I believe in an open internet, FOSS, privacy by default, etc. I migrated away from Google by self-hosting Nextcloud. I prefer messaging apps like Molly, SimpleX, Threema, Matrix, etc. over standard SMS. I love the Fediverse (Lemmy, Mastodon, etc.).
But everyone I live with and everyone I know simply refuses to take part. I can’t interact with them socially because they’re all on Facebook. I can’t communicate with them because they all use group texts for SMS/RCS. I feel like I’m living in a different part of the world and am completely disconnected from everything that’s going on around me (with the people I want to interact).
My question is: does anyone else experience this, and how do you reconcile it? I want to share photos and clever posts with my family but they aren’t on the Fediverse. I want to communicate securely with them but they only want to SMS. I want to share documents but they only use Google Docs.
There are people I’ve met on the Fediverse and through some secure messaging apps with whom I’ve struck up a rapport, but these are still (predominately) strangers, and I’d really like to involve the people I care about in these exciting new times. They just wont participate.
I feel like I’ve invited everyone in my family to go on a great, grand vacation away and I’m the only one who’s packed.
You have a product that needs to be sold just as much as google needed to sell gmail. This is where the technical rubber meets the social road. It is a given that not everyone will want to host their services, so to get the network effect people need to use your instance.
With that in mind, first and foremost you should treat your services you host almost like a product: you do need to sell it, it needs to be maintained it, and if other people get onboard you can’t just get bored of it and put it down. Your product is niche and competes with the largest corporate entities out there, but you have the advantage that you can genuinely personally know your customers and your customers can personally and genuinely know you.
I spend considerable thought on this, unless you are talking about household members or other people who trust you borderline absolutely, there is just no way to get a stranger or acquaintance to meaningfully use your hosted services.
For the stuff i host that i can share from my hosted services i make it apparent to the users that the data is subject to my whims. think this helps a little as it puts the otherwise unstated in the open, it would be awkward for a friend to have to ask me how safe their data is, i can acknowledge their data is as safe as their relationship with me is, and honestly that’s the best that can be done without structuring.
Now structuring: if you genuinely want members of your communities to be able to buy in, become consistent and stable with your services operations, a d make a legal entity. Use the entity to provide what you have as a service to have the legal structures in place to protect you and your users. If you think this is bullshit, i don’t recommend because i think the structures will protect anything, i recommend because the structures indicate trustworthiness to the type of people who don’t make themselves concerned with matters they are instructed to not bother with. You would be able to make an appeal to a more personal business relationship.
Now that highlights the effort, as the privacy advocate i functionally have to operate a business to maintain my digital infrastructure; if i want others to join my network i should commit and run a privacy-centric business. There is opportunity here for standard operational models to be documented so that power users can quickly bootstrap and present an adoptable platform to their communities; however, i am not there yet myself.