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?
I’m not saying that we should remove the option to choose servers. But as soon as you tell someone “you have a pick a server”, their eyes glaze over. I fully understand how fundamental servers are to the fediverse, but users should not be forced to pick one if they don’t want to (which I believe most people will not want to). Forcing people to make their own servers for their families to simplify the process is also not really a solution. What I am suggesting is some sort of scaling system for the fediverse, which will default to grouping people by locality. Again, the mechanism behind this is tbd, but I know that it is possible to quickly spin up servers on demand, and so it should be possible to auto set up servers with some default settings for people who don’t care to deal with browsing through a list of servers with names such as “Patriot Nest” or “doodeman.org”. It just confuses people and creates friction to them joining the fediverse. Indecision paralysis is a real thing, and some people just don’t want to bother with it. Also, without this mechanism, we end up with super servers like the .world that we see on most fediverse platforms, which quickly become overloaded when the fediverse sees a surge in interest. If the fediverse wants to scale in a meaningful way, something has to change. I would argue that this would make the fediverse even more decentralized than it is, because we would see a proliferation of servers based on locality, rather than congregating based on interest, or all grouping up into one default world server for those who don’t care.
The functionalities you mentioned “work”, if you know how to do them. It is very difficult to figure out how to do them though, and there are no tutorials that I know of. The barrier to entry for regular people is still very high to use what should be basic functionalities. I think marketplace needs to happen, because people want it. If groups worked, that could serve the function of marketplaces in the mean time, but again, I don’t really see a way to browse for groups, only manually search for them.
I think it’s a bit of a semantic argument whether the servers are the site or the platform is the site. Each of the servers are running the same basic software, with some variations between them. There is a github for friendica, the software. That software is hosted on servers, with a friendica logo displayed on the top. Doesn’t really matter either way, the point remains, people have a desire for alternatives, and right now this is the best one I know of, but it is still severely lacking, to the point that I am not able to recommend it to them. I am for sure hoping to help out however I can. That includes coding. I’m not a web engineer though, so I can only do so much for now. There is a sense of urgency though, so I will do my best.
With the current growth we have, something like this seems enough.
"Lemmy currently has 42k monthly active users.
Feel free if you have any questions."
https://reddit.com/comments/1hvvu37/comment/m64n3hp seems enough
Once we’ll get those two too large, we can suggest others
How does the existence of few large servers negate the need for streamlining sign ups or easy scaling? Reddit has 1.2 billion monthly active users. You really think those 3 servers would be enough if all of reddit decided to migrate? How would those needed new servers be created, and by whom? At a certain point, with real scale automation is a necessity.
How many bots ?
All of Reddit is not going to migrate at the same time, that was June 2023. Nowadays, only a few people are interested enough to leave to have a look at subs like /r/Redditalternatives. Those few people can join those two servers without issue.
Should a massive migration occur, we could reassess, but that would be a “nice problem” to have
Being generous, let’s say 75% of reddit is bots. Then let’s say 10% of the actual people decide to move to Lemmy. That’s still 30 million people. The infrastructure is not ready for it. I’ve seen it happen in some bursts of interest, people swamp an instance, the instance doesn’t work because too much traffic, and people give up on the fediverse entirely because it didn’t work for them. If you want the fediverse to grow, you need to plan for growth, not just figure out a plan on the fly.
I visit /r/Redditalternatives almost daily to suggest Lemmy to people looking for an alternative.
That sub is very quiet. My conclusion is that most of the people are happy with using current Reddit, be it with revanced mobile clients, or old.reddit on mobile.
Case in hand, Discuit.net, a centralized, easy to sign up website, has less than 200 weekly commenters. Lemmy has 42000 monthly active users.
That’s probably how many people are actually interested in using a Reddit alternative. It’s similar to the WhatsApp to Signal migration. The vast majority of the population does not care.
I would say the problem with discuit, and other centralized alternative sites for that matter, is that there is no draw to them, other than being an alternative. I think people have been burned by traditional centralized social media going south after new leadership or poor decisions by existing leadership. They see that they are being monetized and manipulated and are sick of it. This is the draw of the fediverse, in my opinion, that no one can own it or control it, and people are free to run it in a decentralized manner, as a form of communication should be. That combined with lack of advertising for an overarching concept to draw people in (i.e., people might sign up for Mastodon looking for a twitter alternative and stumble across Lemmy or pixelfed), and it makes it hard for people to learn about this single centralized alternative site, unless they are really not into the fediverse as a concept and ok with the possibility of that alternative going to crap eventually. I had honestly not heard of discuit until you mentioned it, and I would imagine the people who are aware of it is pretty small. And I’m someone who is pretty well versed in social media alternatives. Compare it to a more well known (but arguably still pretty shitty) alternative Mewe, which has 20 million registered users and 170k active users as of 2023, and I think it paints the picture that there is a real desire for alternatives. See also, Bluesky, Mastodon, etc.
I didn’t know about Mewe, but it seems you can’t browse the content without an account? Seems like a big difference compared to Reddit/Lemmy
Bluesky is microblogging, not threaded forums like Reddit or Lemmy. Same for Mastodon.
Threaded forums are a very niche type of social media. People around you usually know about Facebook and Twitter, Reddit not so much.
And that’s why I’m fine with Lemmy only being able to sustain a slow growth, Reddit is already not as busy as it used to be, especially since quite a few “power posters” left for other places, be it Lemmy or others.
having the option to choose server manually and auto assign is kinda good