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When to use Friendica over Mastodon


in reply to serenity

Worth noting (since this isn't mentioned anywhere in the text): Friendica is slow as fuck
in reply to rom

@rom

I first struggled with my single-user Friendica instance after I added all followed accounts from Mastodon. Very slow, sometimes even not responding at all.

After tweaking some settings the site is running quite smootly. So it depends on the setup.

Yes, Mastodon out-of-the-box is faster on most machines, but Friendica can be made very usable.

Via clients like WhaleBird or Fedilab, I don't feel any difference.
@serenity
in reply to rom

@rom @serenity eh, it's not blazing fast but it's quite usable and definitely beats Misskey/Calckey in that department
in reply to F00FC7C8 likes to infodump

It's not even sorta fast, but I've found it to be the most functional for me out of the bunch. In addition to Friendica, I've played around with Diaspora, Mastadon, Pleroma, Misskey, plus the forks Calckey and Akkoma. Friendica's ability to easily follow tags and rss feeds, plus the lemmy and diaspora integration, as well as the ease of import/export really shows where some of the others are lacking. That said, UI/UX customization in Friendica leaves quite a bit to be desired.
in reply to eshep

This is the kinda speed problems I see with Friendica that I don't see with other AP interfaces.
6 days ago (Received 18 seconds ago)
in reply to eshep

@eshep @serenity @rom That's not always because of a speed issue though. I usually see that on messages that were boosted or searched recently, in which case it's no different from other AP servers.
This entry was edited (1 year ago)
in reply to F00FC7C8 likes to infodump

Good to know. I've noticed it mostly on post pulled in from hashtag follows. I thought maybe it could be something to do with how those are polled.
in reply to eshep

@eshep @serenity @F00FC7C8 likes to infodump @rom If you're following a hashtag you'll see posts from people nobody on your instance is following and those won't come in as they're posted, but will be fetched as a side-effect of actions by people that are being followed.
in reply to eshep

In my experience it is not because Friendica is slow. then Its because someone I follow just commented a post and then the server had to download the post whereas before there wasnt a reason to because i didnt follow the OP.

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in reply to eshep

I tried to import/move my profile to my own instance but I got an error saying page not found :S did you succeed with that`?

I agree with what you say. Is your experience that Friendica is slower than the others? My guess would be that Friendica is programmed in PHP which executes slower than other programming languages.

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in reply to Anders Rytter Hansen

I am not sure it is about PHP but it depends how you see it.

Friendica can be rather resource-intensive, especially for public instance. Some of them feel slow because they are somewhat overloaded. On badly overloaded servers delivery times suffer.

Also mostly static interface of Friendica which I like also means most operations reload the entire page. E.g. when you go to someone's profile it can take the same time (say 8 seconds) on Friendica and Misskey/Pleroma/Mastodon but on the latter you don't see the page redrawn - it stays the same and something spins loading the data. On Friendica you see full page reload. It is perceived slower.

Also in some aspects Friendica is inherently slower by design. E.g. when posting comment on Mastodon it is fired off right away (well, almost), on Friendica it is queued for delivery and the worker runs on interval (usually every 2-5 mins). It isn't a problem but feels more like email or old school forum while other platforms can feel more like instant messaging.

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in reply to АлСксандр

@АлСксандр

@serenity @rom @eshep @F00FC7C8 likes to infodump @Fediverse

Good observations. Another thing about full page reload is that it will also put more load on the server.

On my Friendica server I am running the Daemon instead of Cronjob so for me it gets sent immediately :)

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in reply to Anders Rytter Hansen

Interesting, I didn't know about daemon. Can you share how you have it configured? I set my server some years ago, I think it didn't have this option back then but I'd like to try.

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in reply to АлСксандр

@АлСксандр

@serenity @Fediverse @rom @eshep @F00FC7C8 likes to infodump @АлСксандр

You start the Daemon with this command: cd /var/www/html && php bin/daemon.php start

If you don't have your Friendica installation in /var/www/html, change it to the proper location. You can run the command at system boot.

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in reply to Anders Rytter Hansen

@serenity

@Fediverse @rom @eshep @F00FC7C8 likes to infodump @АлСксандр

I assume that you don't run it through Docker since you mentioned Cronjobs. Let me know if my assumption is wrong because then I can give some extra suggestions for that as well.

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in reply to Anders Rytter Hansen

Thanks for the advice to switch to daemon - now it doesn't have delays before sending posts and comments.

Now it works even better :)

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in reply to АлСксандр

@АлСксандр

@serenity @Fediverse @rom @eshep @F00FC7C8 likes to infodump

You're welcome! Great to hear that :) I wonder why Cron job is the recommended method by Friendica. When I saw that in the installation guide I was like "naah I'll stick with the "non-recommended" method" πŸ˜ƒ

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in reply to Anders Rytter Hansen

I wonder as well. Maybe Cron is considered more reliable as it starts new process every few minutes and if it fails for some reason it will be restarted automatically. Daemon requires more configuration.

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in reply to serenity

It is possible to use content warning and alt text in Friendica posts (not very convenient but it works).

There is lack of other features though - can't create or vote in polls, can't upload video and audio, can't block by domain.
in reply to АлСксандр

@АлСксандр You can embed audio and video though, if it is uploaded to a different server and is publicly available. Here's a random slice of pie from duckduckgo images to prove it (edit: there is a picture with a slice of pie below, but Lemmy does not show it):
A slice of pie

@serenity

This entry was edited (1 year ago)
in reply to serenity

in reply to Poliverso - notizie dal fediverso

This entry was edited (1 year ago)

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in reply to Cătă

Friendica and Hubzilla are a bit hard to learn. These platforms need better onboarding process. The greatest advantage of Mastodon is that it is pretty familiar and doesn't overwhelm with features.

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in reply to АлСксандр

Yeah indeed. I felt the same with Friendica in the beginning but I'm a nerd so I can overcome it πŸ˜ƒ but I wouldn't recommend Friendica to my friends if they aren't IT people.

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in reply to Cătă

Do you think there are any cases where it might be appropriate to choose #Friendica over #rebased or #Misskey?
in reply to casey is remote

@casey is remote Really not sure, Misskey is microblogging as well, maybe? And both rebased and Misskey are newer projects, while Friendica is older and more established? Maybe you want to have a Facebook experience like in the heydays?

I want to keep the number of accounts I have to a minimum, but I might create some dummy accounts on any of these platforms to test them out.

@Poliverso notizie dal fediverso @serenity

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in reply to Cătă

Also, the lack of support for accessibility from Friendica is a big NoNo for me. Mastodon made me learn to use CW and all-text and I can't backtrack on a software that has less inclusivity options.
in reply to serenity

Thanks all for the replies (I see one comment here on this instance, but twelve when I look at lemmy.ml). Nice to see more Friendica here!
in reply to serenity

@serenity Well, I feel great that I can post and comment to Reddit with my FB account in this regard, haha ;)

I am really afraid of not doxxing myself though, haha. On the former I am more vocal usually, while on the latter I am more personal. So now I have a mix of social identities that I use for both being vocal and personal.
in reply to Cătă

Great to see that you can comment on Lemmy posts :) you had issues with it before, right?

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in reply to Anders Rytter Hansen

@Anders Rytter Hansen I remember you had, I can't remember, someone posted something on the Friendica support group, not sure if it was you or anyone else.

Yea, I had the same issue as you. Indeed, federation between Friendica and Lemmy servers seems a bit problematic, I still search for my posts and comments on a separate Lemmy tab, unfortunately, don't know if this is a Lemmy/Friendica issue or just related to ActivityPub, as f00fc7c8@libranet.de was saying in a previous comment. I am surprised that this comment made it through w/o such an input from my end, so wow! :D

servers@serenity@jeremmy.ml


@eshep @serenity @rom That's not always because of a speed issue though. I usually see that on messages that were boosted or searched recently, in which case it's no different from other AP servers.

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in reply to Cătă

and this one made it as well, right? :D

I solved the issue by spinning up my own instance :D it seems like a Libranet/Venera problem rather than a Friendica problem, because now it works fine for me.

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in reply to Cătă

wtf. So now I just tried again from my Venera.social profile and now it works there again as well. :D

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in reply to Anders Rytter Hansen

@Anders Rytter Hansen wow, speechless. I guess you never know where the problem comes from, haha.

I previously tried to force-load my initial comment to this post as well, but nothing happened, wherever I tried. :D
in reply to Cătă

indeed but at least i have access to the logs now if the same or something else will happen again :D

you mean force load by searching?

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in reply to Anders Rytter Hansen

@anders@rytter.me wrote:

indeed but at least i have access to the logs now if the same or something else will happen again 😁

That really is an advantage, congrats on your new server, haha! :D

@anders@rytter.me wrote:

you mean force load by searching?

Yes
This entry was edited (1 year ago)
in reply to Cătă

thank you :D

i see. in my experience it worked with the link but it seemed like Lemmy users didnt get notifications when i did it and there for didnt reply.

anyways it works now (out of the blue) so thats great! :D

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in reply to serenity

@serenity@jeremmy.ml wrote:

* No option for a content warning in a post you’re creating. This option is heavily used in Mastodon e.g to warn people for a post about a sensitive topic e.g politics. Friendica does respect content warnings from Mastodon though.
* No option to add a text to an image. Mastodon has this option to include visually impaired people.
* No option to blur an image. In Mastodon this is a feature similar to a content warning for a text.


Have you tried BBCodes? while in your node press on your profile name in the top-right corner of your screen (if you're using the Frio theme) > Help > BBCode tag reference to see what you can do. They can do everything you said.
in reply to АлСксандр

Is it? Really? Easier for non-technical users than Markdown?

Most simple markup languages (djot, markdown, asciidoc, textile, etc.) are based on 7-bit ASCII markup that people have been using in email and SMS for decades. They're compact and straightforward. BBCode is a bastardization (I use that in its technical sense more than as a pejorative) of HTML; it's verbose and unintuitive.

Give a non-technical person with no other information a keyboard and a plain text field and ask them to emphasize a word in some text. I'll bet the first thing they do is all caps. If you ask them to do it without caps, I bet you'll get something like surrounding the text in asterisks or hashmarks, but regardless, what you won't get is bracket-B-bracket followed by a closing tag.

BBCode is just straight-up HTML for people allergic to pointy characters. That's hardly non-technical.
in reply to π•½π–šπ–†π–Žπ–‰π–π–—π–Žπ–Œπ–

I have different opinion on this but I am not UX specialist.

Surely to just highlight something it is easier to use underscore or similar characters but when you want to have variety of formatting styles in my opinon text tags are easier to remember and use. Yes, more to type but BBCode-enabled solutions usually provide some sort of assist.

Also Markdown tends to conflict with user input more often which is confusing.
This entry was edited (1 year ago)

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in reply to serenity

Can this be used for social news sharing, like lemmy?
in reply to jay91

@jay91 You can create forums, which are, practically, like fb groups. In fact, Lemmy communities appear as forums as well. Hell, you can even set your account as a news organization:
https://imgur.com/7wVSTRe.png
Types of account on Friendica

@serenity

in reply to serenity

IMO Friendica feels like beta software or outdated with no signs of improvement. Similar to how LibreOffice used to be for years. The layout is just not streamlined enough. It's unnecessary complicated and the UI looks outdated on all themes.

don't like this

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