korendian

I know this has been a regular topic of discussion lately, as Facebook users are looking for alternatives, but there is a harsh reality I think netizens of the fediverse need to acknowledge that will keep the majority of Facebook users locked in. That is the personal social graph that Facebook has built up for users over the years. No other site on the web has a way to find nearly anyone you have ever known, from high school friends to long lost family members. The reason for this is because of the format of Facebook being "you" on the web. Your profile is your name, your personal info, and it is even linked to your phone number and contacts, making social networking incredibly easy.

The closest that exists for this on the fediverse is Friendica, but it is more of a reddit/twitter hybrid imo, and while you can make your profile page personal, the posts you make will go to the entire fediverse. This lack of privacy and tailoring of your messages to a particular audience is what is going to make Facebook unbeatable for the foreseeable future. People want alternatives, but these alternatives simply do not exist.

I would be very curious to hear about efforts to make sites on the fediverse more personalized and enabling of people to control their audience, because this (along with improving user experience) is the biggest thing I think is keeping people from making the switch.

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?