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"What does Friendica wants to be"?


Start develping the frontend. I would say the backend is one of the most advanced in the fediverse. But there is no frontend developer. So start or gather people who are developing a frontend.
Yes, of course I see what I can do. Perhaps the “positive” is that I am neither a backend nor frontend developer, but more of a data scientist by profession. So it would hardly make any difference where I start to familiarize myself. 😁
@Marek Bachmann :friendica: I think the question is misguided. Friendica isn’t a coherent entity. It’s developers, present and past (quite a few opinionated choices we’ve had to grapple with), server admins and users.

So ultimately Friendica ends up being what the people working on it want to spend their time on, regardless of any coherent central vision.

So far no developer has had any strong inclination working on image/video, but you can single-handedly change this, and you’ve already started with the wonderful image grid you came up with.

Friendica Support reshared this.

HI @Hypolite Petovan thank you for your precious answer. I can clearly see that my question seems "misguided" in terms of an open source project, which is perfectly fine since it was by intention:

I wanted to hear from you people who are just more experienced in the Fediverse world what YOU think about Fediverse in general and Friendica specifically.

And I think this valuable, not least because there is always the chance that someone's vision does not fit at all to the vision of the majority of other participants on such a project. 😀

I admit that there is a certain amount of reinsurance included in my question, nevertheless. 😉
@Marek Bachmann :friendica: Ah, if it's personal then I can answer! The main reasons why I use Friendica are the following:
  • Threaded conversations à-la-Facebook.
  • RSS support.
  • Diaspora support (I mainly like the concept, I don't have many remaining Diaspora contacts).
  • Twitter support (although my patience for the platform is rapidly dwindling).
  • It's written in PHP so I can contribute!


I've looked in Hubzilla as well but I found it too unintuitive and I don't care much about nomad identity anyway.

I also run a single-user Pixelfed instance that I though would be a good complement for images, but I found out that I use it the same way I used Instagram before Facebook bought it out, which excludes casual image posts.

Still, I'm not a big image guy, I'm even less of a video guy, so I've never felt compelled to look into media support in Friendica myself. I've even resorted to post pictures on my Twitter account which would be mirrored on Friendica.

Friendica Support reshared this.

Thank you so much! This is exactly the kind of though exchange I was looking for. 😀

I am not that much in media myself, what is driving me is that I would love to motivate many of my real life contacts to leave commercial platforms for the very reasons we are all know too well.

And I started talking to them already. What I learned so far is, as I elaborated above, they use Instagram / TikTok and so on to "show" their lives but to their own "handpicked" groups.

For me, it is desirable to offer such people a place in the Fediverse. Where they are not subject to advertising and data exploitation.

So I am looking at the Fediverse and its applications at the moment, asking my self:
"What might be required that the Fediverse, in terms of an alternative to commercial social media, will be a welcoming and attractive place for all the good people outside, especially when they do not care about the technology itself too much?"
@Marek Bachmann :friendica: I'm envious of driven people like you. I, on the other hand, don't hope to convert anyone, so most tasks I've been working on have been revolving around my own usage. My own usage of the software, and my own usage of the codebase, for which I've proposed several structure changes, most of them are still ongoing a few years in.

I do enjoy the fact that these tasks have also been beneficial for other people, but this is not my main focus. Although you can get me to do stuff outside of my comfort zone if you bug me enough on Signal, just ask @Kristof Körner .

Finally, I have a soft spot for assisting other developers, as you've probably noticed. Even when I'm not particularly active, I will make sure that motivated people are getting timely answers and reviews and feedback because motivation and goodwill are precious resources not to be squandered.

Friendica Support reshared this.

@Marek Bachmann :friendica:@Hypolite Petovan speaking as a lowly single user node admin, my biggest draw to Friendica from the start was protocol interoperability, along with a (relatively) easy install. I think as long as those things are a focus it will be a compelling option. If we're on a wishlist train, having an improved frontend would be great, but as a non-developer all I can do is project said wishlist and do some evangelizing on the side. 🙂
Since you asked for perspectives...

I started using Friendica in 2011 as a way to escape Facebook, and censorship (I was living in China at the time). "Federating with everything" was the concept that sold the system, but I knew I'd need something to keep it worthwhile even if all the proprietary APIs disappeared, and RSS was that something. So all these years I've basically been using it as an RSS feed reader.

I agree that video support is important. I want to share on Friendica the same way I used to on Facebook: mostly text updates, but if I have something best shared as video, I want to share it as a video.

The connectivity is what matters to me more than the front end, because I use mailstream to read messages and so I only see the front end when I post something - and I use emacs to compose the post. Obviously I am far away from a typical user. But I have found that using metatext to share photos works better than using the web front end, and I think that's probably a sign.
@Mihai von Glogowatz@Marek Bachmann :friendica: Yes, he mentioned it in his original post:
(which I think is really great, for a computer science person, but not for the broad non-technical focussed public)
I personally want/use Friendica as the Facebook UX replacement on the fediverse. The closest thing besides that is Diaspora but DIaspora only federates with the Diaspora protocol not with ActivityPub. On the video questions, that is actually a very interesting question. Media upload in general right now is clunky through the UI. It is one thing I want to fix with the mobile/desktop client I'm working on. Adding short-form video could be interesting but would maybe explode the serving requirements if adopted too liberally by users. That doesn't mean one shouldn't do it. It's just need to be cognizant of it.
Hi @Mihai von Glogowatz I am there, passively but always have a look around there once in a while, mostly testing interacting with my self 😉

@Marek Bachmann
Couldn't agree more.
Let's try to add some images to this fine discussion.
Honestly I'd be delighted just to get toots with text on Friendica... https://github.com/friendica/friendica/issues/12318#issuecomment-1338961629
@Lorraine Lee This is a puzzling issue, nobody else seems to be affected, and your node seems to run fine otherwise.
One of life's mysteries. Perhaps an upgrade will iron it out.
Before video probably image upload should be simplified https://github.com/friendica/friendica/issues/11825
That's another frontend issue. We need a person willing to work on improving that.