To think by now non-commercial platforms for buying and selling goods and keeping in touch should have been developed?

[unsureatthispoint]

Inspired by a few current threads

I'm not a big user of social media (as in FB or IG), just mainly to be reminded about events I may want to attend or buy second-hand items occassionally

But I've noticed for instance the frustration with IG about how they now push posts by users you don't follow - making the platform annoying and time wasting (plus the known change to non-cronological algorithms)

Other tools started as 'friendly' buy/sell virtual spaces but quickly have gone all dictatorial, blocking accounts for no reason or deleting someone's good ratings if not enough sales are made regularly (hence being heavily geared to big businesses that can drive commissions whilst small businesses are punished)

And don't get me started with the latests trend to require uploads of IDs and biometrics to global sites with users having no control whatsoever where such sensitive data is going!

Aren't IT people familiar with the technology already? Couldn't we develop non-commercial platforms that would enable all this genuine, much needed, community activity without all the aggravation and grief? No ads, no moderation, no commissions, no frills, run by volunteers?

Forums like MN and the big players would continue to exist, and are a different 'beast' IMO

The novelty of the early days has pretty much warn off already, right? Isn't it time we went back to basics?

I know, but are you saying that no IT person could ever wish to volunteer for anything? Older people, in their 50s?

WhatsApp is free and simple. Perfect for the keeping in touch part.

Suggest to IG that they make event pages like their sister site FB? Ask them to add a "add to phone calendar" functionality like emails and some text messages have ?

I am confused about why volunteers would code and maintain the site? Facebook groups are run by volunteers and they sometimes run their group with strange rules but it's up to them as it's their group and can ban whoever.

How am I going to set a reminder in my diary if I don't know when it's happening in the first place? 🤔

Also, there may not be one event, what if there were 15 events I would like to know about?

No, I’m not saying that.

But I just think you’re a bit naive. There aren’t loads of volunteers with the skills you’d need who all want this sort of product (what even is it?) and are motivated to mobilise with others just like them to create it for free.

But you wouldn't set up a Whatsapp group with 5000 participants (as in my country fair example, for instance)

Lots of devs regularly volunteer, I'm in a tech4good group that does volunteer things. But this would be such a none starter.
Budget to promote it? You need to promote it otherwise it will be dead like a million apps and websites before it, if you're not pushing "others you'd like to follow" it becomes just a bunch of tiny social circles and eventually dies.
Server costs?
Security issues etc
All for a product that you can get for free already which already have lots of people on them so it's far easier to sell your stuff, you just have to see ads.

Maybe if users are frustrated enough with platforms that are no longer fit for purpose, they would?

And I'm not naive. I know how things work, but I think we are reaching a tipping point where some tools are no longer usable

OP, if you want local social happenings have you tried NextDoor? (I mean, it’s as objectionable as FB and everyone is quite mad, but it would alert you about your local Country Fair).

Are you on FB? There's lots of accounts here "Things to do in X" "Events in X" sort of thing where they advertise local events

The promotion could be crowfunded?

But what happens at the tipping point is that someone else will create a new thing to solve these issues, and people will head there, and then it will monetise eventually and the same cycle will perpetuate. I think you’re naive because you can’t see this wouldn’t work for free forever.

But most people are interested in so much more than events their immediate community.

I think it would be hard, almost impossible to raise the amount needed in crowd funding when there are many other already existing options people are happy to use and then you'd have to continuously raise for ongoing costs.

Yes, there's always the risk of that. Maybe users should look at the track record or background of the founders? Their aims, etc?

The fact that many have been monetised, bought out or derailed, doesn't mean it can never happen, surely?

People are not all 'happy to use' these platforms, though. Many are closing FB accounts, complaining about IG algorithms, etc in forums. It's not all fine and dandy

The people not happy to use them are a very small minority.
Not enough people to bring life to a platform like this and if it was a huge amount of people, it costs too much to do for free, will need scaling up Server and development wise, hence why these sites always end up monetising.

If you search for local bloggers and check their feeds regularly then they often advertise events.

Older/retired people are unlikely to be up to date enough to write code etc for today's and tomorrow's technology because it's changing so quickly. Anyway, given that the internet is only 10-20 years old, most "retired" IT programmers may not even have ever worked on websites etc. A retired DOS/Novell programmer isn't going to be much use in writing tomorrow's "brand new" social platform you envisage!

I feel like this is one of those PTA discussions where some parent has a ‘brilliant idea!’ that they want someone else to research, set up, sort out the problems and run, but aren’t interested in doing any of the legwork themselves.

Build it and they will come, OP. So get on that.

That's what I end up doing and ignore my feed as it's full of random spam. But it's very time consuming, hence I go into IG less and less these days

have you joined Mastodon? that is free & open & built and maintained by volunteer coders. it largely functions like twitter, but could do the selling / local stuff too.

it has grown massively since Musk took over twitter, but it still doesn't have the weight of users that FB and IG and twitter have. But if we all start using it, it might get there.

I'm not an IT expert, otherwise I would absolutely do it myself and stop volunteering on other spaces as I do believe there is a social need for this

It's still a valid discussion. I don't know why everyone is so angry at the mere suggestion

What's stopping you, OP?