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?
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
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.
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.
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 enremovedtifying ourselves hoping to be another facebook or another reddit feels really silly to me
So let me get this straight. Are you really saying “we the developers are going to build this however we see fit, and you the user can go removed yourself, or else learn how to code and build it yourself”? Is that really the dynamic you’re trying to cultivate here? Seems very welcoming and productive.
I’m not complaining as much as I am giving constructive feedback. Don’t like the feedback? Great, feel free to ignore it, or tell me why I’m wrong. Nothing I am proposing will impact how you use the fediverse. I’m not saying we need to cater to everyone or be exactly like big social media sites, but I am saying that a lot of people are dissatisfied with mainstream social media and are looking for alternatives. This alternative has existed for a long time, but still has a fraction of the users as other alternatives out there. Aren’t you at least curious as to why that is? Should we really be satisfied to be relegated to some niche technology that no one really uses, when there is the potential for it to become something more? For me, I just want a platform not controlled by corporations hell bent on monetizing every click and view, where I can keep up with my family and friends and enable people to make content for others to enjoy. Not sure why that is such a repulsive concept to some people.
I would argue that the fediverse is doing just fine enremovedifying itself. From apps that have started to integrate ads, to platforms that are still barely functional a decade and a half after they started development, to the stubborn refusal to cater the overall experience to anyone but tech minded users. We need to do better. I do plan to get involved, but even if I didn’t I think my points would still be valid.