There are many #Friendica fans, and for good reason. Once you get past the learning curve from the difficult UI, you get to appreciate the extra benefits of built-in #Bluesky, #Lemmy/#Piefed/#MBIN, #Tumblr, and #RSS feed integration. It also has #Diasporia integration and some other protocol integrations. Of course, it’s also a #Mastodon alternative.
Nobody ever mentions Friendica as being a #Threadiverse app, but it has Groups, which is built-in Threadiverse capability. If you follow a Community on Lemmy/Piefed/MBIN, for example, it gets categorized as a group and is placed into a separate section for the groups you are part of. Then you can read and post in the Group (Community/Magazine) just like you would on a Threadiverse application. You can also create public and private groups.
And there is no need to use a Bluesky bridge if the Friendica instance you are on has the integration turned on.
Here’s an excellent 5-minute video showing Friendica created by @earthman@my-place.social for those interested in seeing how it works.
Here’s my problem with a facebook replacement.
I don’t like facebook. Now lets take away all the spying, and data collecting. Lets take away all the corruption. Lets take away the politics. Lets take away the ads. Lets take away everything that most people assosiate with facebook being evil. Lets look at facebook as purely what it claims to try to be. A socizl media gathering place to post pictures of your life. Connect with friends. Post stories. Read others posts. All that.
Lets take facebook at that face value, and only that. Ok? Everybody on the same page? Cool.
I still don’t like facebook. Even without the other stuff, I’m just not the type to document and share my life.
So I start to think about that stuff we excluded earlier. All the evil bullshit. And I realize that my mom and sisters all use facebook. So logically it would make sense to introduce them to frendica, right?
Here’s the issue. I look at what my mom would use facebook/frendica for. She uses it to stay in touch with her sewing friends/groups. People she’s spent 40 years sewing various quilts and projects with. It’s like a book club, but instead of reading and discussing books, they all sew things and share their teqniques.
So I’d have to convince not only my mom to switch, but also all 40+ of her sewing group crew. Then I’d also have to convince the 200 or so OTHER people she’s connected with because “oh, I used to know you in the 1960s when I lived in another state, but now I can reconnect with you and share stuff because the internet and facebook exists!”
THEN I’d need to convince her that facebook is bad. Because without a problem, even if I did manage to get all 250ish people to use friendica, why would they make the switch if they’re already on facebook?
YOU see the problem, and I see the problem…but they won’t. Facebook as it is, from their eyes, is working just fine.
And thats my issue with friendica. It’s there to solve a very real problem, that nobody is asking to fix.
You don’t need to convince everyone to switch. You need to convince some people go join and build the user base.
Once there are users, more people will join. Even if people are not active, if they have an account it’s easier to convince someone to add you.
Think of it as a long term goal.
Yeah, facebook started as just college students and built from there. It wasn’t always every boomer and every other boomer they knew back in elementary school.
Boomers on Facebook are mostly a lost cause so we just have to assume they won’t be part of any kind of new social media movement.