I am a member of three (admittedly weird) niche communities. These have been orders of magnitude more impactful in my life than Facebook. The friends I met there have become real-life friends. We've flown around the world to visit each other, we've laughed and cried, we send each other quirky gifts, and cheer on each other's kids. These are the only close new friends I've made in the last 10 years. Two of those communities are based around subreddits, the other a 90s era web forum.
The thing that makes them work where Facebook groups simply don't, I think, is pseudonymity. One of those groups has been particularly powerful, and it is a group that inherently involves being mutually vulnerable, so I certainly would never have joined under my real name, and I enjoy being part of the community even though only a handful of people know my IRL identity.
Reddit has some big problems, but is the best platform I have found so far for these niche communities. And my experience totally chimes with this article: big social media is as shallow as a puddle. Small niches are where real communities form.
The thing that makes them work where Facebook groups simply don't, I think, is pseudonymity. One of those groups has been particularly powerful, and it is a group that inherently involves being mutually vulnerable, so I certainly would never have joined under my real name, and I enjoy being part of the community even though only a handful of people know my IRL identity.
Reddit has some big problems, but is the best platform I have found so far for these niche communities. And my experience totally chimes with this article: big social media is as shallow as a puddle. Small niches are where real communities form.