Alternative to a Facebook group for parent groups and teams.

What a Facebook group is good at

One clear advantage of Facebook is that most people are there already, which makes it easy to get started. It costs nothing. Many people look in several times a day anyway, so a message usually gets through.

The algorithmic feed

What makes a Facebook group hard to get away from is not that Facebook is bad. It is that the two things hang together. To keep up with what happens in your child's class or team, you have to be there, and if you are there, the algorithmic news feed comes with it: an order you cannot see, put together to keep you there as long as possible. We are good at warning against letting children have too much screen time, but adults can struggle just as much with having their attention hijacked by social media. Staying out costs you the messages. Being in exposes you to a service optimised to be addictive.

A feed ranked by what engages can be worked by someone who knows how. That is not a fault that can be fixed, it is built into a system like that, and it holds however well the people running the platform mean it. It is then unfortunate that the same place is half compulsory. If you live in a housing co-op that has its group there, or have a child in a class that does, it is not really a choice. A place people have to be to keep up is also a place that can be used for social manipulation, disinformation campaigns and political propaganda.

Social groups do not have to live on social media. A closed page like kauke does the job just as well without the drawbacks. You keep up with what the group puts out, and then there is no more. There is no feed to stay in, no suggestions about what else you should watch, and nobody measuring how long you stayed.

Where it grates

• Most people are not everyone. Guardians who have left Facebook, and members who never started, fall outside. They get the message passed on by somebody else, or not at all.
• The order is decided for you. A stream is sorted by what engages, not by what is important. A message about turning up at seven can land under a funny comment from last week.
• Nothing can be found again. The photos from 17 May last year sit somewhere further down. In practice they are gone.
• Photos of children sit with somebody else. You do not decide what they are used for, and a group that is ‘closed’ is closed to other users, not to the platform. What has to be in place before such photos are shared at all is on the page about photos of children.
• Replies are not replies. A heart on a post does not say who is coming on the trip, and ‘Are you going?’ in the comments gives no list of who has not replied.
• You own none of it. If the group goes, or the person who created it goes, all of it goes.

How kauke does it

• An address of your own. The group gets its own page, for example kauke.no/korpsklang. Only the people on the list see anything, and the page is never indexed by search engines.
• No account to make. The person who is invited logs in with the e-mail they were invited with, no password. No app to install.
• The posts stay, in order, with the photos in them. After a year the group has a history to leaf through.
• Events with proper replies. Yes, no or maybe, with a reply deadline, and a list of who has not replied. Guardians reply for their children.
• Video stays with you. The recording from the concert is uploaded into the post, not to a public streaming service.

What kauke does not do

There is one thing Facebook does that kauke can do nothing about: it is not where people already are. People have to be willing to take up a new service. In practice that is not so hard, but for some it can be a mental barrier.

• Notifications come by e-mail, and each person chooses how often, or turns them off. Nobody gets notifications on their phone without having asked for them.
• There is no chat. Comments belong to a post or an event.
• Somebody has to invite people. Nobody finds you by accident, and that is the point, but it is also work the first time.
• It is not a membership system. Subscriptions, a membership register and reporting belong somewhere else.

Do you already have a membership system?

Many bands and choirs have one, free through their federation, and then events, the membership register and messages from the leadership are covered. What most of them still use Facebook for is the trip and the photos. Then it is the blog that is missing alongside, and that is what kauke is. A parent group in a class rarely has any such system at all, and then kauke does both.

Can we use both?

Yes, do whatever suits you best. Let the loose talk stay on Facebook, for example, and put what should be findable again in kauke: the photos, the messages from the leadership and the events. Then you do not have to move everybody at once, and the people who are not on Facebook are still in on what matters.

What it costs

The free plan gives 500 MB of storage and video up to 3 minutes, and it does not run out. If you need more room, the paid plan costs 1500 kr a year for the whole group. There is no advertising in either of them. See the prices.

How to get started

Set up the group, choose the address, and invite the board first. Put up one post with photos from the last time you played, and send the link to the rest. It takes a couple of minutes, and you confirm who you are with Vipps once because you become responsible for the details of the people you invite. If you are a class rep, there is a recipe of its own on the page for class reps.