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Signal stories shows what I want social media to be (sgued.fr)

submitted 2 weeks ago by sgued@programming.dev to c/signal@lemmy.ml

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[–] scytale@piefed.zip 6 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (4 children)

I’ve never actually used it. Is it like instagram reels where you can put a photo/video and music together?

Edit: Just tried it. I don’t see the appeal to be honest. A messaging app to me is just that, an app to message people. If I wanted social media to post updates of whatever, I’d use pixelfed or mastodon. The author says the advantage of Signal is the granularity of the audience of your story. IIRC, facebook and the like allow you to restrict down to specific people you want. Obviously the corporate surveillance part is a no-brainer, but if you’re specifically talking about audience filtering, it’s no different.

IMO, instead of social media features, they should try to copy some Telegram features instead (sticker packs, automation, etc.) to make it more enticing to regular users. Make it a full feature chat app instead of a social media app like instagram.

[–] sgued@programming.dev 8 points 2 weeks ago

Author here.

Facebook does not really allow you to specify that one post should only be sent to a specific group of people (like this should only be visible to my family, this should only be visible by close friends), the functionality is hidden, it's not end-to-end encrypted, and it expects you to specify manually the list of recipient each time if it's something other than just "all friends".

Facebook also shows you everything in a feed (with algorithmic ordering to make everything worse), instead of sending you to the user's feed so that you can have all the context.

[–] Bob_Robertson_IX@discuss.tchncs.de 6 points 2 weeks ago

I use Signal the way I want Social Media to be... I share things with specific people who I think will appreciate what I'm sharing, and if I ever want to share something with everyone I chat with on Signal, then I will use Stories. I almost never use Stories because I rarely ever want to share something with everyone, however a few weeks ago I saw that someone I used to work with had posted a Story. He was breaking ground on building his new house. He has spent the past decade living extremely frugally at a campground, saving all of his money toward the goal of building a house, and now he's begun building. It was EXACTLY the type of thing that I think we could all agree is what Social Media should be for, and since he isn't on facebook or instagram, he used Signal.

[–] SweetCitrusBuzz@beehaw.org 3 points 1 week ago

Signal does have sticker packs. What do you mean?

[–] BigTurkeyLove@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

The appeal is Signal isn't fueled by ads and capitalism and won't use everything you share to train their AI like the other social media companies will. It's also easier for the average Joe to use and has a much higher user base than pixelfed and mastodon. I wish it was not the case but hardly any of my friends use the fediverse but a ton use Signal (mostly for buying drugs though).

[–] sgued@programming.dev 1 points 1 week ago

Pixelfed and Mastodon don't fit at all what I want as a "social network". They're not built for communication with friends, they're built for mass media.

I'm not looking for "reach" when I just want to share something with friends.

[–] 3aqn5k6ryk@lemmy.world 1 points 2 weeks ago

I agree. I want it to stay turned off on my phone.