what real usable alternatives to #facebook do exist?

[pocketvj@fosstodon.org]

what real usable alternatives to #facebook do exist?

i want to move our villagers away from fb as the official channel, but i need to give them a userfriendly #foss alternative. best even hosted in #finland #Suomi by real humans.

now is the best moment to explain how we can support democracy and freedom of speech.
#ActivityPub #Mastodon #pixelfed #digitalindependenceday #lapland

[julian@activitypub.space]

@pocketvj@fosstodon.org might I suggest a forum? NodeBB is a forum software that federates (so, connections to Mastodon, Lemmy, etc.)

It is FOSS and you can self-host, or you can pay us for the hosting. I am looking to start up a flagship instance with better tooling to make fb migrations easier, but that is another story :smile:

[growfediverse@dillyofapickle.com]

@pocketvj I've liked Friendica for that purpose so far. Of the various Fedi options I have tried it is closest in functionality. It lets you have granular control of who can see or interact with your posts, lets you organize your contacts, can make long posts if you want of like 200k characters, supports making groups, also has a nice rss feature where you can add rss feeds as if they were a contact so they show up in your timeline and can be easily reshared.

Features it has that are better than facebook are: no ads, no algorithm randomly hiding your friends posts, can be self hosted so you control the moderation (no more random post going missing for reasons you cant figure out), can organize your timeline by subject matter in addition to by who's posting (you can create and organize saved filters by keywords and hashtags and other parameters to create multiple kinds of timelines), has an option to pick from different UI styles (there's a green style one that I love, it's so peaceful and relaxing), and ability to bridge to follow and post with people other social networks too, even ones beyond ActivityPub. And my favorite: an optional anti doomscrolling feature, you can choose "pagination" instead of infinite scroll.

Differences anddisadvantages: At first your timelines are quiet until you start following more people because there's no Meta force injecting "suggested posts" at you constantly. Timeline may also be more quiet than you're used to because it doesnt have addictive UI tricks to keep people scrolling 24/7 (but if you struggle with addiction this is a benefit. I regained hours of my week back). Because it's built by volunteers the default UI isnt as slick. I recommend going in the display settings and using the "bookface" display option which makes it more close to how facebook looks. It lets you control more stuff than Meta does, and some people get intimidated by having so many settings options. Because it's not an invasive privacy predator, it's slightly harder to just look up people you know, no one is required to use a real name, so I recommend joining with a few other folks you know so you can hang out together as you start off.