Not public posts, rather posts to anyone who you have added. Similar to Facebook

I’m happy with Lemmy and Mastodon as is as it’s a different purpose.

I’m gonna investigate hubzilla further, cheers friend!

Hubzilla looks interesting, I’ll give it a go, thanks!

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 :/

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.

Ok, I don’t know how else to explain. What you are asking (“A public timeline that anyone can follow, except end-to-end encrypted”) is physically impossible.

I never even said what you’re quoting. I said a timeline anyone who you’ve connected with can follow. You’re correcting me for something I haven’t once asked for. I only tried correcting your misunderstanding of what I asked for.

How would keep a single timeline where the messages you sent are only visible to your friends, but not visible to your friends’ friends?

The same way you can mass text people, and only the people you sent messages can see it but not each others responses? Unless they forward your messages, which there is no workaround, save for making it difficult with the UI. There doesn’t need to be a way to prevent sharing your stuff. You choose to trust the people you add, there’s no way around that.

The answer is: you don’t. You can not do that. You need to have a separate room for the contacts that you want to make your pictures available. Your contacts need each to have their own room for the contacts that they need to have available.

Yes, I agree, in the backend. As mentioned, this is how Circles says it tackles the issue. And as mentioned, they will have a room each for every contact they add (in the backend).

To view the feed, yes you can consolidate all posts into one single view. But when you post something, you will need to define which rooms will see the content, and the message will be duplicated across the different rooms. You can bet that Futo does not gets rid of this abstraction.

No, I agree, Futo doesn’t get rid of this abstraction, it’s exactly how they do it in the back end.

I am asking for Facebook, but without the spying from Facebook, this is technically possible. It’s been made, just sadly abandoned.

I don’t know why you want to prove me wrong so badly: https://github.com/circles-project

decrypt your message, you will have to add them to a group that you will have to manage it

Yeah, I’ll convince them to join a service/download an app, join a server etc, but not necessarily the same group (in the sense that they won’t see each other’s stuff, just mine and whoever else they add). The wide audience I’m talking about is all the people I add, not the whole internet.

I’m essentially proposing a mass e2ee encryption messaging service, with a UI that amalgamates it into a single feed AND that people can customise what they’re notified for. (This is the concept upon with Futo circles is built, I’m not making this up our of whole cloth)

Like what Facebook is. Except, end to end encrypted.

Or hell, what WeChat moments is, except end-to-end encrypted.

Perfect backwards secrecy what be a trade-off I’d personally be fine with. To speculate a bit, the fact it’s a 2 person room in the Futo Circles case inplifies things a bit. Your keys are different with every single person. It’s like sending a mass e2ee message to every single contact you have, just that it’s only fetched from the server if they go looking.

Having to re-encrypt stuff does seem like the biggest downfall here (if this understanding is even correct 😅)

This is indeed a complicated question, thanks for taking the time to respond :)

This service seems very fully featured, and I can’t quite tell from reading if it does support what I’m looking for, so I’ll just have to give it a try!

Thanks for sharing it :)

There’s nothing conflicting about it. It’s not a public timeline, it’s “public” only to people you’ve added, no one else, including the server that would host your content.

Basically old Facebook (sharing just to your friends), without the spying, is what I’m asking for.

You would manage who can access what, by allowing/not allowing people to follow you

It’s not a group abstraction, at least for the user, since you’re not asking everyone to join the same group, and see each other’s content. Only yours, and in turn theirs.

Matrix is basically a group chat with bells and whistles, which is really nice, but isn’t what 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.

if you self-host it

This is antithetical to mass adoption if to get end-to-end encryption you need to self host :/

I’m not saying the service you’ve shared is bad, just it’s not what I’m looking for

Yes, I’m saying Matrix doesn’t satisfy my requirements of what I’m looking for, sadly :/

Damn, thank you for this response, I really appreciate it. This does make sense, and I do not understand a lot of the technical details, or how this problem would be solved. I just wish it was haha

The circles project, at least claims, to be built on top of Matrix, where everyone who you accept to follow you essentially joins a seperate matrix room with your content in it, and the “timeline” compilation is done via UI.

Can’t say I understand what happens technically when someone is kicked from a matrix room, so what what happen with the encryption keys I dunno.

Yeah I considered Friendica, but I believe it’s not end-to-end encrypted :/

Thanks though!

Are the blogs end-to-end encrypted? It seemed to imply that they are public.

Futo Circles describes what I’m after well: “a good way to share things with lots of people who don’t all know each other, but they all know you.”

This is where going a group is not what I’m after, as that’s what Matrix would be good for.

Yeah I’ve seen these photo storage apps, they are neato but not what I’m looking for unfortunately, and I already use Signal for e2ee messaging

Really wish Futo Circles wasn’t abandoned :(

Oh neato, thanks for sharing. Hope some other kind soul takes it up (and takes my donation money :3)

Appreciate you taking the time to reply, but this isn’t what I’m looking for

At least I couldn’t find any mention of end-to-end encryption outside messaging.

And it doesn’t appear to be timeline (i.e. you post and anyone who you’ve connected with can see it), it’s fully public blogs, private (but no mention of e2ee) chatrooms, and videoconferencing.

Unfortunately none of these are end-to-end encrypted (I believe). Thanks though!