

I joke, but the internet I knew as a youth going the way of the dinosaurs really has had a deep impact on me. End of an epoch.

Exactly.. you’d only really see them on Christmas or Easter.. Maybe some special event like Wedding.

Once in a while they would come over but that was it. You never knew what your uncle had for lunch.

Folks around me use mostly Instagram which ironically is also from Meta.

Zuck is always one step ahead.

And as a sibling comment says, also WhatsApp. The guy is always two steps ahead.

I'm waiting for Whatsapp to go down the toilet too. I notice it is already advising me to beware of misinformation on forwarded posts and only to use official and trusted sources (the government and their mates basically).

There's two separate things at play here.

One is "I don't want to use Meta products as a matter of principle", and WhatsApp's a no-go if that's your posture.

The other is "I don't want to drown in horrible, algorithm-curated junk content". Instagram is just as bad as Facebook there, but WhatsApp is definitely not the same.

100%. Whatsapp is still zuck, but it doesn't have a "feed" and that's the most important thing about it for me.

Now at the bottom it has a few tabs: Chats, Updates, ...

Updates are broadcasted, but they disappear after 24 hours.

Step 1) Keep updates for a week, later forever

Step 2) Mix Chats and Updates

Step 3) Add a few relevant patrocinated posts

Step 4) Change the css from green to blue

Step 5) Profit

Sería 'sponsored posts.' Como angloparlante nativo, tenía que comprobar que fuese una palabra de verdad 'patrocinate' (como 'patrocinado').

Yes, my bad. Hi from Argentina!

¡Mucho gusto!, desde los EE.UU.

You only ever need a Meta account. The next content format will be brought to your door by Zuck even before you know you need it.

I have an IG account that I barely use, whereas my Facebook account I do (regrettably) still spend time on, and have put in the effort to silence/hide the worst of the baity type content that it wants to throw at me.

But interestingly my experience of IG when I do occasionally go on it is similar to what TFA describes: lots of engagement-bait / thirst trap content that I never asked to see but also haven't been around to hide, so I guess the baseline algorithm is just matching me to what others in my demographic bracket have found, um, engaging.

In my part of Europe it’s all in private WhatsApp groups (one for inner family, one for friends, etc)

Unfortunately, those are also being surveilled by Meta, so the exodus from Facebook did not help. Consider Signal or a private XMPP server.

I convinced my family to try Signal, and after a month of not being able to connect despite knowing each other's numbers - silent errors - I had to apologize and join them on WhatsApp.

They all use iMessage primarily, but that's a whole other can-of-worms conversation. (Screw Apple.)

Got my entire family on Signals (sisters, brothers, in-laws, parents, nephews…). We're very happy but could extend that to second degrees(?), to cousins and uncles. We're were close to succeed but we needed help (media, mostly).

I am in my mid forties and most people around me seem to use instagram to share memes and stuff + keep contact with rarely seen friends and whatsapp groups for closest more tightknit circles.

I am still on whatsapp but I am planning on nuking my account in september after a large event involving people from various continents. I have no idea if I will be able to stay directly in touch with those people after that, probably not.

I am still unsure if I'll send a message to most of my contacts or if I'll just tell my nuclear family, in laws and closest friends.

Can't speak for OP but my spouse has set up a private GroupMe for posting events for a group, but otherwise everyone shares pictures using text messages. We don't post any pictures of our kid where strangers can easily get access to them and we've read the privacy policy of every service we've ever used.

I was considering self-hosting something for a while but she found it more sensible to do it this way.

Every once in a while she logs into Facebook to post something on Marketplace and immediately gets completely sidetracked by their algorithm and design. Then she gets frustrated and we just put the thing she wanted to sell on the corner instead.

IG, though I didn't bring my FB list over and lost contact with a bunch of people.

I keep my follow list small and regularly unfollow people (not because I don't like them or what they post, but because I've seen enough of that).

Being able to unfollow without drama was something that was problematic in FB.

My siblings and parents have a private WhatsApp group - that's what's used for actual communication.

Similar experience for me and at this point it's just a collection of private chats. Different groups use different platforms (mine are on iMessage, Whatsapp, Signal, Slack, and.. actually Messenger although apparently Facebook is taking that away soon). It kind of feels like real-name social media is a failed experiment at this point.

Almost all chat threads in messages, signal, or occasionally in slack or discord or something else.

Close friends and family: group chats (whatsapp, signal)

Distant friends and extended family: email threads

Not parent, but, depressingly:

  1. Signal
  2. BlueSky
  3. Discord
  4. WhatsApp
  5. SMS

This list is presented in order of preference, and in reverse order of prevalence.

iMessages (which supports groups well with RCS), Signal, Telegram, GroupMe. Slack, IRC, and Zulip for online groups.

(early 40s)

Personally, it’s all through WhatsApp

Text messages, email. Same as ever.

Nothing, the sharing has stopped.

Group chats on various apps

I'm probably a bit younger than the gp, but I can confidently say that all socializing has moved almost entirely off "social media" and onto group chats. Most people have a dozen or more combinations of friends and families on multiple apps, all trying to replace what was once easy.

I'd love if somebody would make a site based on the ~2010 expectations (not reality) of facebook. Ban any commercial activity and make people pay for it. I just want to talk to my friends and say "happy birthday" to somebody I haven't seen in years, not look at ads and slop posts.

Several people have tried over the years. We all failed, because it doesn’t work.

The economics don’t work because no one is willing to pay.

The network effect doesn’t exist, because real people don’t post enough to get the flywheel started.

All the dark patterns exist because that is what users reward.

Sucks but it’s true.

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