Alternatives to FB & Twitter & more!

Very extensive page by Richard Stallman (wikipedia) on:

Reasons not to use Facebook — Sections are:

Real Names ♦♦ Censorship ♦♦ Privacy ♦♦ Ads ♦♦ Psychological Harm

♦♦ Taxes ♦♦ Racism ♦♦ Control of media ♦♦ Misc.

Facebook saved all your phonecall data (when, how long, and to WHOM, per ArsTechnica article) and same "metadata" for texts for (apparently all) Android users, for years..they have years of data on us. See also Vlog by Jamarl Thomas and EFF.org's (Electronic Frontier Foundation) How-To on disallowing, if you plan to stay on FB...which hopefully you're not planning on -- see alternatives below.

Here's a useful page of links to some free/libre and/or 'open source' alternatives to facebook: the page is one they entitle * * Open Source Facebook Alternatives * * (and alternatives to twitter here), but see next two paragraphs on this page for why that's misleading; in short, "open source" is an improvement over typical "closed source" software but free/libre is better, and the list of "facebook alternatives" on that page seems to include some of each.

Alternatives there include GNU Social (joined forces to combine with StatusNet) and Diaspora — and also Twitter alternatives ("microblogging" softawre) like Mastodon, and Twister. We're not making any recommendations at this point, do your own research, it's worth it! It's also very worthwhile to not just kick the can down the road by joining another site owned by a giant corporation(s). Go for FLOSS! (Free/Libre Open Source Software) Open Source means the code is viewable by anyone, so not only are bugs easier and (if decent sized community) faster to fix, and improvements/user requests faster to add, but also no spyware etc can be hidden behind "closed source" software since it's open.

Free/Libre software ("Free as in Free Speech, not as in Free Beer", but is often free or very cheap) is even better -- it takes open-source and adds a commitment to protect our freedom so it can't just become open source that was created by a community then freely stolen by a corporation only to make minor additions/improvements and copyright and closed-source it and make is another corporate "walled garden" they control. Join the Free Software Movement :-)

NEW: Microsoft&Facebook start intervening in private conversations.

"How long until they beep out unwanted parts in real time?" (Privacy News Online)

BREAKING: Facebook Admits To Tracking Android User's Calls & Text. Be Aware! 1,450 views

A while before the current (early 2018) public reaction against FB, I wrote these words while referencing a 2014 article:

Is it true that Facebook will lose 80% of users by 2017, say Princeton researchers as researchers suggest?
I'm not at all sure. The more important question is: will people be served by technology and companies? Or will human beings continue to be treated as "the product" sold by corporations like Facebook, and have a dysfunctional rather than empowering relationship with technology? Unless we address those issues, Facebook and Twitter could easily be replaced by equally troubling "sequels" (Facebook replacements that are just as corporate) which would be (at best) not much less troubling than these and others [FB, twitter, etc] becoming even more entrenched.

2 minute animation, Mastodon: Alternative to Twitter!
Decentralized, uncensorable, non-profit, Open Source & Federated Twitter Alt!
Most "instances" are crowdfunded rather than having any ads (what's "instance"? See vid!)

(Yes Gab has been better than twitter since that mostly conservative place hasn't censored lefties like twitter censors all (left and right) non-establishment -- and I even got an account in 2016 -- but it's still a one-point-of-failure, thus is **censorable** by governments, and subject to possible abuse by its owners if they start behaving less nice, and able to be shut down by governments etc since it's centralized rather than Federated like Mastodon)

Other helpful links (add to later)