The Battle for the Soul of Buy Nothing

March 11, 2023 7:52 AM

What happened with the Buy Nothing app A story of how the originators tried to break away from Facebook, and how BuyNothing grew away from them.

(Previously.)

posted by toastyk (28 comments total)

I had quit Facebook but rejoined mostly to use Buy Nothing in my community, and partly to be able to follow the groups associated with a sport I have just quit; I have finished giving away half a houseful of my late husband's possessions plus a few of my own, so was considering quitting again. This article makes me feel even more like quitting. Again.

Funny how unnecessary it is to know what my extended family and friends are doing remotely.
posted by Peach at 7:57 AM on March 11, 2023 [4 favorites]

I'm so torn on this, because my own local Buy Nothing is flippin' amazing. I joined a few years back, and two years ago, when I was moving to a smaller place and was thus up against a major downsize while I was still struggling with a broken knee, I posted a panicked "SOMEONE PLEASE HELP ME GET RID OF ALL MY SHIT" message - and something like TWELVE PEOPLE all immediately reached out and all came by to chip in on sorting all of the stuff, taking it to post BN posts for me, bringing it to Goodwill or a local Free Store being run in our neighborhood, and one woman even offered to come by my old place on my moving day to sit there an extra five hours for me and oversee an "open house giveaway", where anyone could come and pick through the neat piles of stuff left behind and claim whatever they wanted. Then she and her boyfriend helped me carry all the food from my old place to the new (the movers weren't allowed to take that).

I've also contributed to people who were gathering up bedding and kitchenware for their parents after they got flooded during a rainstorm, people who put out a call for stuff for refugees, and I've gotten scores of DVDs for my blog - and then passed even more on to a woman who was going to be recovering from surgery and asked for stuff to do while she was laid up. Just the other day I picked up a hose and a hanging basket from someone to use in our community garden.

But I've also noticed a bit of internal strife; there's someone in the group who is very likely trying to claim anything on offer, but then she turns around and sells it on Facebook Marketplace. A lot of the other people in the group have a bit of a beef about it, and started posts complaining about her. The admin for our group struck that down, and so then they started an internal DM campaign warning new members about her; the admin found out about that too and had to make a post saying to cut the shit out.

I haven't offered much since I moved, so I simply haven't run into her, but I had similar suspicions when I was moving. I think I tried to offer her something once, but she never responded to my message to set up a handoff. But I also noticed that most of the women complaining are white ladies like me....and she's not. So I don't know how much of this is genuine "she's actually trying to make money off us", and how much is White Ladies Throwing Weight Around.

But the good news is, it does seem to be setting up low-level community in my experience. The guy I got the hose and hanging basket from was a guy who claimed some stuff I was giving away during my move, and that was a fun coincidence.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:21 AM on March 11, 2023 [14 favorites]

I actually quite like the Buy Nothing concept and found myself joining my local Buy Nothing group...on Facebook. Now the FB account I held from, say, 2007 to 2016 is gone. I deleted it after Trump was elected and I made the common dumb mistake of accepting friend requests from family members I don't like. I knew it would be a gross time to be on there so I nuked it. I created a burner account strictly for the Buy Nothing group in 2020, and for a while, it worked fine, but I really really resented to having to have an FB account to participate. (This is also how I feel about some of my favourite podcasts who have an FB page for you to talk about episodes. I get the utility but I don't want to have an FB account.)

tl;dr I understand the creators' discomfort and I too wish that Buy Nothing groups would find a different way to do this.
posted by Kitteh at 8:23 AM on March 11, 2023 [6 favorites]

There are certain ideas that are somewhat inevitable. Someone has to be the first to do it, yes, but it's not that genius of an idea, and even if it were, thinking of it doesn't guarantee further good ideas.

"Freecycle, but on Facebook" is one of those. The founders meant well, I'm sure, but it's the same "clinging to power" we see over and over again. The groups/movement grew on the backs of the communities, not on the founders' effort.

The bit about Jamaica Plain? 100% true. If it splintered, it would absolutely have segregated richer and poorer (whiter and blacker) communities. Boston's heavily segregated, and I'm sure while the group started in JP, it had spread into adjacent Boston communities.

Buy Nothing should have been an idea to copy and implement rather than trying to make it a network or a brand.
posted by explosion at 8:31 AM on March 11, 2023 [16 favorites]

Our Buy Nothing FB group "sprouted" after a bit, but because it's so small, a larger all-town group was created instead, and they do not use the Buy Nothing name, but still kept most of the same rules. I just post to that one, and it's been lovely. I've loved using it, and I'm giving away a bunch of stuff today after decluttering the linen closet.

The other alternatives: FreeCycle, Craigslist, etc, still exist, but I've found that I get better responses on Facebook...like, the group feature is the one thing Facebook has done very well.
posted by toastyk at 8:40 AM on March 11, 2023 [1 favorite]

This article is the only explanation I've heard. I used Facebook in the pre-pandemic era. It wasn't perfect, I had some bones to pick, some more on that in the article, but it was definitely like trading out your screwdriver for a power drill. Extremely effective and useful. I stopped using it before the start of the pandemic. It was the only thing I used Facebook for.

This explains it! The founders registered a business and pitched venture capitalists to try to move away from Facebook.

So far, though, Buy Nothing Inc. was a flop. Even more upsetting, Clark and Rockefeller were getting blasted from within their own community. Some Buy Nothing members accused them, in blistering Facebook comments, of selling out. This reaction might have been expected, in retrospect, from a commerce-free collective, but the intensity of it shook Rockefeller and Clark. They had built a thriving and generous community on the most corporate of internet platforms. But now that they were trying to become independent—a move that they saw as committing further to their principles—they were met with furious disbelief that the founders of a movement premised on strings-free gifting now appeared to be trying to make a buck. “You have to fund it. There’s no shame in that,” Clark said. “But we are shamed nonstop for having named it the Buy Nothing Project.”

There are a lot of other ways to build out a free app and get paid for it. Form a co-op. Start an org. Start a B-corp. Use a fiscal host. Etc. Their membership was dedicated like Metafilter's, they would have been fine. Spoiler, they tried fundraising in the community and it didn't raise enough money so they gave the money back. They DID start a B-corps.

I'm happy for the people who use Facebook that the concept is thriving and has grown bigger than them. I hope the movement grows bigger than Facebook, too. It looks like Gifting With Integrity is another core search term nowadays if you're on Facebook looking for Buy Nothing type groups. It looks like they have some fresh momentum on getting the app going. But since they're doing it as a business they're going to have to monetize it, and that's disappointing. I think they could have made it work on donations alone if they had put the same push in with the community that they're now putting in with investors. The world does not need another gig economy app, but at least this one will come with a side of gift economy.

They got a lot wrong, they're getting a lot wrong, they got a lot right, they may yet get a lot right.

Test the limits of what can be gotten or discarded on Buy Nothing, and you will be confounded. You can proffer a medium-size rock, and someone will want it for their garden. You can post dryer lint, and a neighbor will convert it into hamster bedding. In their book, Rockefeller and Clark write about a childless couple who, after multiple miscarriages, finally gave away their unused baby items. The recipient, collecting this on behalf of a pregnant friend, mentioned that the friend was thinking about putting her child up for adoption. One thing led to another, and soon the couple became the infant’s adoptive parents.

They changed so many lives.
posted by aniola at 9:15 AM on March 11, 2023 [12 favorites]

My local BN group has been a godsend and a comfort to me for the past year that I've been a member. When I had to move suddenly in February 2022, I was able to give away lots of things that I just didn't need anymore. I gave away a broken Eames repro chair, wineglasses, regular household stuff. When I moved into the new place I needed a bed for my son and put out a wish, never thinking it would be granted. Someone gave me a brand new queen size mattress and boxboard, along with the warranty because it was still that new. Someone else posted an Ekornes stressless chair and I was selected to receive it. I figured it was a reproduction. It was an authentic, and my back is much better for it.
I love the people in my BN group - it really does represent the sense of community. Unfortunately I had to move again, and am now in another town, so I can't really participate anymore. My new town it much bigger and I'm not sure if I want to join right now. But I do miss the folks that I was able to help and who helped me.
Interestingly, my mom tried to join last year and for some reason she ended up on some app that looked kind of like my BN group, but had different postings than what was showing on mine, so that was weird. Not sure what happened there.
posted by sundrop at 9:38 AM on March 11, 2023 [1 favorite]

Interestingly, my mom tried to join last year and for some reason she ended up on some app that looked kind of like my BN group, but had different postings than what was showing on mine, so that was weird. Not sure what happened there.

I think what happened is what's described in the article. A schism. They tried to move everyone off Facebook and onto the app and most people didn't come with.
posted by aniola at 10:15 AM on March 11, 2023

I was a Buy Nothing admin in my community (Vancouver, CA) for a couple of years, and single-handedly grew a quiet group of about 200-ish members to a very active group of 750-ish. I recruited five more admins to share the load. We hit the 1200- to 1500-member mark twice, so we went through two sprouts into groups with a smaller geographic area. It was a very fulfilling volunteer gig but it was also a lot of work. I stepped down more than a year ago and am frankly enjoying my member-only status.

When I joined, there were three pockets of the city with active groups: Downtown (West End), Kitsilano, and Mount Pleasant. It was also when the regional admin structure still existed, and I felt very supported in maintaining and growing my group. The structure was disbanded a few months afterwards, and I felt very lost! Now I'm the adult in the room who's supposed to lead this community?! A similar splinter group formed here (Buy Nothing Canada) which sought to preserve the old hierarchy and use the old documents and rules, like what was mentioned in the article. There was some drama about picking sides, but it was pretty mild and they weren't pushy about recruiting (at least to me!), they just said, "Hey, we're here if you want to switch." In the end, my group stayed with the locally managed model espoused by the founders.

There was a time when Buy Nothing was spreading quickly by word-of-mouth, but there were a lot of areas in the city that didn't have a group. Because Buy Nothing was very strict on boundaries, we always had to deny them if they lived more than 2 blocks outside of it. That felt really shitty and some people got upset about the gate-keeping. As time went on, though, it reached a critical mass of former admins who moved, or even long-standing members who felt they could take on an admin role in a new group. Since I was one of the very few admins in the city to have experienced the growth model under the heirarchical structure with the regional admins, I kinda was the de facto mentor to all of these new admins joining the fold and starting up their own groups. One of my greatest joys was when we were finally able to have the entire City of Vancouver covered with at least one Buy Nothing group.

The group, when it works, is pretty magical. One of the oft-repeated statements is that Buy Nothing is there to build community, the giving/receiving of free stuff is just the way to get started and meet each other. I got to know a lot of neighbours. Some people met and became best friends due to the group. It encourages people to see asking (for help, for goods, for companionship) not as a sign of weakness, but a sign of strength and trust in the community. Asks (requests) for someone's time and service showed up more and more - like an accountability buddy in cleaning up their space, or a gym buddy, or someone to drive them to and from a dental appointment when they are still under medication and connot drive or take transit. As someone with a big vehicle, I've helped move a lot of couches, beds, and even a dishwasher pick-up from the store at one point.

I cannot understate the amount of work involved. As admins in the same city, we kept in touch in a separate Facebook group and bounced ideas off of each other when tricky situations come up. Of course that admins-only group has to have its own administrators, and sometimes the admins themselves get into disagreements! One of the core rules is that you can only be a member of one group, so we essentially had to join all the other (12+) groups in the city so that we could check first if they already belonged elsewhere. When denying membership, the script had to be modified each time. I need more info before I can accept you. Or based on your location you should apply to Group X, with a URL link to the appropriate FB group (of course this means we have to be familiar with the city streets or check Google Maps to see where they should be redirected). Or you already belong to Group X, leave that first and then re-join our group. I probably had 20+ templates on my phone to copy-paste into each FB message. Among our own group, the five admins had a schedule for engagement and rule reminder posts. Some of the photos and content you can copy paste from the global Admin Hub, but sometimes you have to just create your own. It was at least an hour a day, sometimes more. Of course some of the above are not required, like the engagement posts, group challenges, and rule reminders. But if you truly want to build a community that goes beyond free stuff, you kinda have to do it.

I left the admin job when they were just launching the app for a few beta testers. I never tried the app, even now. The article mentions that money/funding was a big problem, and I don't doubt it. I work in tech, I've created wireframes and design specs for mobile apps, I've even tested them myself before release on Apple or Play Store. I think they severely underestimated the time and money it takes to do that, and to do it well. I think they also kind of forgot that the real value of each group is actually in the quality and number of people that are engaged. I don't think they ever had a concrete plan for how to move/entice a critical mass of people in each neighbourhood to go to the app. After all, if your neighbours aren't there then why should you switch?

As an admin team we had hopes of the Buy Nothing leadership building in some better admin tools into the app, as we were always at the mercy of Facebook Groups' feature changes. When they would launch or remove features we'd have to re-work our process again. But again, feature development on mobile app platforms is costly. And as they mentioned in the article, it turns out the app doesn't even have admin-type users.

The Buy Nothing groups in Vancouver are still alive and thriving. I often meet people who ask, "Have you heard of Buy Nothing?" and I'm like, "Well, actually, now that you mention it..." They are all still on Facebook and I don't know that they'll ever leave.
posted by tinydancer at 10:50 AM on March 11, 2023 [20 favorites]

The article made it seem like a major factor in migration failure was that Facebook has a social component. I wonder if giving up on the app and setting up a Mastodon instance would work better.
posted by aniola at 11:49 AM on March 11, 2023 [4 favorites]

I joined a local FB group called “Buy Nothing No Rules Austin” about a year ago and had no idea about the internal strife, or that it was even an organized thing beyond the local group level. I just went and looked, and can’t find any information on that group’s page linking them to the Buy Nothing org in this article and am wondering now if it’s a renegade splinter group and if the “No Rules” part of its name is indicative of that. Curious stuff.

Volunteerism is a thing rife with dissension, blame and recrimination, and I do feel a bit sorry for what the founders have gone through, but it seems like there comes a point in life where you should say “Fuck it” and walk, that they blew right past several years ago. I hope the larger buy nothing community can thrive on the web somewhere because it’s a thing worth having.
posted by Devils Rancher at 11:50 AM on March 11, 2023

Devils Rancher - I am 99% sure that the "No Rules" group is a splinter group. There are a couple of rules that on the face make sense, but as always, they break down under certain scenarios or edge cases.

For example, one of the core rules is you must join one group only, and you should "give where you live." You shouldn't join a group in the affluent neighbourhoods to get "better" or more items. Well, some people split their time between two homes. Maybe they're a student who stays near school most of the time but still goes home to their parents' place every now and again. Or someone who is caring for elderly relatives part-time, in a diff neighbourhood. The official way to deal with it was for the person to leave one group and join another each time they move households. Which is ridiculous!

Another rule that seems great on the surface is that you must give freely, no strings attached. No payments, no trading/bartering. But we had situations where people literally had the exact same style of shoes or socks or something, they just got the wrong size (say someone got a small, and needed a large, and the other person bought large and needs small). Those two people are not supposed to suggest a trade with each other even though this is a perfect match! There was also someone who asked neighbours to help with a last-minute emergency household move could not even say "I'll buy the pizza and beer for all your help!" because then there is some sort of payment or incentive involved.

All of this type of rules-lawyering falls on the local admin team in the end, and you can't please everybody. That's partly why managing it is a big job. You could literally receive one DM thanking you for a small but logical exception to one of the scenarios above, while at the same time someone else is DMing you angry about the inconsistency in how the rules are applied. So I can totally see why some groups decided to just do their own thing.

I actually think the splinter groups are GREAT because then people can join whichever group best suits their style.
posted by tinydancer at 1:02 PM on March 11, 2023 [6 favorites]

Rockefeller and Clark may have realized that if they couldn’t compete with Facebook, they would do better to take control of what they’d started. A couple of days after Christmas, Schwalb opened up Facebook to find that her OG group had vanished. Months earlier, Buy Nothing Inc. had secured trademarks on the phrases “Buy Nothing” and “Buy Nothing Project” and reported the OG group to Facebook for trademark infringement.

According to the article, the no rules groups are unauthorized. But also:

Meanwhile, they’d been changing Buy Nothing’s operations, partly in light of the equity team’s findings. They started getting rid of regional and global admins, a move meant to return control to local groups and streamline communication. They published self-serve materials on their website so that people could launch new groups on their own. They also loosened Buy Nothing’s rules to let groups determine their own geographical boundaries, decide when to sprout, and allow members to belong to more than one group.

posted by aniola at 1:08 PM on March 11, 2023 [1 favorite]

[from the article]
> build a platform independent of Big Tech
...
> App Store...
Not independent. A mobile-friendly web site gives you a lot more freedom & so far big tech is keeping unrestricted browsers.

> social component... Mastodon instance
Too much switching cost. If someone already has an account, no need to make them set up another. What attracts me to giving away on Facebook Marketplace over Craigslist is the lower flake factor because people have some kind of stake in their account's reputation. A Buy Nothing-only Mastodon account might not have any activity other than giving.

A set of region-based hashtags (e.g. #freeshit-pdx-chinatown) and some accounts to boost things could be enough. Yes, there isn't the ability to enforce rules with instance moderation. Are the rules that important? All I've seen in this thread is how they cause strife, but maybe they're valuable.
posted by ASCII Costanza head at 1:18 PM on March 11, 2023

Trying to brand, and corner the market on the gift economy is probably bound to fail.

That s not how the gift economy works.
posted by eustatic at 1:23 PM on March 11, 2023 [4 favorites]

I actively used Freecycle on Yahoo when I was living in the NYC metro area a decade+ ago. As the article described, everything moved to Facebook, which I used less and deleted it. I truly felt the loss of the sharing community. I was really excited when I saw the standalone Buy Nothing app and hadn't realized the backstory. Building and supporting a wide community with standalone tech takes money. I can't fault the founders for that.

The community is active in Chicago and I've successfully gifted many items in the last few months.
posted by paradeofblimps at 2:03 PM on March 11, 2023

Huh, I think I’m sympathetic to everyone in this article although they disagree with each other.

Totally agree with the above that an app was the wrong move, though I don’t think a website would quite work either — they’re trying to do something that works on Facebook but not Craigslist because Facebook has identity and social infrastructure; a website that also did that would be a huge endeavor.
posted by clew at 4:12 PM on March 11, 2023 [2 favorites]

On the Fediverse, wouldn’t a Hometown instance be the reasonable match? AIUI they already support local-only posts.
posted by clew at 4:14 PM on March 11, 2023

The Buy Nothing group was one of the few things I missed when I quit F’book over a year ago.
But even before then, some of the rules chafed: “let an item simmer before you decide to give it away” and “listen to peoples’ stories when they ask for your item.”
Screw that. I want the thing gone now and I don’t care to hear someone’s sob story about how their next door neighbor’s niece-in-law twice removed needs my coat.

I downloaded the stand-alone BNP app, but it disagreed with the password I had set up, and I haven’t been able to work through the problem as yet. “Nextdoor” is a bat-house of drama, and Freecycle is populated with a gimme-mentality. For the nonce, asking friends if they need my XYZ and continuing donations to Goodwill is the modus operandi.
posted by BostonTerrier at 5:29 PM on March 11, 2023 [1 favorite]

Mastodon doesn't do groups very well and search is still middling.
posted by creatrixtiara at 6:11 PM on March 11, 2023 [2 favorites]

My local Buy Nothing group on Facebook has been incredibly helpful while I've been isolating at home to avoid catching COVID - when I need a parcel collected from the Post Office and dropped at my doormat with no face to face contact, I have posted an Ask post, and have usually had 4 or 5 people put their hands up each time.

I've also become friends with one person from the Buy Nothing group, and we chat on the phone sometimes even tho they have now moved away from the area and they are no longer in the same Buy Nothing group.

On average my experiences with Buy Nothing on Facebook have been significantly more positive than my previous experiences with Freecycle.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 7:24 PM on March 11, 2023 [1 favorite]

I recently lost my mom and am still in the arduous and heartbreaking process of sifting through her stuff. Her home was filled with charming and unique items, from enormous sea shells and a two-foot tall amethyst geode to antique rocking horses and one of those ride on toys that you used to see at supermarkets. The things she had when she passed were her very favorites because we already went through and downsized when I moved her across the country two years ago.

It feels like such a betrayal to toss her treasures in a Good Will box, not knowing if it will sit unloved on a shelf or be tossed in the trash bin. I have kept so much, but I can’t keep it all and if I do, it will just be sitting in boxes here.

The local Buy Nothing Group has been the only thing that made this process easier. I cried when I listed her beloved Raggedy Ann and Andy dolls. But several people wanted them and I knew they would take better care of them than I could. I found a woman whose mom had the dolls growing up and is in memory care. She was so excited to share them with her. I found a teacher who wanted to use the coral for her students.

I’ve had experiences like these over and over. It’s a slow process, gifting things away like this, but it is honestly the only thing I am emotionally equipped to do.
posted by diamondsky at 9:06 PM on March 11, 2023 [20 favorites]

Huh. I had NO idea there was an app, and I am part of a very active and friendly BN group that has managed to largely avoid drama and disingenuous behavior.
posted by desuetude at 9:24 PM on March 11, 2023

But even before then, some of the rules chafed: “let an item simmer before you decide to give it away” and “listen to peoples’ stories when they ask for your item.”
Screw that. I want the thing gone now....

The problem with that is, the people who are glued to their phones always end up getting everything and the single mom working as a cashier who can't check her phone until she's off her shift ends up losing out. Which sucks if the thing you're giving away is a hi-chair or spare diapers or something that she needs for her kids.

"Let an item simmer" isn't a "wait a week" it's more like "wait a FEW hours to give more than one person a chance".
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 9:36 PM on March 11, 2023 [13 favorites]

Yeah I just do not have the capacity to "listen to peoples' stories when they ask for your item." I understand the thought behind it, I really do, and it's lovely, but I'm just not there. And I don't have the capacity to even let things sit for an hour or two. When I want things out of my house, I want them OUT of my house NOW. This is why I don't do Buy Nothing or even the "Recycle Bin" group for my neighborhood. If I have to put something on my porch and then mentally babysit it until it's gone, or god forbid, find someone else to take it when the person who ostensibly wanted it doesn't show up, it's just not gonna happen. Godspeed to everyone else who does have that capacity. I simply do not.
posted by cooker girl at 9:05 AM on March 12, 2023 [3 favorites]

The groups I was a part of, the admins were very clear on "let it simmer if you have the capacity". One thing I used to ask for on Buy Nothing was "can you take my entire pile of outbound things and redistribute them to good homes?" and people would do that and my stuff would all go away at once and it was nice.
posted by aniola at 9:15 AM on March 12, 2023 [4 favorites]

I use my local group, or a splinter group, to get rid of things, but I can't stand to follow them -- I post, pick someone, and get back out. There's so much anxiety floating around in there. Sometimes stuff really is garbage, nobody is going to redeem your having purchased it, and people need to accept that. I tried to follow the group for the community-building aspect, but my final straw was when someone posted an open pack of gum. I didn't recognize the brand and was curious; Wikipedia told me it had been taken off the market years earlier.

That said, I've used it to get rid of stuff that I thought was garbage but I might as well give a second try: used lightbulbs, old paint, an air mattress with a leak. I was honest in the descriptions about all the items, and they all got taken quickly.
posted by The corpse in the library at 5:16 AM on March 13, 2023

Cooker girl: fair.

In my own group I think the reasoning behind some people asking others to "tell me stories about why you want this thing I'm giving away" is to dissuade the people who express interest for everything, because invariably about 50% of the time those people flake out on picking up the thing you wanted to give away and you have to start all over again. It's meant to weed out the people who are motivated only by casual greed; if your interest in something is only half-assed, you aren't going to be arsed to tell a story about why you want it, and that would make you more likely to flake on picking it up if you got it anyway. And by contrast, if you're motivated enough to say a few things about "oh this pot would be perfect I can imagine myself doing XYZ with it" you're more likely to actually follow up with the pickup when you get it.

....I have had a not-insignificant number of people flake out on me when I tried to give stuff away, that's why I was so panicked when I needed to get my shit gone when I was moving.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:31 AM on March 13, 2023 [1 favorite]