If you live in the EU - you may also be faced with this Meta prompt. Info in text.
If you, like me, live in the EU, Facebook is now entirely clamping down and forcing free users to make their personal data available for monetization.
Attempting to access any Facebook domain and perhaps also other meta products will redirect you to the following prompt with a choice between either accepting the monetization of your user data, or coughing up a region-dependent monthly subscription fee: base (for me ~10€) + an additional fee (~7€) for each additional facebook or instagram account you have.
Now, the hidden third option. At an initial glance, it seems like there is no other option but to click one of the buttons - however, certain links still work, and grant access to important pieces of functionality through your web browser.
If anyone has information to add regarding Facebook or Instagram, please do share it. I've only (begrudgingly) used the former up until now, but I know many others use Instagram and don't feel like giving a single cent (nor their personal info) to Meta.
https://www.facebook.com/dyi - perhaps most important of all, now is a good time to make a request to download your Facebook data. Don't forget to switch to data for "all time" and "high quality" if you intend to permanently delete your account.
This forced me to look into hosting an own social media as a replacement for me, my friends and acquaintances. Where we can chat, upload files, organise events, and make posts about all sorts of things.
Anyone got a recommendation for software, preferably open source?
Humhub looked promising, but the "free" version only allows 5 people, which is just dumb.
With Friendica you can run public and private groups so your meat space friends can converse outside of public view while still participating in public spaces.
If you want really private with direct connections instead of servers, with everything encrypted and hidden from public view see:
Akkoma dropped support for chats, which sucks tennis balls.
The others are too technical for many of the people I know. They just want something like Facebook, but that I host myself. Not the "every device is its own node" type of deal.
And connection to the fediverse definitely isn't a necessity.
Friendica should fit the bill right there for you. Or if you don't want ActivityPub, check out diaspora*. There's also Hubzilla which uses AP as well, but internally it uses its own Zot protocol.
How did this specifically make it worse? They didn't follow the GDPR before so choosing free is the exact same as before.
This is just their latest attempt at avoiding the GDPR and last I checked taking payment for not tracking someone is a grey zone in the GDPR. After looking at the law it shouldn't be allowed but it might be. Who knows. Other sites do it as well.