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Friendica – A Decentralized Social Network

166 points by janandonly

by mxuribe

0 subcomment

Wow, this is a blast from the past! I haven't touched nor done anything on Friendica since like 2014/2015! (Yes, this is one of the grand daddy of the original fediverse social platforms before the name "fediverse" was even a thing...like Gnu Social and status.net old!) Good on them that they're still going strong!

by trolleybus

0 subcomment

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.

by kennywinker

10 subcomments

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?

by swed420

0 subcomment

Anybody have familiarity with Friendica to know how it stacks against the common pitfalls listed here?
https://www.noemamag.com/the-last-days-of-social-media/
Seems like it maybe suffers from the "fiefdom" / portability issue that other platforms struggle with, but I haven't looked closely.

by IFC_LLC

2 subcomments

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.

by vuldin

0 subcomment

I was really interested in this when it first came out years ago. I was also a heavy social media user and it was amazing to have a tool that allowed you to own your data and then share with various other closed social media platforms as or if you like. This idea is still amazing today, although I've lost interest in social media platforms generally (so don't have as much of a need for this awesome tool).

by interglossa

0 subcomment

I tried it sometime ago. I liked the interface but haven't found much of a community around it. It is very unfortunate that diaspora did not thrive earlier.

by Duplicake

0 subcomment

The problem with these kind of decentralized social networks is... nobody uses them. Like what's the point of a social network if no one else you care about is on there

by kkfx

1 subcomments

I'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.

by virgil_disgr4ce

1 subcomments

This is one of the least convincing homepages I've ever seen. It doesn't help that there are no x margins at the largest media query. In fact nothing about this page encourages me to spend more than one second looking at it.

by HelloUsername

1 subcomments

Previous discussion in 2018: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16763779

by AnonyMD

1 subcomments

I tried to host this a few years ago, but it fell through because there wasn't enough documentation. I wonder if the documentation is more comprehensive now?

by tpah8

0 subcomment

Where are the images stored?

by ulrischa

0 subcomment

Finally one project with php and mysql that I can throw on a cheap shared hosting. No docker of node_modules fuckup

by wizardforhire

0 subcomment

“Military grade encryption”…???
What does this even mean? I’ve scoured the website, their wiki, their faq, the past hn convo… too no avail!
A substitution cypher was considered “military grade” for millennia

by mosaibah

3 subcomments

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by The_Goonies1985

0 subcomment

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by onlyjanand

0 subcomment

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by wotsdat

0 subcomment

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