I really want a Facebook (the old Facebook timeline) replacement, but end-to-end encrypted, and decentralised so there’s longevity.
Edit for clarity: I’m looking for a way to share things online, end-to-end encrypted to a wide-audience that knows you but doesn’t necessarily know each other.
This is why messaging apps don’t fulfil this requirement, and chat rooms (like Matrix) also don’t fit.
I love Lemmy, I like the idea of Mastodon (twitter-like sites just aren’t my thing. ActivityPub rocks. However, none of them are encrypted.
PixelFed is neato, but I don’t plan sharing my personal photos with the whole of the internet, which seems to be the only choice with ActivityPub.
Signal and other encrypted messaging apps are great, but are for direct messaging. Where are the encrypted social media apps?
Matrix is cool and all, but it’s aimed at groups. Like discord / MS teams replacement.
Someone told me about Futo Circles, which seems to tick all the boxes and built on top of Matrix, but it’s currently abandoned.
Are there any other alternatives? My wallet is open, I would very much like to use such an app. I am no programmer, so sadly cannot take on the mantle of continuing the Futo Circles project.
There’s nothing conflicting about it. It’s not a public timeline, it’s “public” only to people you’ve added, no one else, including the server that would host your content.
Basically old Facebook (sharing just to your friends), without the spying, is what I’m asking for.
You would manage who can access what, by allowing/not allowing people to follow you
It’s not a group abstraction, at least for the user, since you’re not asking everyone to join the same group, and see each other’s content. Only yours, and in turn theirs.
Matrix is basically a group chat with bells and whistles, which is really nice, but isn’t what I’m looking for.
Which means that you have a protected room!
You mentioned you are not a programmer, so maybe you are missing one key information: it only makes sense to talk about “end-to-end encryption” when the sender knows the recipient a priori. You can not simply broadcast a message to any unspecified “wide-audience” and have it “end-to-end encrypted”.
Yes, you are. If you want the messages to be e2ee encrypted and which can not be spied by the server owner, you are in effect asking people “come join me on this room where we will have a shared secret to exchange messages privately”.
I understand that you are thinking in terms of an unified view, but this is an UX matter. If you want only a selection of people to be able to decrypt your message, you will have to add them to a group that you will have to manage it, and Matrix/XMPP already provide these mechanisms.
Yeah, I’ll convince them to join a service/download an app, join a server etc, but not necessarily the same group (in the sense that they won’t see each other’s stuff, just mine and whoever else they add). The wide audience I’m talking about is all the people I add, not the whole internet.
I’m essentially proposing a mass e2ee encryption messaging service, with a UI that amalgamates it into a single feed AND that people can customise what they’re notified for. (This is the concept upon with Futo circles is built, I’m not making this up our of whole cloth)
Like what Facebook is. Except, end to end encrypted.
Or hell, what WeChat moments is, except end-to-end encrypted.
Ok, I don’t know how else to explain. What you are asking (“A public timeline that anyone can follow, except end-to-end encrypted”) is physically impossible.
Like, really impossible. See if you spot the issue:
How would keep a single timeline where the messages you sent are only visible to your friends, but not visible to your friends’ friends?
The answer is: you don’t. You can not do that. You need to have a separate room for the contacts that you want to make your pictures available. Your contacts need each to have their own room for the contacts that they need to have available.
To view the feed, yes you can consolidate all posts into one single view. But when you post something, you will need to define which rooms will see the content, and the message will be duplicated across the different rooms. You can bet that Futo does not gets rid of this abstraction.
I never even said what you’re quoting. I said a timeline anyone who you’ve connected with can follow. You’re correcting me for something I haven’t once asked for. I only tried correcting your misunderstanding of what I asked for.
The same way you can mass text people, and only the people you sent messages can see it but not each others responses? Unless they forward your messages, which there is no workaround, save for making it difficult with the UI. There doesn’t need to be a way to prevent sharing your stuff. You choose to trust the people you add, there’s no way around that.
Yes, I agree, in the backend. As mentioned, this is how Circles says it tackles the issue. And as mentioned, they will have a room each for every contact they add (in the backend).
No, I agree, Futo doesn’t get rid of this abstraction, it’s exactly how they do it in the back end.
I am asking for Facebook, but without the spying from Facebook, this is technically possible. It’s been made, just sadly abandoned.
I don’t know why you want to prove me wrong so badly: https://github.com/circles-project
Sorry, I think we were talking past each other.
When you were talking about “Matrix is not a good” , I was understanding that you meant that the protocol was not suitable for it. Now I see that your issue is not with matrix itself, but with its most popular clients, because none of them (unlike Futo circles) provide any sort of unified view of the different rooms.
I understand how it could be interesting to have this type of unified view if you really care about emulating “the Facebook experience”, and perhaps it wouldn’t be that difficult to implement that. In practice though, I think that you’d come up with the following conclusions:
No worries, appreciate you taking the time to engage.
Yeah, getting people to adopt something new is challenging, but I’ve had some success with Signal, and this is sadly a problem no matter what
The social connections wouldn’t have to be in different buckets, the app would give you a timeline of all your contacts posts by default (default behaviour on Facebook and Instagram, with public posts and ads baked in), and sorting into various buckets would be a choice users would make. As we discussed under the hood every contact would be technically in a separate matrix room with you, but the user is just presented with a unified timeline of posts they can interact with.
In terms of group chats, this is a subjective question. I’d argue the fact people post on their pages formally on Facebook and more commonly now on Instagram is evidence that people don’t only want to use group chats. To me, group chats are mostly useful in a small group, and I already have signal and other messengers for this purpose.
The idea here, and what I wish was still being maintained, is a way to connect with people on social media without being forced to invite people into specific groups, just add them, and then they can see whenever you post, and comment on your posts etc. Without the requirement for you to filter anything if they don’t want to, nor join specific groups of people.
i.e. I add 10 different people, they make posts, I see said posts from all 10 people in chronological order.
The app could optionally provide ways to sort your friends however you like (a feature which also used to be present on Facebook, not sure if it still is), but it’s the optionality that is attractive.
It’s much lower friction to say: “Hey, add me on XYZ social media app”. Rather than, “join this specific group”, which may not be suitable. Which is exactly how Facebook and Instagram work (and people frequently ask to add me on there still).
I realise the demand for this to be e2ee is not large, hence the lack of clients. But I’d argue the demand for this style of social media is huge, evidenced by the existence of Facebook and Instagram, which largely sees people posting things only to their followers/friends - just with Meta data mining you and advertising to you.
only because of network effects. People are used to ask you to add them on FB or IG because literally a third of the world have an account there. Now go around asking them to add you on friendica or movim, they will probably just give you a blank stare.
Indeed, getting the network effect on your side is the hardest part.
But at least if something exists, we can make a start on converting people. And for me to be able to sell the experience, it’d be nice if I can say: hey join me on this network, it’s like Facebook/Instagram, but the only people who will see your posts are your friends. Not even the server can see it.
(And ideally there’s a sliding scale of how much it costs and various ways to host the content).
Currently, I haven’t yet found an app that fits the description. I signed up for Movim, but encryption isn’t default, and it’s not entirely clear what exactly is being encrypted. Friendica is not e2ee either :/