foss alternatives for social media apps
foss alternatives for social media apps
hello im trying to find good foss alternatives to apps like discord, facebook, and others that are foss and federated are there any possable apps out there that are like that?
Discord --> Matrix
Lemmy and mastodon are good I think 🤔
Delete Facebook
Seriously....need to do that with mine but it's just sitting deactivated. Don't feel like messing with it....
Pixelfed for Instagram to a certain extent. You can also use Instander for an alternative viewer for regular Instagram.
Revolt Chat looks like another alternative for Discord, but haven't used it myself
revolt is awesome ^^ im on revolt its a great foss alternative to discord
It seems like only the frontend is open-source, correct me if you find the back end code and if it is under AGPL license
Alternative to discord: your best bet will be to find a matrix server at https://servers.joinmatrix.org. Element is the most mature client for all platforms.
For Facebook, any of the ActivityPub alternatives like Mastodon, Pleroma, GoToSocial... Too many choices for clients and instances, but if you are looking for a professional provider and care more about a "generic" instance that is well-maintained (or want to run your own), you can try communick. Disclosure, it's my own project and I've been running it for some years now.
I’m a fairly technical guy, but I genuinely cannot figure out why I’d want to use Matrix at this point.
My understanding, which may be wrong, is that it can communicate on its own encrypted standard, and that there are bridges that allow it to communicate with other services like Signal and WhatsApp. You have to register for a home server, which essentially means trusting the individual(s) running that home server not to abuse that privilege, especially considering that not all features are supported by the bridges to other protocols at this point (including end-to-end encryption in some cases), so they may have access to your unencrypted content. Not only that, but your data is then replicated on other servers where the other participants in your conversations are registered, which means you essentially need to trust all those other admins as well.
Then there are the clients, which (at least on iOS) seem to be few and far between. The (seemingly) most popular, Element, appears to collect a crap-ton of personal information - including user content!
I was a big fan of Trillian back in the day, which sought to unify AIM/MSN/ICQ/etc. into one place; am I correct in thinking Matrix seeks to do something similar today?
Given the seemingly large amount of trust you need to put in potentially numerous individuals and organizations, is the convenience of a unifying protocol that may or may not bring your various chat and calling services under one roof with varying levels of compatibility and security (not to mention the apps, some of which appear to collect everything under the sun about you) worth it?
Thats a pretty awesome question imo.
I think Matrix only makes sense if you‘re already using instant messaging of some sort. Either discord, whatsapp, signal, what have you…
If you are using one of these services, there is a high chance that your data is sold, traded and used for all kinds of purposes, from training AI to manipulating your life choices (or as simple as selling something to you).
If a person is not using social media at all (and has an offline friend circle), then they should happily stay away from any of these products, federated/foss same as the others. Simply because social media is addictive.
But for those (like me) who don’t make friends easily offline, social media makes sense. And for those, it is far better to trust db0 or whatever the admins name is of an instance, than google,
has only one answer. Hell yes!
Element is a for profit company and therefore not the best idea if you want to go fully without data collection I assume. But then you also need to keep all smart devices in your home from calling home, you need a rooted android phone or similar, etc.
So I propose that we do our best, keeping the megacorps from collecting and selling our data without a penny of the profits going to us. In the meantime, we make compromises where necessary. If element is the only „usable“ client for you, let them have at it for the time being. Especially on ios, you‘re transparent to apple anyway and besides you don’t see the apps in development until they leave testflight (iirc).
Let me know if you have any further questions. Have a good one. :)
You are indeed misunderstanding some of the points about it:
You have to register for a home server, which essentially means trusting the individual(s) running that home server not to abuse that privilege.
Communication that happens exclusively via Matrix are always end-to-end encrypted. No one will have access to it. The only point where e2ee is "broken" is when/if you are using any of the bridges to any of the protocols where the messages are in clear text. If you are worried about having your messages read by a third-party, then you wouldn't be using the insecure protocol in the first place, right?
Not only that, but your data is then replicated on other servers where the other participants in your conversations are registered.
Not true. Data that goes to the other servers is always encrypted and only the intended recipients can read it. No trust required.
The (seemingly) most popular, Element, appears to collect a crap-ton of personal information - including user content!
Technically speaking, every client "collects user content", no? The question is what the application does with it. The code is open source and I'm yet to hear anyone claiming bad practices or security flaws in the client.
nice
I host my own HumHub for just my extended family. It's basically Facebook but there's only about 25 people and no external nonsense like ads or news.
@DjMeas You can also try Friendica for this. Also Facebook-like and AP-compatible (as well as federated).
Facebook -> Friendica
I made a list:
Great thread, although I tbh don't even want alternatives for most of them.
Lemmy, sure.
Discord, would be nice but until I get my friends and servers to move to something else, not gonna work.
Facebook, I don't ever want to use anything like it even if it was open source.
Mastodon, I don't want to use it despite being fedoverse cause it tries to be like Twitter and I hate Twitter.
Pixelfed, I don't really want to use anything like instagram and even if I did, not relevant until people I want to follow use it since I wouldn't post myself.
Tictoc, I would rather scoop of my eyeballs with rusty spoon than use it, no matter if it would be federalized.
Others not mentioned I don't care enough to know how they work. Still, I support the sentiment of making fedoverse alternatives for things, although I personally only need lemmy and discord to get my dopamine fix.
would be nice but until I get my friends and servers to move to something else
I felt like this was how WhatsApp still lives on lol, and outside my in real life friends, the Discord communities I'm active in won't be moving anywhere either
Most of my friends moved to telegram at some point, but attempts to have them move to signal, let alone matrix are futile.
thanks for the suggestions all :)
I’m also looking for an easy to host, or at least private, Facebook alternative for about 250 people. I like where Pixelfed is going but I’m seeing it’s rather difficult to run.
I know this is not what you asked but I would also considering not replacing all social medias at all. Just get rid of those you feel are not generally good for you and just replace that time with something actually fulfilling. Perhaps this advice isn’t for you but I am at least much happier when I don’t use too many social media services. So just wanted to throw this idea out there.