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Friendica – A Decentralized Social Network

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Re: Friendica – A Decentralized Social Network

#51

Post by jauntywundrkind »

kennywinker wrote: post #21
jauntywundrkind wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you also want to host or build interesting social apps, you should definitely do an isolated atproto / Bluesky service! https://blueskydirectory.com/ As for actually doing this... running a PDS and relay isn't that hard, and the red dwarf web client is online and can be configured to point to whatever appview you want. There's significantly less experience running your own appview, but there are options & folks ar…

I’ve used bluesky, and it’s very twitter-like. That doesn’t seem like the best model for a close-knit community. For larger ones, perhaps!

That you phrase it like that implies that you haven't used atproto very deeply, and aren't aware of how versatile the protocol is, and how many apps it hosts.

I linked you a directory of apps already! You could use any of these! You'd have to set up your own instances to use it on a private service but that's doable, and since you'd have the main atproto systems up, it would be much lower lift than you might expect!

PDSls let's you browse people's PDS. This shows you what apps I've used! It's quite versatile, capable of hosting all manner of social systems. There's nothing else that will give you the ability to build a neat rich social community like this: everything else has specific purpose and intent, and you are rather stuck with that design, but atproto is versatile and generic and ready to form whatever kind of social systems you want with it. To look at what's here and say atproto is very twitter like is to barely scratch the surface. https://pdsls.dev/at://jauntywk.bsky.social

Re: Friendica – A Decentralized Social Network

#52

Post by subpixel »

IFC_LLC wrote: post #43

Sadly, 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.

More importantly I feel like federation is a reaction to a problem small social networks don’t have.

I want a Tumblr for just people I know. I don’t want it to metastasize and interact in any way with people I don’t know.

Re: Friendica – A Decentralized Social Network

#53

Post by swampangel »

kennywinker wrote: post #3

I’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?

Here's a good intro to the topic (not that I personally have put it into practice) https://runyourown.social/

It focuses on Mastodon but that's probably an artifact of when it was written.

Re: Friendica – A Decentralized Social Network

#54

Post by dpc_01234 »

IFC_LLC wrote: post #43

Sadly, 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.

P2P? I have a p2p social network with a public/demo instance hosted at https://rostra.me .

Re: Friendica – A Decentralized Social Network

#55

Post by ray_v »

verdverm wrote: post #29
jauntywundrkind wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you also want to host or build interesting social apps, you should definitely do an isolated atproto / Bluesky service! https://blueskydirectory.com/ As for actually doing this... running a PDS and relay isn't that hard, and the red dwarf web client is online and can be configured to point to whatever appview you want. There's significantly less experience running your own appview, but there are options & folks ar…

There are projects that make running independent atproto networks "easy": https://github.com/verdverm/testnet I no longer recommend ATProto, in part because the public by default was a terrible choice. People prefer privacy, not anyone in the world able to read all of their activity. Bolting permissioned buckets on after the fact is not the way, it needs to be core to the protocol design.

I just started looking at the At Protocol for another side project - do you think the protocol will eventually support such privacy settings by default, or is heading in that direction?

Re: Friendica – A Decentralized Social Network

#56

Post by julianlam »

ray_v wrote: post #55
verdverm wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are projects that make running independent atproto networks "easy": https://github.com/verdverm/testnet I no longer recommend ATProto, in part because the public by default was a terrible choice. People prefer privacy, not anyone in the world able to read all of their activity. Bolting permissioned buckets on after the fact is not the way, it needs to be core to the protocol design.

I just started looking at the At Protocol for another side project - do you think the protocol will eventually support such privacy settings by default, or is heading in that direction?

It's baked in as deep as it can go.

Use a different protocol.

Re: Friendica – A Decentralized Social Network

#57

Post by trolleybus »

Friendica is incredible software, the best social network in the fediverse. I've been using it for years, but now I'm even more satisfied thanks to the Raccoon for Friendica app (which also works with Mastodon), an app that's still a bit immature but extremely promising. Friendica has other problems, however: - a slow system (much improved with the latest update) - a complicated system that's difficult to master without days of experimentation, which isn't acceptable for the average user. Too many hidden or multi-accessible settings: ergonomics that seem to have been developed by a Mordor goblin, not one of the smartest... - a skeleton development staff that doesn't want to become industrially structured.

These are serious flaws for software intended for a broad audience, but despite these flaws, Friendica remains a software that's on a higher plane than the deadly boredom of other software in the fediverse.

Re: Friendica – A Decentralized Social Network

#58

Post by trolleybus »

kennywinker wrote: post #3

I’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?

From this perspective, Friendica is definitely the best choice, but be careful because the ergonomics are problematic to say the least

In short, it's not the right software for a seventy-year-old mother, nor for Gen Z, who are no longer accustomed to using their opposable thumb except for scrolling on TikTok.

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