I am not joking when I say that I thinked for hours about how do people find each other in 2025.

Currently, the world is in very weird state. People online are either using social video platforms or they are reading news or lurking in online forums in it’s different shapes and forms.

Most chat platforms that I know had shut down and most alt social platforms are almost dead. Even Hackernews had started to see a lower amount of comments compared to previous years.

I want a serious answer, how should I find people online to talk to about anything really other than politics?

  • Dr. Moose@lemmy.worldEnglish
    10·
    1 day ago

    Check out https://slowly.app/ - its a penpall service that simulates snail mail which makes for great connections! You can get a random pall or choose one explicitly and the community there is really wholesome.

    • Kairos@lemmy.today
      16·
      1 day ago

      In their terms of service, they share data with ad companies and marketers. But I can’t copy paste it here because JavaScript

      Edit: grammar

      • LH0ezVT@sh.itjust.works
        2·
        6 hours ago

        I just quickly read through them, and it just sounded like the usual “we run as here”. Could you specify it a bit? Or take a screenshot of the relevant part?

        • Nuggsy@lemmy.world
          3·
          5 hours ago

          You might be looking for this perhaps?

          I can’t copy and paste the text from my phone, but under Privacy Policy > 4. When and with whom do we share your personal information?, it says the following in the first paragraph:

          Vendors, Consultants, and Other Third-Party Service Providers. We may share your data with third-party vendors, service providers, contractors, or agents (‘third parties’) who perform services for us or on our behalf and require access to such information to do that work.

          (Not verbatim…) It goes on to say the contracts are designed to safeguard personal information and can’t use any personal information without their permission. Third parties will not share personal information except with them and third parties commit to data protection they hold on their behalf and to retain it for the period they have been instructed.

          Third parties information may be shared with:

          • Ad Networks
          • Data Analytics Services
          • Payment Processors
          • Performance Monitoring Tools
          • Sales & Marketing Tools
          • Testing Tools
          • User Account Registration & Authentication Services
          • Website Hosting Service Providers
          • Cloud Computing Services
          • Communication & Collaboration Tools
          • Retargeting Platforms
          • Social Networks

          Additionally:

          • During business transfers i.e. mergers, sale of assets, financing, acquisitions, negotiations
          • When using Google maps platform APIs
          • Other users: this seems to be mostly if you connect/interact via a social media platform like Facebook. It may be more nuanced than I understand.
          • LH0ezVT@sh.itjust.works
            1·
            2 hours ago

            Unfortunate :(

            Although, this still reads like “standard” stuff like using google analytics or a Facebook plugin. To me, this does not seem to be any worse than most mainstream sites.

            Of course, modern internet sucks balls, don’t get me wrong.

        • Kairos@lemmy.today
          1·
          6 hours ago

          Look for sections about sharing data. In an attempt to copy paste it seems I banned JS from that site which made it fail to load the body content entirely.