this post was submitted on 27 Mar 2024
197 points (97.6% liked)
Privacy
32165 readers
245 users here now
A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.
Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.
Some Rules
- Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn't great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
- Don't promote proprietary software
- Try to keep things on topic
- If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
- Reposts are fine, but should have at least a couple of weeks in between so that the post can reach a new audience
- Be nice :)
Related communities
much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
@yogthos Is anyone surprised by this anymore? Facebook is evil- full stop. We don't need any more reasons to obstain from using their products but "mArKeTplAcE" and "mY cOuSiNs WoNt SwiTcH."
Maybe the idea is to show the folks who keep complaining about defederating from Threads that they either don't know or have forgotten just exactly what kind of company Meta is.
I'm trying really hard to get my family to use something else for communication but they won't. It's a fucking drag.
I feel you. I've spent the last couple years building up self hosted replacements for these enshittified services as they flop. But despite all the work I've put in, I can't even get them to log off facebook to look at what I've got.
Marketplace is pretty useful. I hope a solid open-source alternative comes along.
What's important here is not the source code, but whether the service collects unnecessary information.
Craigslist does a pretty good job of respecting privacy.
I agree. However, I think that most people won't use Craigslist simply because it doesn't have a lot of the modern niceties, specifically modern messaging solutions. The email system they have is pretty painful to use.
It's easy enough to do messaging via text, or whatever other contact info you choose to give out. I like that I can use Craigslist without giving them much info about myself.
If you're suggesting that a messaging system built into the venue is critical for success, then I suppose all of us wanting privacy are out of luck for now... but perhaps Craigslist (or some other privacy-friendly venue) could make it happen by integrating Matrix.
I agree that most messaging services are problematic, but Facebook having Messenger is part of the moat that's keeping FB users on Marketplace. I think offering any non-email messaging solution would be hugely beneficial. I like the Matrix idea quite a bit.
Europe's new Digital Markets Act might help in this department, too, through legally mandated interoperable messaging. Let's hope it works out in our favor.
Craigslist also doesn't have shit on it. try and buy a car on there. if you're looking for a beater, sure. but a halfway decent sports car, fb marketplace is the only place
its still OK for other stuff, I've bought tools and whatnot off Craigslist, but for vehicles fb is unfortunately still king
What you're describing is the network effect in action, not a flaw in Craigslist.
(It will be the same with every alternative you find, except perhaps one that's well funded with outside money, which will be awful on the privacy front, of course.)
The way we overcome a network effect is piece by piece:
If I felt I had to buy a sports car, and some awful invasive site like Facebook was somehow the only viable venue, I would buy just the car there. I wouldn't make them the middle man for every other transaction in my life.
well yea its not Craigslist itself that's the issue, its the fact that its a smaller platform. and yea I use eBay or Craigslist for everything but vehicles.its sad that Craigslist has been forgotten though.
Network effects do make it really hard for any new platform to displace the incumbents.