I admin a Facebook group with just about 30k people in it. It used to be great, and over the past few years the enshittification has been too much. Lately there is an out of control Facebook AI bot posting constantly pissing everyone off that we can't seem to turn off. I only use FB for the group, and don't have their spyware - I mean, app - installed and wont. Admin abilities are severely limited on the webapp.

I'm stepping down as admin cuz I'm tired of this mess. But I'd like to offer an alternative community to members who are ready to jump ship. Is a Lemmy community the best option? It's a photo heavy group so when Pixelfed launches groups that will be great, but I haven't seen an ETA on that. I've read that Piefed has better mod controls. It can/should be public and accessible across platforms.

Thoughts? And before anyone points it out, I know most folks won't bother switching. But I also miss when it was smaller and had more chill vibes so I can live with that.

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[–] Ulrich@feddit.org 3 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

I know that shitty AI bot all too well. Unfortunately I've tried and failed to get people to leave as well. I have a community of ~20k users. Sad reality is that not only does no one care but they will actively attack you for even suggesting such a thing.

Facebook knows what they're doing. The only way to close the group is to remove each and every member, one by one, and even if you actually wanted to spend the time actually doing that (I have), they will "detect automated activity" and lock your account.

I created my own private Lemmy community. Even set up Photon as a frontend. Not 1 single user joined.

So yeah, we're so fucked.

[–] JustOneMoreCat@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago) (1 children)

You should be able to "archive" a group as admin, which essentially shuts it down. I haven't tried but I've seen it happen in other groups. And yeah, it's really disturbing what people will accept from FB for the sake of inertia and comfort. I've told a couple friends about Meta using the localhost loophole for tracking and recommended they delete the apps and just use the web version if they need to, and they all still have the apps. Who even needs privacy, right? Sigh

[–] Ulrich@feddit.org 2 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

It looks like at one time you could archive the group but not anymore.

[–] JustOneMoreCat@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

I just took a peek and you're right. But there is an option to "pause" a group, I didn't explore enough to see if it could be permanent. The rule that you can only delete a group when it has no members is absurd, wtf

[–] Ulrich@feddit.org 1 points 4 hours ago

Only "absurd" in the context of a user. Not really in the context of a business with 3B MAU who will not leave no matter what.