I really want a Facebook (the old Facebook timeline) replacement, but end-to-end encrypted, and decentralised so there’s longevity.

Edit for clarity: I’m looking for a way to share things online, end-to-end encrypted to a wide-audience that knows you but doesn’t necessarily know each other.

This is why messaging apps don’t fulfil this requirement, and chat rooms (like Matrix) also don’t fit.

I love Lemmy, I like the idea of Mastodon (twitter-like sites just aren’t my thing. ActivityPub rocks. However, none of them are encrypted.

PixelFed is neato, but I don’t plan sharing my personal photos with the whole of the internet, which seems to be the only choice with ActivityPub.

Signal and other encrypted messaging apps are great, but are for direct messaging. Where are the encrypted social media apps?

Matrix is cool and all, but it’s aimed at groups. Like discord / MS teams replacement.

Someone told me about Futo Circles, which seems to tick all the boxes and built on top of Matrix, but it’s currently abandoned.

Are there any other alternatives? My wallet is open, I would very much like to use such an app. I am no programmer, so sadly cannot take on the mantle of continuing the Futo Circles project.

  • rglullis@communick.newsEnglish
    1·
    1 day ago

    Sorry, I think we were talking past each other.

    When you were talking about “Matrix is not a good” , I was understanding that you meant that the protocol was not suitable for it. Now I see that your issue is not with matrix itself, but with its most popular clients, because none of them (unlike Futo circles) provide any sort of unified view of the different rooms.

    I understand how it could be interesting to have this type of unified view if you really care about emulating “the Facebook experience”, and perhaps it wouldn’t be that difficult to implement that. In practice though, I think that you’d come up with the following conclusions:

    • even if Futo Circles was still around, you’d still have a major challenge in convincing the people to create an account on a Matrix server.
    • even if Futo Circles was still around, most people are not interested in getting all their social connections sorted in all these different buckets.
    • even if Futo Circles was still around, you’d quickly realize that most people prefer the UX of separate group chats. There simply aren’t that many “circles” for most users. You’d have a circle for your close friends, another for work/school colleagues, another for some common activity like gym/chess/book club, maybe a bigger circle for your neighborhood, etc… so it doesn’t really provide a lot of helping when filtering things out in a timeline. The whole thing with “Circles” is interesting (and one of the most interesting features of Google+) but one of the reasons that Google+ failed was because and the UX of “browsing through the list of groups with new messages” is good enough for most people.
    • MisterFrog@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      1·
      22 hours ago

      No worries, appreciate you taking the time to engage.

      Yeah, getting people to adopt something new is challenging, but I’ve had some success with Signal, and this is sadly a problem no matter what

      The social connections wouldn’t have to be in different buckets, the app would give you a timeline of all your contacts posts by default (default behaviour on Facebook and Instagram, with public posts and ads baked in), and sorting into various buckets would be a choice users would make. As we discussed under the hood every contact would be technically in a separate matrix room with you, but the user is just presented with a unified timeline of posts they can interact with.

      In terms of group chats, this is a subjective question. I’d argue the fact people post on their pages formally on Facebook and more commonly now on Instagram is evidence that people don’t only want to use group chats. To me, group chats are mostly useful in a small group, and I already have signal and other messengers for this purpose.

      The idea here, and what I wish was still being maintained, is a way to connect with people on social media without being forced to invite people into specific groups, just add them, and then they can see whenever you post, and comment on your posts etc. Without the requirement for you to filter anything if they don’t want to, nor join specific groups of people.

      i.e. I add 10 different people, they make posts, I see said posts from all 10 people in chronological order.

      The app could optionally provide ways to sort your friends however you like (a feature which also used to be present on Facebook, not sure if it still is), but it’s the optionality that is attractive.

      It’s much lower friction to say: “Hey, add me on XYZ social media app”. Rather than, “join this specific group”, which may not be suitable. Which is exactly how Facebook and Instagram work (and people frequently ask to add me on there still).

      I realise the demand for this to be e2ee is not large, hence the lack of clients. But I’d argue the demand for this style of social media is huge, evidenced by the existence of Facebook and Instagram, which largely sees people posting things only to their followers/friends - just with Meta data mining you and advertising to you.

      • rglullis@communick.newsEnglish
        1·
        22 hours ago

        It’s much lower friction to say: “Hey, add me on XYZ social media app”.

        only because of network effects. People are used to ask you to add them on FB or IG because literally a third of the world have an account there. Now go around asking them to add you on friendica or movim, they will probably just give you a blank stare.

        • MisterFrog@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
          1·
          21 hours ago

          Indeed, getting the network effect on your side is the hardest part.

          But at least if something exists, we can make a start on converting people. And for me to be able to sell the experience, it’d be nice if I can say: hey join me on this network, it’s like Facebook/Instagram, but the only people who will see your posts are your friends. Not even the server can see it.

          (And ideally there’s a sliding scale of how much it costs and various ways to host the content).

          Currently, I haven’t yet found an app that fits the description. I signed up for Movim, but encryption isn’t default, and it’s not entirely clear what exactly is being encrypted. Friendica is not e2ee either :/