Jerry

Just curious. Have you had trouble loading my-place.social?

They never explained well how to use Friendica, so it's all guessing. But, I believe, to get a Facebook-like experience, you mark people as "Friends" who you want in a Facebook-like environment. This maps to "Friends" on Facebook. Then you click on the "Friends" circle, and you only see posts and conversations from your friends.

You can also set up groups that federate to other instances, and you can control access to the groups. I've never used it, so I don't completely understand how to do this.

But, I think these are the 2 closest Friendica features for Facebook emulation.

https://wiki.friendi.ca/docs/groups-and-privacy#groups_and_privacy

and

The stalls are because the database queries are suboptimal. There is one that occasionally runs that, on my instance (I have 337 active users), can sometimes run for 15 minutes and will lock tables. Everything stalls and backs up.

This query was discussed, and I believe in the next release (but unsure) it will be replaced. Instead of using a ton of "not in" clauses, it does a left join now. In testing, someone mentioned it went from multi minutes to multi seconds to run. But there are a lot more such queries.

I think what Friendica needs desperately is a MariaDB/MySql expert to clean up the queries.

Because Friendica supports groups, you can connect to Lemmy communities. This is what kills Freindica. It just cannot handle the hundreds of thousands of daily connections that come in just from lemmy.world alone. Basically, it then becomes a Lemmy/Piefed/MBIN instance plus a Mastodon instance. The database grows by leaps and bounces, queues back up, and it stalls. CPU pegs without relief.

On mine, I finally had to block the Lemmy User Agent at the Cloudflare firewall. I calculated I would have had to spend another $500/month to allow the server to handle the Lemmy traffic comfortably, excluding the continuing cost for DB space. So far, I haven't blocked Piefed and MBIN, but this could change.

Friendica groups were designed for small private groups or specialized groups. Not public forums. I don't think they ever anticipated someone connecting to Lemmy.world communities and that such groups would become so active. I've told people on my instance that if they want to connect to these groups, they should use Piefed/Lemmy/Mbin, not Friendica.

I haven't looked at the code, but it's standard PHP so probably not terribly hard for PHP developers to get involved.

The developers still work on it, are active in the support groups, and answer questions, but they just can't put in the time they used to. I'm sure they'd be happy if someone wanted to get involved. But, I don't think it would need to be taken over, just helped.

Wow. This is great that you're doing this.

I've done a quick read. It's very nicely done.

I'll look at it in more detail this weekend and follow it. I'll let you know about suggestions.

Great stuff!

It's an acquired taste. Now that I've been using it for months, I prefer it. I like that I have my Bluesky and Tumblr posts completely integrated into my timeline. I can reply to Bluesky posts. When I post something, it automatically gets posted to Bluesky, and Tumblr, if I like. I never go onto Bluesky any longer. Likes and replies from Bluesky are right in with my Mastodon posts and RSS feed posts too. Yes, RSS integrates in as well (obviously you can't reply to them though).

On Mastodon, if someone posts something interesting and I want to see replies and discussions, I can't, unless I remember to go back to the post and look. In Friendica I can click that I want to follow the thread, and it will notify me of the updates, and take me right to the new comment when I click it, it takes me directly to the notification. I love this! If I interact with a post (like it), same thing. It will track it for me. And it does a better job of pulling in replies and responses from all over.

Yeah. Not all good.

I run one of the Friendica servers and it's a problem child. The database grows rapidly and struggles. The database queries urgently need work. Some are super slow. It stalls a lot. The UI is confusing. The developers are not all that active any longer, but still active. The UI is, well, dated.

More info about it here: https://news.elenarossini.com/the-future-of-social-is-here-a-show-and-tell-part-3-friendica/

MUCH better!!

The developers are extremely responsive to good ideas for improvements. I suggest you write this up as an issue at https://codeberg.org/rimu/pyfedi/issues

The downvotes and karma do not stop you from saying whatever you want. It just means you have to say it somewhere else. Hence, you are not censored.

This is fantastic news!

The self-promotion may invite drama. Just today Rimu posted that Piefed is really taking off, along with graphs to prove it, and a link to piefed.social. How would this, technically, not violate this rule; not be self-promotion? Rimu is the lead developer of Piefed. It's his website in the post. Seems to fit. If he posted this as a comment on another site, should they delete the comment?

And where's the line then? Is FOSS software OK because it's free, but software that charges for extra features is not OK? Or is all software OK if not a corporation, or is Signal OK because they are a non-profit corporation? What about Proton and Tuta mail? Would they violate this policy is they told someone who was concerned about privacy in Gmail to check out their products, or is that valid information in the discussion?

I'd leave it out, and I'd take it on a case by case basis and should I decide that I don't like it, which is my right as the one who pays the bill, I'd call it a violation of the advertising policy and be done with it.

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Stating political stances, I think, is inviting fights with the Admin and worse, calls for defederation of the site by people who will misread the intent after putting it through their political lens, and it will somehow become that piefed.social is or isn't a Zionist site, that is or isn't anti-Israel, and is or isn't anti-Semitic, and so on. It doesn't matter what the truth is. The accusations will come, and others with similar lenses will latch on to it.

Wouldn't it have been better for Lemmy if the tanky developers just never publicly said anything political?

I get reports constantly on Mastodon where the same person who has accused people of being anti-Semitic is being accused of being anti-Semitic simultaneously because they are all experts on Zionism and middle Eastern history and politics, and they are all angry. I keep my views to myself (except for my hatred for Trump and his enablers because I want my country back).

No matter how clearly you state it, people will apply your words to their agendas and it will get ugly. I recommend you don't go there.