Using Social Media for Community Activity
A Facebook Group COULD be used as a Community Website (or means of a community communicating and helping each other). It doesn't even need to be Private but it does need to have Admins that set strict rules and enforces them.
Our local community has two Facebook Groups, one for the Community in general and the other for Covid-19 support. Both of these groups are Private. However, the fact that they are Private is no conseqence with regard to privacy as the Admins don't seem to sudit applications to join the groups. In fact I am a member of both the groups under a Psudonym and nobody has even attempted to see who I am! I originally joined in my own name so that other members could identify me, one of the points of the group I would think. I suggested that the group be made public as it would be seen by a wider audence, After briefly being made Public it reverted back to Private due to some "push-back" from existing members who voiced their concern that their information would be made ublic. Names, addresses and the like, this is bullshit because of the resaon that I gave before.
How this COULD work
The Rules would be:
- The group is Private. As personal information would be allowed
- Only known Community Members are allowed to join. This has to be strictly policed
- Only Community matters should be discussed. NO ADVERTISING (a seperate group can be setup for this!
- Posts that violate the rules are deleted by the Admin. THIS HAS TO CONSTANTLY MONITORED
The reason why this would NOT work are mainly because of rules 3 and 4. Rule 3 because I am not sure if you can stop Facebook inserting advertising into the Timeline becuase of their algorithm - it is their business model. Also, there may be valod instances where offers of help and free stuff are made by community members and the determination of whether that is advertising or not. And Rule 4 because it is not practicable, the interpretation of the rules will be subjective.
Also, not everyone in a community wants to use Facebook - there are many good reasons for this. Exisiting Facebook users may also want to seperate their regular Facebook activity from the rest of the community. I know I "stalk" other members of the groups that I am a member of. It is the case, that none of the other members of the group are my "friends", but other users of the Community group are "friends" of other group members. "Friends" is used in the Facebook sense, some of the community are actual friends.