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It's been brought to my attention that while #BuyNothing groups are pretty useful, they tend to exist mainly on Facebook. It'd be nice to have such a group for #WaterlooRegion here on the fedi as well.

I'd be happy to set one up, but if there's one that already exists, I'd rather use that than start from scratch. Is anyone aware of such a group here?

#KWAwesome #WRAwesome #Kitchener #Waterloo #Cambridge #Guelph

in reply to Jonathan Lamothe

we've got a (so far) small signal group just to chat local stuff, buy nothing could definitely be a part of that. DM me if want a link.
in reply to Jonathan Lamothe

I am not the nerd to answer that question but boosted this so hopefully somebody can.
in reply to Valerie Roney

@Valerie Roney It looks like I can install it without interfering with my existing SMS app. That was not the case when I first looked at it. I'll probably set it up when I can get around to it.
in reply to Jonathan Lamothe

@vlrny As far as I know, Signal only does their encrypted messages. They used to do SMS as well (before RCS) but removed it to avoid confusion between which messages were encrypted and which weren't.
in reply to Jonathan Lamothe

I don't know that region, but I would definitely be interested in a worldwide Fediverse group like that! And one for my own region, if possible.
in reply to Quasit

@Quasit I thought about a global one, but worried it'd be a bit of a firehose with no real way of filtering.
in reply to Jonathan Lamothe

It seems to me that at current scale, we're unlikely to see a worldwide community on Mastodon that's overwhelming. And by the time such a community WOULD become overwhelming, I'd expect sub-groups to form - probably linked to the worldwide forum to allow users to select which areas they'd want to subscribe to.

Or maybe that should be a Lemmy thing. I don't know.

in reply to Darcy Casselman

@Darcy Casselman Hmm... Friendica doesn't seem to want to let me follow this group. I wonder if there's a bug in the way their server is implementing ActivityPub that Friendica doesn't like. (This would not be unprecedented.)
in reply to Jonathan Lamothe

I can follow @waterloo_region. (Probably should've done that already, but it's not terribly busy over there...)
in reply to Jonathan Lamothe

@Court Also, now I wonder of setting up a group would open me up to trademark issues. I suppose I could pick a different name that conveys the same idea.
in reply to Jonathan Lamothe

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in reply to Jonathan Lamothe

Another thing that was brought to my attention is freecycle.org. I don't know much about them yet, but they exist and seem to offer a similar type of service here.

reshared this

in reply to Jonathan Lamothe

I participated in Freecycle for many years. It's quite legitimate. It doesn't get the attention it deserves.
in reply to Jonathan Lamothe

We used to have an active Freecycle group around here - it was a mailing list - perhaps 15/20 years ago.

It was replaced with Freegle, which was also a mailing list.

Then most things seemed to move to Facebook groups.

in reply to Jonathan Lamothe

FWIW, while I’m not what a # BuyNothing group talks about, the local KW Techs Slack team has a # buylocalandcanadian channel that has great recommendations for local and more-broadly Canadian products, and is focused mainly on independent businesses. It's a great resource, though obviously not fediverse.

Also FWIW, I’d love to see something similar here.

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