I trust the social network on my telephone's contact list more than any other. If I want to find out how someone is doing, I can do so via messaging or calling. It's a service I pay for anyway, though you can get it for free if you have an old device that you have only hooked up to the internet via wifi rather than cellular data access.

That does a good job of handling the direct communication use case (i.e. Person A wants to talk directly to Person B), but it doesn't cover the passive viewing that I get a lot of enjoyment out of. I really enjoy seeing pictures of people's kids/pets/life events. I wish there was a better, decentralized way of handling the latter use case that everyone immediately has access to without signing up for another account and being subject to user-hostile data mining.

> If I just wanted a private social graph with my friends on it, so that it's easier for us to keep in touch over time... where should I go?

Email?

Not that they're replacements for facebook, but I like and have reasonable trust in HN, reddit, usenet, IRC (freenode, efnet, rizon, stuff like that).

I have started trusting reddit a lot less after all their banning and quaranting of subreddits with little notice beforehand along with their non moderation of rule violations, blatant vote manipulation, vote botting, corporate posting, etc.

Irc is awesome though, actually feels like real communication with other people.

Some of the same people who frequented Reddit have moved on to Snoonet, which is another nice IRC network to hang out on (particularly #casualconversation).

I see a lot of people around me using Mastodon, but I've yet to actually try it myself (I don't really like social media). It's federated and you can run your own instance.

I've just tried Mastodon recently and haven't been blown away by my experience so far, but I don't like social media either. It's more a Twitter replacement than Facebook. I'm looking to get out of FB as well...

Could you elaborate on Mastodon? I've been following it for some time, wondering whether it's worth the effort to join? (And try and drag some of my friends along as well ;-) )

I’ve been a fan of micro.blog for a while. It’s a great blogging service and has a sort of mini built in social network along with it.

HN is a type of social network that seems pretty trustworthy.

There's nothing that can fill everything that Facebook offers, with the most important part being your friends will probably not use whatever you choose, even if it's only to keep in touch with you. If you're looking for a Messenger replacement to keep in touch with your social graph, you can try Telegram, Wire, or even Signal (if you're adventurous and want to piss of some friends). There are also several Twitter replacements, with Mastodon being a major one (decentralized, free).

I'm increasingly of the opinion that only distributed open source social networks can be trusted. I'm currently on Diaspora, which is pretty nice, though lacking in some features. I want to look into Hubzilla or Friendica, which have the advantage of being able to share with both Diaspora and Mastodon.

I know a lot of Google+ refugees moved to MeWe, and they have Tim Berners-Lee on their board and supposedly implement his Solid standard that lets users own their own data, but I have no idea what that means exactly; it's still a proprietary network.

Currently, I use Telegram. I believe that it doesn't read my messages.

I'm not aware of anything with the breadth and discovery features of FB and without the disadvantages. Your phone's contacts list is probably the best compromise between privacy and ability to get in touch with old friends (I have 20+ years old contacts on it).

If you just want to be found, publish a personal web page, perhaps with an easy to find, SEO-friendly domain like firstnamelastname.info or similar. List your e-mail address there and people should be able to get in touch.

I don’t trust any website, especially any that monetize the data you feed it.

The incentives on the business’ side are nowhere near aligned with my side as a user.

You can use tox. Check out their website https://tox.chat

Yeah, I wouldn't use tox after reading this.

https://github.com/TokTok/c-toxcore/issues/426

You can just create an account, add your friends, and login occasionally. If your friend contacts you, you simply ask them to chat elsewhere.

> Is there any social network that you trust?

The real one?

Telegram works well as my primary social tool.

I trust GPG.

Worth reading in this regard: Shoshana Zubhoff's The Age of Surveillance Capitalism. https://www.amazon.com/Age-Surveillance-Capitalism-Future-Fr...

Facebook

ello.co is a decent alternative to sites like deviantart or tumblr.

Reddit is a good one.

Reddit has been known to be quite susceptible to shills for sometime. It is a source of both fake news and swayed opinion in favor of whoever has the most money to throw at it. I'm not saying that other places are immune to this, but the problems with reddit are actually very well documented, and management seems not to care. It's even possible they are shilling themselves.

https://thehustle.co/reddit-fake-comments

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jaymcgregor/2017/02/20/reddit-i...

https://medium.com/@coinmall/how-easy-and-cheap-it-is-to-man...

https://www.cnet.com/news/reddit-election-misinformation-201...

https://mashable.com/2014/07/31/unidan-banned-reddit-permane...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=YjLsFnQejP8...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxNvUWN3vYk

Also, reddit has changed comments before, or their CEO has. They have probably also banned people for less than transparent reasons.

Twitter is even worse with their shadow banning, and limiting viewership of twitter accounts, censorship of mainstream conservatives, while notably not censoring known terrorist accounts.

Youtube is known for allowing pedophilia posts, but having conservative politics also gets people banned.

I like mastodon, but I haven't used it enough yet to have a real opinion.

Also scuttblebutt (https://www.scuttlebutt.nz/) looks very promising but has made little real progress into mainstream as of yet.

Just a point of clarity - I am registered green party, but I don't think you can have true democracy with media manipulation.

activeneighbor.com