It used to be impossible for everyone to get all the photos after a vacation / trip / event. Now we just create a shared album and everyone upload everything.
Edit: WhatsApp biggest flaw is the aggressive compression. It takes pictures down to an unacceptable qualify.
For relatives who don't have Internet access (just one at the moment), we use NanaGram.co for sending a monthly batch of photos by mail.
> Are some of your older relatives not on FB?
Just one right now: my elderly grandfather who's 90-something now and losing his eyesight. He's the one we use NanaGram for. Digital delivery would not really work for him, since he doesn't own a computer.
For relatives that are on FB, that's how they get their photos. They don't request prints too often, but when they do, my wife usually uses Nations Photo Lab.
I have talked to my family about my privacy concerns and that I don't want pictures of my kids on Facebook unless I approve or my kids approve. I think it is important to respect children privacy requests (my son sometimes don't want pictures being shared) but it is a way to share memories with close family members that would enjoy the moment.
I used to use firefox send but that's gone now I think.
I have used a self hosted buddypress - upload and only share with "friends" and with that user account the only "friends" are one or two people.
I've considered trying to deploy a buddypress with added plugins to harden it and offer it as a SaaS hosting for family circles and friend circles just to share stuff like private pics and such.. I still think about it. Pretty I know how it can work and people will use it and some will pay for it.
I actually do mean burn CDs / DVDs.. I know they are not the best backup medium.. but they are better than trusting 'the cloud' imho.
You are right that more and more systems are coming without cd / dvd drives... I have a couple of cd readers (that I think are also burners) that attach via USB - I happily lend or give one away and get another, they are like $25... to use for importing and accessing hard media backups which can be priceless, with bonus privacy.
I also have a Nextcloud instance and have all photos and videos auto uploaded, then recently Nextcloud introduced some workflow features that I used to auto upload all videos from Nextcloud to Peertube, making it really easy to go pick the video link and share.
What I've found is that better quality photos and videos tend to make it into Mastodon and Peertube, while other content will still be shared in the Signal group chat.
It's all running in docker, making it easy to upgrade, backup, and/or move around.
https://alpha.peergos.net/#%7B%22secretLink%22:true%2c%22lin...
My wife and I can easily post from the tumblr app on our phones. Password protected site so only family can see it. Easy backups to Wordpress just in case.
It’s easy for family to check the site whenever they want rather than putting it on social media. We turned off commenting so there’s never pressure for anyone to leave a comment and we don’t have any sense of needing affirmation for every picture we put up. It’s all just there if family wants to see it. Grandparents living far away especially appreciate it.
For our own usage, it has been invaluable too. I made some theme updates so we can go back in time and look at specific months easily. It’s been a great asset of curated family photos we can go through to see the kids at different stages. They’re 7 & 4 now.
I’d be happy to share my custom Tumblr theme with anyone who’s interested.
[1]: https://beakerbrowser.com/
[2]: https://tox.chat/
[3]: https://maqentaer.com/devopera-static-backup/http/dev.opera....
https://discord.com/ about: https://www.protocol.com/discord
Some privacy focused mail providers (like mailbox.org) have cloud capabilities too.
