Context: https://soatok.blog/2024/05/14/its-time-for-furries-to-stop-using-telegram/

I use Signal under my real name but find it insufficient for a general furry use case so far.

Wishlist:

  • editing and deleting stickers / sticker packs is important for people who commission one-off stickers or keep adding to theirs over time. There is a closed github issue about this.
  • easily accessible multi-account support. Yes you can use a burner phone or a separate profile on Android. Those are workarounds. Even the smallest amount of friction is a sufficient barrier to prevent people from switching.

Features on telegram that are not completely compatible with Signal’s model:

  • public channels. I have a much better time getting “news” from these compared to keeping up with social media, as it’s less noisy. stuff like con info, local meetups, artist commission openings… it’s pretty helpful. These can all be email lists or RSS feeds, but who’s gonna set that up? Who’s gonna subscribe?
  • high-volume groups. Signal data is stored locally and not everyone has 100GB+ phones. people send so much media in group chats, most of it irrelevant. you should never treat these chats as completely private, so TG is a fine place to host them.

People who aren’t nerds don’t care that much about encryption. We know that much from the huge Discord user base. None of the text messages on Discord are e2ee! From my gen z experience, everyone starts on Furry Discord and only make it to Furry Telegram when they start talking to people who have been in the fandom for a while, or when they start going to local meetups & cons. Discord’s network effect is extremely annoying.

Second response: https://soatok.blog/2024/05/30/furries-are-losing-the-battle-against-scale/

IMO the question is not “how do we scale furry conventions” or even “will someone make more furry cons”. At least in the Bay Area, there are many regular meetups and 4 cons that I know of… Further Confusion, PawCon, Galactic Camp, and a (new) Furlingame, which used to be Babscon (a brony con). But it’s most likely that people who go to the smaller cons also go to the big one; I don’t believe the attendance from FC is statistically significantly fanning into the smaller ones. Or, people might be going to smaller cons, but attendance at big cons will never be spread out enough to stop the hotel and elevator nightmares.

https://www.furryfediverse.org lists fediverse general and niche instances. Understanding the Fediverse is unnecessary for this metaphor; just think of them as online gathering spaces. If there are entire instances / sites on the internet for niche interests, a clean way to scale down is to make more niche conventions. Way easier said than done of course, most furry sub-interests are kink-related and require lots of careful planning and hotel staff training. Babyfurcon pulls it off well, and I know non-furry BDSM cons exist. On the SFW side, something like a Pokefur (rip copyright, I know I know) or kemonofur convention would really align with my personal interests! Especially as I’d be far more likely to recognise artists in the Dealer’s Den and bump into friends just walking around.

Anecdotally, the best con experiences I’ve had were from those with <5k people.