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.
A lot of us here are on the same boat. We don’t know each other but deal with these same issues. We know the truth behind proprietary software and surveillance capitalism and we know that we can only succeed in our efforti if we bring together our loved ones. We need to find the best language and ways to let people know the reality behind the software they use, the dangers of using it, and the marvelous solutions of the free software community. We are a community. Let’s hold ourselves together and keep going. The world may be based in libre software in the future. If it doesn’t, it will be not a good place to live on. But at least we tried. If not for us, for the ones that’ll come in the future.