In my 12th August Latest News post I mentioned my plan to undertake a search and review of alternatives to Meta apps ie Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. My initial thought on this was triggered by the countless ads, irrelevant posts and recommendations to be-friend people I either do not know or with whom I have no interested in connecting. I also noted a tendency to push FB posts from Instagram accounts that I follow. Why?
I don’t have a huge following on Instagram but, while I enjoy looking at posts from a wide range of instagrammers, I have been content to post my own work in the hope that a few people may like it. But those instagram accounts have little to do with my personal Facebook account, and my “Gallery” Facebook account is used by me merely to reach a few people who do not use instagram.
Until recently I had a couple of other instagram accounts, for my nutrition and consulting businesses, but I deleted those during the early part of the pandemic as I retired from both of those work areas. More recently I created two new instagram accounts; one for my photography and the other for my design work. Things were going reasonably well till, out of the blue, Instagram told me my photo account had been blocked for transgression of some rules. As I pointed out to Instagram, I had NOT broken any rules as, at that point, I had only just uploaded a handful of photos. I had not solicited any followers and in fact had not yet confirmed my email address so the account was not even fully functional. I really have no time to waste in discussing such matters with social media providers so my plan to exit Meta has been accelerated.
Having now undertaken a search for alternatives apps I found a few that I thought would be interesting. In the last couple of weeks or so I downloaded the following apps (or I already had them) and will undertake a review of each, focused on how suitable these apps are to me.
I had hoped this review would take a few days but, as is too often the case, I became embroiled in other tasks – including an overdue plan to travel!
So, just to provide some feedback, here are the alternative apps that I will be looking at. I doubt I shall complete them before the end of September, nor even before I travel, so I will publish by thoughts as and when they become available.
Diaspora (https://diasporafoundation.org)
Ello (https://ello.co)
Minds (https://www.minds.com)
MeWe
Vero
Steemit
Caffeine
Steller
Telegram
Signal
Discord
Kik
Snapchat
Skype
Keybase
Viber
I have not looked into Twitter replacements because (a) I don’t use it much (b) it isn’t part of Meta and (c) it’s been subject to a takeover by Elon Musk so the outcome of the change in ownership may be either positive or negative but, in any case, (a) is an over-rider ie I don’t use it much though perhaps I should.
I doubt I shall be able to commit to a specific schedule but will attempt to post some progress every Friday.
Thanks for following
Skyrme Gallery 
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