Are we talking 50k people per town? So over a quarter of a million people in total, each with more connections to other people outside said towns?
I applaud and encourage your chutzpah, but I’m not too optimistic about your prospects. Do you want to move your community out of Facebook, or does the community want to do it? Do they even agree with your reasons for wanting to move, or is it possible they actually agree with Zuckerberg and voted for Trump?
Remember you only have one shot. With that large of a group, you’ll find people with all levels of skill, patience, and ideology. If your solution isn’t immediately better (not equal; better) than Facebook, you already lost. It doesn’t need to be better at everything, but it does need to be better at the most important and most used features. And make sure you believe in the cause enough to be the goto person for every question.
Make a list of what the platform needs to support and do and come back with that. Then test, test, test. You won’t succeed if you rush, people move slowly.
That is not true at all. Trying, failing, and trying again are part of any change or innovation. In fact, it's close to the truth that nobody succeeds the first time.
When you’re trying to move a significant mass of people from something that works to another platform for ideological reasons, you’ll be met with resistance. Every time you fail you’ll be met with more until you can move no one.
“Innovation” doesn’t matter at all here, that’s not in question in the slightest, you’re conflating concepts. I’m giving specific advice, not making a general statement.
> When you’re trying to move a significant mass of people from something that works to another platform for ideological reasons, you’ll be met with resistance. Every time you fail you’ll be met with more until you can move no one.
That's not actually how it works. People try time and again, sometimes over decades or centuries, before achieving change - or achieving anything at all.
One thing you do by trying and failing repeatedly is that you normalize your presence and legitimize your cause, and demonstrate that you won't be dismissed or deterred. People begin to take you more seriously.
Of course they will laugh at you and ridicule you at first. That just means you have left the starting gate.
Yes, it is. And your next sentence demonstrates how you’re still missing the point.
> People try time and again, sometimes over decades or centuries, before achieving change - or achieving anything at all.
Do you think OP has decades or centuries to move their community out of Facebook? That is patently absurd.
Again, I’m offering specific advice. Specific, as in to this situation, not making a general point.
I agree with you on the broad philosophical level, but that is absolutely useless advice for this situation. Good advice for the macro doesn’t always apply on the micro. Don’t get blinded by ideology, this thread is about solving OP’s specific problem.
> Of course they will laugh at you and ridicule you at first. That just means you have left the starting gate.
People like to believe that “if they’re making fun of you, you’re doing something important to change the world”. That is not necessarily true. Many ideas are ridiculed and do turn out to be wrong and stupid. Like alchemy or NFTs. There are many more ridiculed bad ideas than ridiculed good ideas, the only reason you know more of the latter than the former is that the bad ideas everyone thought were bad are quickly forgotten, and the others are remembered because it makes a good story. It’s survivorship bias.
I applaud and encourage your chutzpah, but I’m not too optimistic about your prospects. Do you want to move your community out of Facebook, or does the community want to do it? Do they even agree with your reasons for wanting to move, or is it possible they actually agree with Zuckerberg and voted for Trump?
Remember you only have one shot. With that large of a group, you’ll find people with all levels of skill, patience, and ideology. If your solution isn’t immediately better (not equal; better) than Facebook, you already lost. It doesn’t need to be better at everything, but it does need to be better at the most important and most used features. And make sure you believe in the cause enough to be the goto person for every question.
Make a list of what the platform needs to support and do and come back with that. Then test, test, test. You won’t succeed if you rush, people move slowly.
Best of luck to you.