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.
Imagine being able to post only to Alice, Bob and Carol and nobody else ever laying their eyes on the post. Not in the Fediverse, not outside the Fediverse.
Imagine only Alice, Bob and Carol being able to reply to your posts, but all three being able to see and reply to each other’s replies.
Imagine being able to define groups of connections with which you can do the above.
Sounds like utopian science-fiction. Is reality.
Hubzilla (official website), a Friendica fork by Friendica’s own creator, offers literally what I’ve described above. It has since 2012, almost four years longer than Mastodon has been around.
If you want something more lightweight with not quite such a steep learning curve, there’s also (streams) (code repository from 2021 from the same creator, the result of a whole series of forks. Similar advanced and fine-grained permissions system, but somewhat easier to use.
Very interesting. I have heard of hubzilla, but never really checked it out. I will be looking into it now, thanks!