Previous discussion in 2018: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16763779
Discourse around social networks hasn't changed one bit huh
Friendica – A Decentralized Social Network
41–50 of 63 posts
Re: Friendica – A Decentralized Social Network
#42[dead]
Re: Friendica – A Decentralized Social Network
#43Sadly, but the whole buzz about social networks is built around the community. And any of federated networks require some technical knowledge that is over the head in 99% of regular users.
I wish this could be a bit more user-friendly, like p2p networking that does not require any user configuration, just install a client and it will p2p automatically.
Re: Friendica – A Decentralized Social Network
#44[dead]
I'm increasingly unsure if this is something to aspire for. I make an effort to only follow people I know, and I turn off algorithmic feeds on social media, but it doesn't matter because the people I know routinely reshare made-up political bait and AI slop that's coming from the broader ecosystem. This sucks and there's no way to push back on that. First, if you do it too much, you're just a "reply guy" - you become…
Yeah, I agree that small social networks are better. But some people are just bad at using social media - even if they're great people in other ways, so they share AI slop and made up political bait posts. You may have to curate your feed a bit.
Re: Friendica – A Decentralized Social Network
#45I’m interested in self-hosting a small social network for my family and close friends. Something to get us off facebook/instagram. If anybody is more familiar with the options, is this what you’d recommend?
When it comes to fediverse most ActivityPub servers focus on microblogging, and it is where interoperability works best. There are a number of good lists to consult. I would recommend checking projects for activity, quality, and governance, besides the features that matter to you, since "being part of the fediverse" is a moving target.
https://delightful.coding.social/delightful-fediverse-experi...
Re: Friendica – A Decentralized Social Network
#46I've tested WriteFreely, Mastodon, Nostr, ... but all lack the basic to succeed IMVHO:
- being a single, simple application, without much deps, maybe go-get-able, pip-able, cargo build-able etc, WF actually is one of them
- offer a platform, meaning a blog, comments per posts, distributed identity, optional chat
We have many different projects who do so, but not a single integrated one.
Nostr is good for the infra, have a sufficiently complete relay (Haven) and a future one a bit more complete (MOAR), but lack a built-in client and a decent chat support (0xchat is nice, and very hard to deploy in a sovereign manner).
WF is nice but limited as a blog and have no comments
Matrix is nice for chatting, with a very complex audio/video support, with very little documentation, I manage to get it running, with LiveKit as well, but it's a pain. XMPP is even worse because it lack a complete client for all platforms and it's very touchy on DNS setup.
The defunct ZeroNet was very nice to host personal websites without a domain name and also behind NAT, but offer nothing ready made to use with it.
...
Long story short we have the wrong tech stack underneath. We need to rediscover the old Xerox model of the OS as single integrated app, where anything can be combined at the user will, with ease. Emacs/LispM do better pushing anything in the config instead of relaying on a live image. But that's what we need. We have one mind, we need to combine out digital companion.
Re: Friendica – A Decentralized Social Network
#47[dead]
Mastodon spoke OStatus in the beginning as did GNUSocial and Pleroma before it, but EEE'ed it once it got big enough. OStatus isn't even relevant to fedi anymore, since there's only like one GNUSocial instance left and only a couple older Pleroma instances can still talk to it.
Re: Friendica – A Decentralized Social Network
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you were going for a social-media-y experience, I'd not recommend Pleroma (or Akkoma which is the less problematic fork) because dealing with Erlang+Elixir is a massive pain in the arse. You'd want GotoSocial[0] (single binary, reasonably straightforward), snac[1] (haven't tried it but fedimeteo runs a whole bunch of instances successfully), or one of the other small servers (Takahē, bovine, etc.) [0] https://goto…
GoToSocial looks interesting, i will probably spin one up to try it out! Still seems a little twitter-like, but worth a shot. And as long as there is a docker container, i don’t really care what language it’s written in, tbh - tho that is sometimes useful as a signal of the code quality or other aspects
Heh, I've found this post while installing Gotosocial :D
Re: Friendica – A Decentralized Social Network
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you were going for a social-media-y experience, I'd not recommend Pleroma (or Akkoma which is the less problematic fork) because dealing with Erlang+Elixir is a massive pain in the arse. You'd want GotoSocial[0] (single binary, reasonably straightforward), snac[1] (haven't tried it but fedimeteo runs a whole bunch of instances successfully), or one of the other small servers (Takahē, bovine, etc.) [0] https://goto…
GoToSocial looks interesting, i will probably spin one up to try it out! Still seems a little twitter-like, but worth a shot. And as long as there is a docker container, i don’t really care what language it’s written in, tbh - tho that is sometimes useful as a signal of the code quality or other aspects
> as long as there is a docker container, i don’t really care what language it’s written in, tbh
That's a good point that I keep forgetting these days.
Re: Friendica – A Decentralized Social Network
#50[dead]
I'm increasingly unsure if this is something to aspire for. I make an effort to only follow people I know, and I turn off algorithmic feeds on social media, but it doesn't matter because the people I know routinely reshare made-up political bait and AI slop that's coming from the broader ecosystem. This sucks and there's no way to push back on that. First, if you do it too much, you're just a "reply guy" - you become…
I have rarely been in a group chat that suffers the same problem as I see on all the other social networks (Google+ and its "Circles" seemed promising while it lasted...) but it could be because leaving a single chat is easier than leaving an entire network and the group is well-defined. Federation is good but it's not enough on its own. If I think back far enough I do remember email chain letters with people forwarding everything to everyone on in their Eudora addressbook:
> Now for 180. Forward stupid chain letters to as many people as you can. > Remember: Be annoying whenever possible
https://patorjk.com/misc/chainletters/179waystoannoypeople.h...
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It seems to me that if a given social media network is not an effective way for you to connect with someone then try something else. Expecting one platform to handle all out social connections is unreasonable. Some people live on Discord and others prefer a phone call etc. A world with everyone on IRC would be convenient but probably also a nightmare once someone figured out how to make money off with it.