I've realized that I'm not really on Facebook for friends the way I used to be anymore. I'm there for Messenger, Marketplace, and sometimes a Group if my neighborhood, team, etc. has decided to use Facebook.

Which then made me wonder: is there truly no good social messenger that's separate from social media now? Signal was the closest I could come up with, but it's missing lots of niceties especially in group messages.

Personally I haven't used FB messenger for years now because WhatsApp and Signal serve my use case. When people messaged me on FB I immediately switched to e-mail or some other messenger. I haven't used FB marketplace, but I'm pretty sure that is something that does not require social media at all.

The one thing that I don't see a good replacement for at the moment is event management because it inherently requires visibility to many people. As a musician I have been advertizing by events on FB (together with good ol' newsletters). Conversely, I have found out about many cool local events I would have missed otherwise. I'm using past tense because I have deactivated my FB since. (Meta sucking up to Trump broke the last straw for me.)

Signal is the best I've found too - I'm reticent to use WhatsApp as it's another Meta product.

While an online marketplace doesn't require social media (see Craigslist), like events, you're missing out on a large population of potential sellers/buyers if you're not on Facebook.