It seems that the time for a facebook replacement is now, just based on the sense I have gotten. A lot of my friends, who would previously have clung onto facebook through all the terrible things it did over the years, are now looking for alternatives. The current consensus for most is joining Bluesky. I would love to be able to recommend them to the fediverse equivalent, Friendica, but it is nowhere close to ready for primetime.
So my question is this. How can we work to make friendica more user friendly and develop it’s features to a point that it can be a true facebook alternative? Or, do we need to come up with a new platform entirely, possibly one that is forked from Friendica, that has the required features. Specifically, these are the things I think need work:
- Simplify user sign up. No one cares about servers, and I think this is one of the biggest thorns in the side of the fediverse in general. Make a single landing page, where you type in your location and will be auto assigned to a server based on the closest one to you. If one does not exist within a certain radius, a server is instantly created (details of this mechanism tbd), and a member of a dedicated team of admins will be assigned as a moderator of that server. This is just an idea, but we need to greatly simply the user sign up process and make scaling easier.
- EDIT: Nevermind, it was an issue with the wrong version I downloaded. I did find a couple apps, but both were still in somewhat early development: Raccoon - https://apt.izzysoft.de/fdroid/index/apk/com.livefast.eattrash.raccoonforfriendica Relatica - https://gitlab.com/mysocialportal/relatica
A working mobile app. There is only one app I know of that is not even in beta, and I couldn’t get it work at all. Most people will not use a site if it doesn’t have an app. - Clean up of basic functionalities. Default to the most intuitive and user friendly options (no delete box enabled on posts/comments that aren’t yours, infinite feed on by default, prominent option dropdown to turn on darkmode or different styles, etc). I should not be taken to someone’s page when I click the “follow” button. Following should also be a two way street, and require consent. You cannot see someone’s content on facebook unless they approve your friend request. This is how it should be on friendica. Improve groups. I see they exist, but for the life of me I cannot figure out how to browse or search for them. Stop notifying me after I make a post. I know I made the post, I don’t need to be notified. Develop more appealing UI/UX overall that is easy for a layman to understand and use. Allow editing to show updates without needing to refresh the page. Etc, etc, etc.
- Add expected functionalities. Tagging users, live videos, gifs, reaction emojis, marketplace, public events, unshare, reshare with commentary, recommend friends from contacts, etc.
I know this is a lot, but this is my honest assessment of the situation. This is why I mentioned potentially creating a new platform. What do people think? Are these changes doable within the friendica framework, or should we start from scratch? What are the thoughts on a facebook alternative in general? I definitely think there is value in enabling people to have a page on the internet that is “them”, that people can add and keep up with their life. That is the value that facebook provides, but the existing fediverse doesn’t really have such capabilities right now. How can we change that?
You must log in or # to comment.
this feels useless at best and entitled at most: if you want these, get working. this is not reddit or Facebook: there is no profit or product, nobody is making money and no money is being spent on development or making sure your requests are met. all the time you spent writing this or replying could have been spent actually researching the app. not a dev? not entitled to complain
simplify user sign ups
you’re basically proposing a centralized service over a decentralized network. who runs that service? how is it guaranteed fair? which servers should be in the pool? what if a server is worse than another spec-wise? what if the assigned server shuts down? the solution to the server issue is you picking a server for your non techie friends, not cooking more centralized complexity on top.
polish/add functionalities
if you really want features developed, make a bounty! pay developers! expecting others to work for your appeasement for free is distastefully entitled. or do it yourself. as you can probably assess, expertise and free time don’t grow on trees.
how to attract more users
i think most of this disconnect stems from you wanting this to be just like big centralized services. it’s honestly delusional. in another reply you state that “lemmy.world couldn’t handle 10M users”. maybe, but decentralization is only going to make it worse. every lemmy server needs to broadcast every action to every other server which has users in that community. every post and like needs to be stored in all relevant instance dbs. this generates an insane amount of traffic and data. if the lemmy network suddenly gained 1000 servers, each with 10k users, the new replication traffic may stomp smaller instances to the ground.
the idea of a “global square” is naive and we should move over. it just limits us all because a platform which caters to everyone must be built around the common ground, and the common ground for everyone isn’t that much ground. a platform that caters to everyone caters to no-one: see mainstream social media and how it’s going. fedi is great because it’s a whole different model: small islands which can interconnect. this is why picking a server is so important and you should not hide it from the user: you’re not signing up to mastodon, you’re signing up to furry.engineer or fosstodon! you can interact with the other instance just fine, but it matters where you register!
this is the core of the disconnect: we should not bend the fediverse to what mainstream social media is, we should either teach others about this or be fine living as a niche. auto enshittifying ourselves hoping to be another facebook or another reddit feels really silly to me
A working mobile app
Here it is. Soon the 0.4 release will be both on F-Droid and Playstore.
github.com/LiveFastEatTrashRac…On Play Store it is only for beta testers. If you want to try it and contribute to beta testing…
- join this group with the same account you are using on Google Play;
- use this invitation link to become a tester and install the app.By the way, anyone who wants to participate in the beta testing of Raccon for Lemmy can do so here:
- join this group with the same account you’ll be using on the Play store;
- become a tester using this invitation link;
- download the app from here.Simplify user sign up
It is not easy, but a simplification process has costs that can only be justified by an increase in the audience. Today, despite Friendica being the most powerful and versatile software in the Fediverse, there are just over 2000 active users!
Clean up of basic functionalities
There are frontends for Mastodon that can simplify the use of Friendica, but with those frontends unfortunately you lose the distinctive functions that make Friendica exceptional. At the moment the easiest way to use Friendica is through the Raccoon app which however still lacks all the management of the hard settings of the account.
What should be renewed is the Friendica interface which at the moment is cumbersome, but volunteer developers who want to contribute are neededAdd expected functionalities
The only feature that Friendica lacks is poll voting. Otherwise Friendica has everything that other software in the Fediverse have and has things that no one else has. There is no point in asking for more features. The only thing that makes sense is to improve the interface.
I definitely think there is value in enabling people to have a page on the internet that is “them”, that people can add and keep up with their life. That is the value that facebook provides, but the existing fediverse doesn’t really have such capabilities right now.
Facebook pages are no longer an added value. Today the only added value for Facebook are Facebook Groups, distributed throughout the world: local groups, thematic groups, political groups. Take away Groups from Facebook and that platform no longer has any value!
Friendica is today the only software that allows you to manage social groups in an excellent way (Friendica groups are Activitypub groups, exactly like Lemmy Communities!), but unfortunately the visualization of groups in Friendica is still not up to the task.Simplify user sign up. No one cares about servers, and I think this is one of the biggest thorns in the side of the fediverse in general.
I cannot stress this enough. This complaint has to die. It’s OK for the fediverse to not be ready for everybody yet. But the idea that we need to hide the fundamental building blocks of it, rather than retrain people for a different technology, has to end.
Servers matter. Servers are the core elements of all of this. The fediverse is a local-first, small social media space, dressed up as a big centralized one. We have to accept it for what it is.
Users need to decide which server they’ll use, in the exact same way they do when using centralized social media. Only now, they’ll be able to talk to people using other services. Whether you use Facebook or Reddit or Twitter matters. You have to choose which server to use between them. THey have different rules, and different cultures between them. This is true here, too.
Masking the server problem behind auto-assignments isn’t going to work, because the developer doesn’t own those servers. They have no formal relationship to those servers. They cannot vouch for those servers. If the closest fedi server to you is startrek.website and you hate nerd shit, you should not be auto-assigned to it.
If you want to simplify the Friendica signup for your friends and family, launch a Friendica-based website. Give them the URL. Now they don’t need to make any decisions. Just like they don’t for your Discord, or whatever else you may use that’s smaller and personal.
A working mobile app. There is only one app I know of that is not even in beta, and I couldn’t get it work at all. Most people will not use a site if it doesn’t have an app.
Get coding.
Clean up of basic functionalities. Default to the most intuitive and user friendly options (no delete box enabled on posts/comments that aren’t yours, infinite feed on by default, prominent option dropdown to turn on darkmode or different styles, etc). I should not be taken to someone’s page when I click the “follow” button. Following should also be a two way street, and require consent. You cannot see someone’s content on facebook unless they approve your friend request. This is how it should be on friendica. Improve groups. I see they exist, but for the life of me I cannot figure out how to browse or search for them. Stop notifying me after I make a post. I know I made the post, I don’t need to be notified. Develop more appealing UI/UX overall that is easy for a layman to understand and use. Allow editing to show updates without needing to refresh the page. Etc, etc, etc.
Most of these are admin settings. Launch your own Friendica-based website and have at it.
Add expected functionalities. Tagging users, live videos, gifs, reaction emojis, marketplace, public events, unshare, reshare with commentary, recommend friends from contacts, etc.
Tagging works. Gifs work. Marketplace isn’t going to happen, because it’s a whole different product. A bunch of these need someone to support them.
So, start coding.
Friendica is not a social networking site. Lemmy is not a social networking site. Mastodon is not a social networking site. These are web servers that let you run your own social networking sites. Social networking sites that can connect with other small, independent social networking sites, creating an open social web.
But you should not be getting people to sign up to “Friendica”. That’s not a place on the internet.
It’s a technology that drives places.
I cannot stress this enough. This complaint has to die. It’s OK for the fediverse to not be ready for everybody yet. But the idea that we need to hide the fundamental building blocks of it, rather than retrain people for a different technology, has to end.
Servers matter. Servers are the core elements of all of this. The fediverse is a local-first, small social media space, dressed up as a big centralized one. We have to accept it for what it is.
I totally agree with you @Kichae , but in a way I also agree with @korendian , because having the choice between multiple servers is FUNDAMENTAL for the Fediverse to be truly free, but it is unquestionably a great difficulty for the typical user who no longer has time to think and choose: time has been taken away from him!
In my opinion, the best solution is to maintain this immense wealth constituted by federated servers, but to start introducing customized Apps from instance administrators that are installed and that are already set up to automatically register the user.
This is the same strategy adopted by bigtech, but also by the staff of Mastodon Social: apps are a terrible dictatorship, but today all consumer traffic travels through apps
I’m not saying that we should remove the option to choose servers. But as soon as you tell someone “you have a pick a server”, their eyes glaze over. I fully understand how fundamental servers are to the fediverse, but users should not be forced to pick one if they don’t want to (which I believe most people will not want to). Forcing people to make their own servers for their families to simplify the process is also not really a solution. What I am suggesting is some sort of scaling system for the fediverse, which will default to grouping people by locality. Again, the mechanism behind this is tbd, but I know that it is possible to quickly spin up servers on demand, and so it should be possible to auto set up servers with some default settings for people who don’t care to deal with browsing through a list of servers with names such as “Patriot Nest” or “doodeman.org”. It just confuses people and creates friction to them joining the fediverse. Indecision paralysis is a real thing, and some people just don’t want to bother with it. Also, without this mechanism, we end up with super servers like the .world that we see on most fediverse platforms, which quickly become overloaded when the fediverse sees a surge in interest. If the fediverse wants to scale in a meaningful way, something has to change. I would argue that this would make the fediverse even more decentralized than it is, because we would see a proliferation of servers based on locality, rather than congregating based on interest, or all grouping up into one default world server for those who don’t care.
The functionalities you mentioned “work”, if you know how to do them. It is very difficult to figure out how to do them though, and there are no tutorials that I know of. The barrier to entry for regular people is still very high to use what should be basic functionalities. I think marketplace needs to happen, because people want it. If groups worked, that could serve the function of marketplaces in the mean time, but again, I don’t really see a way to browse for groups, only manually search for them.
I think it’s a bit of a semantic argument whether the servers are the site or the platform is the site. Each of the servers are running the same basic software, with some variations between them. There is a github for friendica, the software. That software is hosted on servers, with a friendica logo displayed on the top. Doesn’t really matter either way, the point remains, people have a desire for alternatives, and right now this is the best one I know of, but it is still severely lacking, to the point that I am not able to recommend it to them. I am for sure hoping to help out however I can. That includes coding. I’m not a web engineer though, so I can only do so much for now. There is a sense of urgency though, so I will do my best.
What I am suggesting is some sort of scaling system for the fediverse, which will default to grouping people by locality.
With the current growth we have, something like this seems enough.
"Lemmy currently has 42k monthly active users.
- https://discuss.online/ if you’re American
- https://sopuli.xyz/ if you’re European
- https://vger.app/ if you want an app
Feel free if you have any questions."
https://reddit.com/comments/1hvvu37/comment/m64n3hp seems enough
Once we’ll get those two too large, we can suggest others
How does the existence of few large servers negate the need for streamlining sign ups or easy scaling? Reddit has 1.2 billion monthly active users. You really think those 3 servers would be enough if all of reddit decided to migrate? How would those needed new servers be created, and by whom? At a certain point, with real scale automation is a necessity.
1.2 billion monthly active users
How many bots ?
You really think those 3 servers would be enough if all of reddit decided to migrate?
All of Reddit is not going to migrate at the same time, that was June 2023. Nowadays, only a few people are interested enough to leave to have a look at subs like /r/Redditalternatives. Those few people can join those two servers without issue.
Should a massive migration occur, we could reassess, but that would be a “nice problem” to have
Being generous, let’s say 75% of reddit is bots. Then let’s say 10% of the actual people decide to move to Lemmy. That’s still 30 million people. The infrastructure is not ready for it. I’ve seen it happen in some bursts of interest, people swamp an instance, the instance doesn’t work because too much traffic, and people give up on the fediverse entirely because it didn’t work for them. If you want the fediverse to grow, you need to plan for growth, not just figure out a plan on the fly.
having the option to choose server manually and auto assign is kinda good
I would argue that Friendica is getting there, but it’s never going to be a replacement for Facebook, if there isn’t an official app for Android AND iOS.
Only android app development as far as I know, and it’s got a long way to go.
Last time I talked to the main Friendica developer they were looking for a frontend dev because their expertise is only backend stuff. I am sure they would be happy to have someone help out.
Regarding mobile apps, Raccoon for Friendica is a pretty polished and nice app, and it also works for mastodon accounts too.
EDIT: Never mind, I had downloaded an old version!!!
Update, yea, still not functional for me. Hearting or sharing posts does nothing. When I try to comment I get an unexpected error. Even loading my profile page gives me an error of some kind. Also, no one I know is going to download an app off of GitHub, but I do understand that the play store listing is pending.
Dev here. Could you please tell me:
- what instance you have logged in;
- what application version you are using.
The fact that you are seeing “hearts” to like makes me think it is < 0.4.0 because now there are thumbs up/down (since Friendica allows disliking too).
I really appreciate the response. You were absolutely right, I don’t know how, but I had downloaded an older version. I followed the links from GitHub to f-droid, so I don’t know how it happened. After downloading the new version, I was still having issues, but it was only with the logging in, which I had been having all day in the browser so I think it was an issue with the friendica.world instance. After signing up for a new instance and logging in, I can now do all the expected functions. I really appreciate the help, I’ll be sure to report any other issues I encounter!
Strange. I don’t consistently use it myself (I’m more a Lemmy type person), but it always worked pretty okay in my testing. I tried it again just now, and I was able to respond to someone and visit my profile without issue. Perhaps there is an issue with your friendica instance? I did my testing on friendica.world.
I’m using the older 3.1 version from f-droid, so maybe there was a regression in the 4.0 release as well, if you’re using that.
EDIT: Never mind, I had downloaded an old version!!!
That was the one I tried. I could log in, but nothing else worked at all. I will give it another shot though.
Feel free to report bugs: there is an issue tracker, a Matrix room, an ActivityPub group, an in-app feedback form and an email address to write to. Criticism is welcome, this is a community project so speak up!
There’s also Relatica, another Friendica app in the active development, however it’s in early beta right now
Oh look it’s yet another “why servers?” whine yelp disguised as a request for development,
Anyway, summer is hot here in the best hemisphere. News at eleven.
If it’s a perennial problem that you keep hearing about, maybe there’s something to it. I will note, I did not once ask “why servers”. I’m fine with servers and I get servers. The issue I see is that while most nerdy tech type folks can easily wrap their heads around the concept, most lay people cannot. That’s not to say that picking a server of your liking should go away, but for the onboarding process for the masses, which I would think most proponents of the fediverse would want to include, the process needs to be a lot more seamless. Automated stuff in the background that keeps the decentralization, but doesn’t bother the user with the need to worry about it. It’s simply improving the user experience. I realize it’s work, but I think it’s work worth doing.
