this post was submitted on 23 Jan 2023
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@serenity
"When to use Friendica over Mastodon?"
Short answer: always
Long answer: Friendica is the software of the fedeverse that allows the most complete user experience. However, thanks to the fact that Mastodon was the first successful project on activitypub and to the fact that it addressed a very specific target (Twitter users), its users have always been much more numerous than those of other software and this has meant more money and more funding which has allowed the mastodon developers to improve many aspects.
For this reason, as well as for contingent reasons (the immediacy of microblogging is an immanent feature), the comparison between Friendica and Mastodon highlights some aspects in which Mastodon is objectively superior. Between these:
- an essential and compact timeline
- universal compatibility, due simply to the fact that all other fediverse projects must adapt to mastodon if they don't want to be cut off from the larger audience
- a modern and ergonomic graphical interface (while the Friendica one looks like the alpha version of MySpace)
- apparently faster servers: this is due to the fact that some fediverse virtualization and optimization projects are focused on mastodons; But this is also a consequence of the fact that the greater number of mastodon users allows the servers hosting the community to be financed with more donations. moreover, the increase in users of a single instance generates disruptions, slowdowns and shock waves for the entire faith universe. In fact, the disproportionate increase in mastodon users in the last three months has also led to a slowdown for smaller instances: today friendica servers are also slowed down due to the increase in mastodon users.
- mastodon has an excellent moderation system that allows you to limit the proliferation of bots, spam and scams
- mastodon is clearly aimed at an audience made up of former Twitter users; friendica on the other hand, despite being the only real alternative to Facebook, presents itself as an object without clear characterization, without a "strong message", and aimed at a heterogeneous audience
@notizie
Yea, the fact that it was not that much cathered at being the alternative to something (in this case Facebook) really left it behind, although it is more feature complete. Hell, even diaspora has more users according to fediverse.observer. And given the development speed boost that followed the bird site takeover (which came along with the user influx), I'm afraid that Mastodon is likely to catch up and leave less room for Friendica to have a meaning for new users.
At the moment, at least, there is an influx of new users going on for quite a few months, so it definitely seems to be taking off, but it still leaves Friendica behind many other social networks, sadly.
Imo, Friendica missed some opportunities when it really had the chance of attracting new users, and given the extent of Facebook, it really could attract more users, possibly flip the balance, at least with today's feature set. I only found recently about this whole Fediverse thing, but I was against Twitter due to the post character limit (why the hell should I have to create more than one post in order to post that seldom long idea that I have stuck in my head from time to time?), so I naturally disliked Mastodon's model, although I like many other things at it. And over time I grew fond of its feature set. This is why I really hope Friendica will be able to take a part of the pie in the future.
@serenity
@notizie @petrescatraian @serenity 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.
@serenity @petrescatraian @notizie @shuro Yeah indeed. I felt the same with Friendica in the beginning but I'm a nerd so I can overcome it 😃 but I wouldn't recommend Friendica to my friends if they aren't IT people.