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?

  • Kichae@lemmy.caEnglish
    191·
    18 hours ago

    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.

    • piratepost@poliverso.org
      4·
      13 hours ago

      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

    • korendian@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      51·
      18 hours ago

      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.