@Friendica Support @Friendica Developers Let me start with a concrete, question: Are there any efforts / plans to support the
upload of videos?
And now, since I might have your attention, allow me to broaden the question to:
What is your opinion regarding "what #
Friendica is / should be"?
My view / vision is heading slightly in the direction that nowadays image and video content is quite central in social networks and thus a #
Fediverse application like friendica should support the multimedia aspect a bit more, if it wants to be attractive for the broad public in terms of being an alternative to commercial social networks.
Most of you might tell: "Yeah, if one prefers media centric Fediverse, then check out #
pixelfed ". But I think, pixelfed is yet too much of an Instagram clone,
only providing the image / video focus (which bothered me at Instagram from the very beginning not being able to have good commenting / discussion options there).
In my view, Friendica has great potential becoming a great "one fits all" application for the majority of people who like social media and the concept of the Fediverse. It has way more cool functions than #
mastodon / pixelfed (which are in my opinion too close copies of Instagram and Twitter, respectively) but much simpler and convenient than Hubzilla (which I think is really great, for a computer science person, but not for the broad non-technical focussed public)
Wrapping it up: I would love to see a Friendica development towards an easier multimedia support. What are your thoughts?
Cheers
Marek
So ultimately Friendica ends up being what the people working on it want to spend their time on, regardless of any coherent central vision.
So far no developer has had any strong inclination working on image/video, but you can single-handedly change this, and you’ve already started with the wonderful image grid you came up with.
I wanted to hear from you people who are just more experienced in the Fediverse world what YOU think about Fediverse in general and Friendica specifically.
And I think this valuable, not least because there is always the chance that someone's vision does not fit at all to the vision of the majority of other participants on such a project.
I admit that there is a certain amount of reinsurance included in my question, nevertheless.
I've looked in Hubzilla as well but I found it too unintuitive and I don't care much about nomad identity anyway.
I also run a single-user Pixelfed instance that I though would be a good complement for images, but I found out that I use it the same way I used Instagram before Facebook bought it out, which excludes casual image posts.
Still, I'm not a big image guy, I'm even less of a video guy, so I've never felt compelled to look into media support in Friendica myself. I've even resorted to post pictures on my Twitter account which would be mirrored on Friendica.
I am not that much in media myself, what is driving me is that I would love to motivate many of my real life contacts to leave commercial platforms for the very reasons we are all know too well.
And I started talking to them already. What I learned so far is, as I elaborated above, they use Instagram / TikTok and so on to "show" their lives but to their own "handpicked" groups.
For me, it is desirable to offer such people a place in the Fediverse. Where they are not subject to advertising and data exploitation.
So I am looking at the Fediverse and its applications at the moment, asking my self:
"What might be required that the Fediverse, in terms of an alternative to commercial social media, will be a welcoming and attractive place for all the good people outside, especially when they do not care about the technology itself too much?"
I do enjoy the fact that these tasks have also been beneficial for other people, but this is not my main focus. Although you can get me to do stuff outside of my comfort zone if you bug me enough on Signal, just ask @Kristof Körner .
Finally, I have a soft spot for assisting other developers, as you've probably noticed. Even when I'm not particularly active, I will make sure that motivated people are getting timely answers and reviews and feedback because motivation and goodwill are precious resources not to be squandered.