https://hub.netzgemeinde.eu/item/d98f952d-b5b8-47df-b75c-23ade695178fContent warning:How Fediverse users are trying to invite Facebook users over and to where; CW: long (over 6,500 characters), Fediverse meta, Fediverse beyond Mastodon meta, Facebook mentioned, Bluesky mentioned
All hell has broken loose in the Fediverse. What we have been waiting for since 2010 has happened: Facebook is about to become so unbearable that people want to leave.
But there are several Fediverse factions involved in this.
First of all, the Friendica community would love to migrate as many Facebook users as possible to Friendica which was launched in 2010 explicitly as an alternative to Facebook. But they can't because none of the Friendica veterans is on Facebook anymore.
Instead, surprisingly many
Mastodon users want to invite Facebook users over to
Friendica. Which, until now, has been considered direct competition for Mastodon. There are lots of Mastodon users shouting their requests for help into the void because they don't know Friendica beyond its name.
And then, of course, there are those who want to pull Facebook folks over to Mastodon. To a wannabe Twitter clone. In fact, there are four such factions:
- those who only know Mastodon and think the Fediverse is only Mastodon
- those who want to stay in contact with their Facebook friends, but who haven't understood the Fediverse, especially the federation between different server applications (you can follow someone on a Facebook alternative from your Twitter clone), and who think this only works when their friends join Mastodon, too
- the fanatic Mastodon fundamentalists who are so convinced of Mastodon's superiority over the whole rest of the Fediverse that they have to chime into each thread about moving to Friendica and propose a move to Mastodon instead
- those who simply cannot stand anyone joining anything that isn't Mastodon even if it's connected to Mastodon
Just like for the Friendica community, this is what the Hubzilla community has been waiting for, too. In fact, they're going into direct competition against Friendica now.
The big difference, however, is that Friendica is better-prepared. It has an easier UI, it has better official documentation, and above all,
it has native mobile apps available. There's even the Mastodon client API as a fallback, although Mastodon apps don't even cover 10% of Friendica's features. But even on Facebook, many users rely hard on a phone app that they can pull from the Apple App Store or the Google Play Store. If there's no app for it, it doesn't exist to them.
Meanwhile, the Hubzilla community is trying hard to get Facebook users to join a Hubzilla that's entirely unprepared even for converts from Friendica, much less Facebook. It's still built on an idea of the Fediverse from 2012, the vision of a grid of Hubzilla hubs with everything else that Hubzilla connects to as satellites which would render Friendica obsolete. This vision itself became obsolete with Mastodon's success.
Hubzilla is so complex that even veterans keep learning new things about it which have been there for years already. But the built-in documentation is spotty, hopelessly outdated and in many cases simply wrong. It's being rewritten, but the current version is only available on
a third-party website, and even the guy who writes it keeps learning new stuff about Hubzilla.
Hubzilla is full of obstacles for newbies. It is being marketed as connected to the whole Fediverse, but actually, ActivityPub is off on new channels because it doesn't play along well with nomadic identity. Not only that, but instead of just flicking a switch in the configuration, you have to "install" an "app" to be able to follow Mastodon accounts. On top of that, if you as a Hubzilla newbie start posting away on default settings, your posts probably won't even be public. It takes quite a while to set a Hubzilla channel up so that it works properly.
But the biggest obstacle is the almost total lack of a mobile app. There is one that's called Nomad. But it's only available for Android. Only on F-Droid. Instead of being fully native, it mostly uses the Web interface. And it hasn't been maintained in over five years, so it can't even be installed on newer devices. Sure, you can install Hubzilla as a progressive Web app. But the average Facebook user has never heard of progressive Web apps, and they want something that they can install from the Apple App Store or the Google Play Store.
To be honest, I'd say that it's even easier for Facebook converts to get into (streams) than into Hubzilla. It's slimmed down, in fact, the first generation of Hubzilla forks already was. It's more modern and more adapted to today's Fediverse because the development of everything post-Hubzilla wasn't slowed down by having to drag such a software monster along. It's still complex, it's still at least as secure as Hubzilla, but it's easier to handle because it's built upon what's actually needed in today's daily operation.
And still, the small (streams) community stays mum. I've yet to see any activity in the official (streams) group regarding inviting Facebook users over to (streams). I don't think that the whole (streams) community is living under a rock and has yet to notice the imminent Facebook migration wave.
Maybe it's because they're even more aware of obstacles such as the total lack of mobile apps for (streams). Maybe it's because they don't trust any new (streams) user who hasn't gone through the Hubzilla school first. Maybe it's because they themselves aren't sure whether (streams) is stable enough again.
But maybe it's simply because there's hardly anywhere to go on (streams). The issue isn't that (streams) instances are notoriously hard to find because they aren't listed anywhere outside (streams) itself. The issue is that there are hardly any to begin with.
I think there are three public, open-registration (streams) instances. One is Rumbly in the USA which could handle a whole lot more users than it has. One is the new incarnation of Nomád in Hungary which nobody even knows of. And the third one is Diversi Spiritus in Brazil which had so many issues over the last months that I really wouldn't recommend anyone to join it, also because its admin has repeatedly been taking wiping it clean and re-installing it into consideration.
That is, maybe I'll actually succeed in getting someone to move from Facebook to (streams). You have to start somewhere.
Well, and finally, there are those who seriously want to invite Facebook refugees over to Bluesky out of all places.
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