Most of you have been following the events of the past week. The fallout from the social media platforms has been unprecedented. Although South Carolina Carry focuses on the 2nd Amendment, we believe all of the Amendments are important. Facebook, Twitter, and Amazon are private companies (not owned by the government) and not subject to the constraints of the 1st Amendment, but that does not mean we agree with their actions either. Many of our members, board members included, have been leaving Facebook & Twitter for other social networks. Some of you quite some time ago. It's unclear at this time which ones we should focus our efforts on as an organization, but it has been clear to us for a while that Facebook has not been friendly to the firearms community. We don't want to spread ourselves too thin, so there will only be one or two at most where we will be as an organization.
With that in mind, we would love to hear from you, our members, on what platforms you are using and your thoughts on each. Some of the ones a few of us have checked out so far are:
- MeWe - Sherra & James have had accounts there since 2016 and there is a South Carolina Carry group set up already, but since there aren't many users there yet, it's not very active. This seems to be a Facebook alternative where you can post profile updates as well as join groups and follow pages.
- Parler with an E, not an O (very important distinction) - This seems to be a Twitter alternative since there are no "groups" to join. It's just a feed of updates from the people you follow. Be aware that if you're trying to reach this site within a few days of this blog post, the website may be unavailable because Amazon has pulled their hosting service and they are moving to a new server platform.
- Wimkin - new to us.
- CloutHub - new to us.
Using Parler versus Twitter. Using http://www.wimkin.com to get transferred off Facebook. Also have mewe. Telegram.org has a text messaging medium. It’s big tech hates the first amendment and generally the constitution as a whole. Stay loaded and ready. We are in some uncharted territory. One of the original founding board members that believes we must win this battle.
I have been trying to get folks to leave Facebook for years but very few people want to leave it. Makes it kind of hard to communicate with people.
http://www.minds.com
This is a decentralized blockchain based alternative to FB.
I am registered on there as “chiefpropellerhead”. I have not used it much though.
Some of us are using an app called Telegram which is a simple and fast Text messaging app that advertises encrypted messaging. I like it a lot. It is easy to use and easy to find other people on it. If you give it access to your contact list it will tell you when other people have joined it.
I left FB months ago and jumped around some but have wound up on GAB for the time being. I was aggravated with FB a long time before leaving and only miss “marketplace” there.
I was on Parler but was surprised with how they left the door open and haven’t gone back so far with them coming back online.
I like my Apple products but am ticked off on what they have done lately in the censoring department themselves, especially after just getting a new phone a few months before.
Signal seems to be the most recommended security minded communications form similar to WhatsApp. You can allow them access to your contact list and it will alert you when someone in your list signs up. I’ve been using it for text messaging as well as audio and video calls to my daughter in Europe. It’s always been end to end encrypted. Also using MeWe. Facebook is free because they farm your usage data and sell it to advertisers to target you. So, for an ad-free secure alternative you may havee to pay a monthly fee.
Signal is great for communication between a small group of people, but it’s not for large groups. I have installed both Signal and Telegram for personal communications.