I want to connect my neighbourhood in some way, but I don't know how to handle this privacy friendly 🤔

we want to connect to coordinate .. lets say some gardening. we can handle first information via email, but afterwards it gets messy for the organizer. the neighbours don't care about privacy at all as far as I know so Element/Matrix won't work. and most of them don't have 'media literacy skills. should I give in and forget about a coordinated talking ground outside of neighbourhood meetings irl?

Basically any solution would revolve around installing an app they most likely don't already have (signal, etc), but if you could convince enough of them to do so then soon enough a critical mass will be pressured into it.

What's wrong with email? I'm assuming that you want privacy from big corps rather than government?

Meet in person?

Just tell them to install Signal and connect through it.

Signal is very straightforward to use, if there's anyone else in the group that uses it then maybe start with them

This is the way to go.

@OP: You could even print out QR codes with Signal invite links to the group, so people can on-board others in the neighbourhood.

Props for trying to create a more tightly-knit community, btw! It's the single most important thing to do against the loneliness epidemic and the fallout that comes with it. You're doing the right thing, and doing it in a privacy-friendly way is even better.

thanks! I've been thinking about doing this for a couple years now and yesterday was the day when I decided I'm just gonna start. I rang some doorbells and invited random neighbours to my place for tonight^^

Signal with QR-Codes is a good idea, thank u!

I don't know why but I feel like that's too annoying if we have to coordinate in real time. I kinda compare sending emails to sending letters instead of chatting even if that's just stupid thinking haha

What’s wrong with email?

What's not wrong with email? It's a horrendous UX unless it's formatted properly into something like chatmail (Delta Chat)

It's really not that bad. As the other person said, the UX is down to the client you choose. It's an open protocol that everyone already has an account on.

But if you can persuade everyone onto signal, then that's probably going to be better. I thought you were saying that wasn't possible as they "don't care about privacy".

I'll try my best tonight to get them to sign up on signal 😬 but I'll reconsider mails for myself with Delta Chat (haven't tried it yet)

DaltaChat (use its fork called ArcaneChat on mobile devices) is super straightforward to start using. You just download the app, enter your nickname - note: no phone number, no email, even no password! - and you're ready to go. Then you need an invite link to the group chat and that's it. The onboarding experience is in fact much simpler than on WhatsApp, Telegram or Signal.

Also as DeltaChat doesn't require a phone number or other confidentials, it is much more private than Signal. And it has stronger encryption than the latter (AFAIK Signal doesn't encrypt the message metadata).

I've managed to even get my gandma using DeltaChat (ArcaneChat) so I think it's the best choice for people who are not very into tech.

So I'll just provide a QR-Code to the grouchat and they are in?

Is Arcane available for both IOs and Android?

And do I need a new inbox programm or an extra email if we use emsil like chat? I use thunderbird and I feel like there would be a lot of alerts popping up?

So I'll just provide a QR-Code to the grouchat and they are in?

Yes!

Is Arcane available for both IOs and Android?

Oh okay, my bad. I forgot about iOS 😅
ArcaneChat is available only for Android, but DeltaChat is available on both. They are inter-operable, so you can tell Android users to use ArcaneChat and iOS users to use DeltaChat. Or use DeltaChat for both. ArcaneChat just adds a couple features like Markdown.

And do I need a new inbox programm or an extra email if we use emsil like chat? I use thunderbird and I feel like there would be a lot of alerts popping up?

DeltaChat creates an account on its own kind of servers automatically so you don't have to worry about that.

Slight correction to his advice:

Delta Chat (the app itself) is available on iOS, android, windows, mac, and Linux. There is a fork on android called ArcaneChat, but it isn't the only app available and the "official" one is also (as in both are) on F-Droid as well as Play Store.

I also recommend a Delta Chat "Group" if you want a group chat, or Delta Chat "Channel" if you want to be the sole poster for disseminating "news." If group chat be aware: there are no moderators or admins or anything, all users have the same power, this means any user can kick any other user. It's mostly meant for families and friends groups where that won't be an issue, but a neighborhood chat would also likely be fine depending on your neighbors lol.

Yes, pretty much just put a QR code and it should work, it should take them to the app store directly to Delta Chat, and then once they DL and make an acct they may have to scan it again.

You would use Delta Chat as the client for the chats, with a separate chatmail address made during set-up, completely divorced from TBird or your email. You CAN use a traditional email to communicate with DC but it isn't recommended anymore and it's a whole thing, good luck getting your neighbors to set up a new email just for chatmails and set up autocrypt on it properly to communicate with encrypted chatmails, and yes you can use unencrypted email but it's still advised to be a dedicated address and tbh why not just use email if you're not going to encrypt it?

To your users who don't know shit about what's under the hood it'll just look like whatsapp, they'll have an easier time accepting "new app."