I do agree with that assessment. I feel like it almost just needs to be rebuilt from the ground up, with that specific focus in mind. A new site all together might be the best way to go.
Comment on Friendica's marketing is terrible.
Soapbox@lemmy.zip 2 days ago
My complaint about Friendica is that it just doesn’t actually seem to do the part of Facebook that I actually want. At least not very well. I don’t want to see news, current events, memes and crap in that feed. I want to see posts and pictures from IRL friends, life updates, event organization, interest groups, etc. With privacy settings so only actual friends you want see the posts.
In its current state Friendica seems to just be a skin over mastodon, with some alpha stage friend features.
korendian@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Jerry@feddit.online 2 days ago
They never explained well how to use Friendica, so it's all guessing. But, I believe, to get a Facebook-like experience, you mark people as "Friends" who you want in a Facebook-like environment. This maps to "Friends" on Facebook. Then you click on the "Friends" circle, and you only see posts and conversations from your friends.
You can also set up groups that federate to other instances, and you can control access to the groups. I've never used it, so I don't completely understand how to do this.
But, I think these are the 2 closest Friendica features for Facebook emulation.
https://wiki.friendi.ca/docs/groups-and-privacy#groups_and_privacy
Etnmarchand@feddit.online 1 day ago
I set up several Circles on mine. I have one called "People Only" and it is just the people I follow. No news sites or tech sites or RSS feeds for sci-fi tv, no celebrities or astronomy feeds or cat picture accounts, just people. When I want to catch up just with people I follow, I click it.
I did test the calendar feature with a non-event event and was able to see and respond to it from my Mastodon account. I have not yet played with the groups feature though. That is on my (eventual) to-do list.
korendian@lemmy.world 2 days ago
It almost seems like it is too flexible. Like, it pulls in posts from all over, which is interesting and cool. But do people join a site like Facebook to see random posts from everywhere, or do they join it to see posts from their friends?
Lemmy is good because it is a closed ecosystem. It doesn’t take in posts from every site on the fediverse. That’s not to say that it should not be an option on Friendica, but it should definitely not be the default view. Which is definitely a part of what also drives people away when they try it, I think. They don’t know how to connect with their friends, and just end up connecting with lots of random people. The fact that “list in directory” is checked no by default doesn’t help either. It seems like it almost tries to make it hard to connect with people you know.
haui_lemmy@lemmy.giftedmc.com 2 days ago
Maybe i’m missing something but lemmy absolutely shows mastodon posts. It depends on if someone uses the handle of the group or not.
Soapbox@lemmy.zip 2 days ago
Yeah, it feels like its all supposed to be there. But without getting any of my actual friends to make an account, its hard to test any of it out. Though the bigger issue right now is that it seems my instance (friendica.world) is down or dead. The list of other instances is also struggling to load for me.
Jerry@feddit.online 2 days ago
Just curious. Have you had trouble loading my-place.social?
Soapbox@lemmy.zip 2 days ago
I just tried it. Seems to be fine for me. Just brought me to a login screen.