I plan to end my Facebook account before January 19. I like the format and would like something similar in the Fediverse. Also, I need a good Facebook alternative I can show people when trying to convince them to leave Facebook.
So what is the best Facebook alternative as of 2025? Frendica, Diaspora or Pleroma? Or something new and promising?
If you don’t mind a learning curve and having to use the Web interface (because there’s no native mobile app): (streams). From Friendica’s creator.
If (streams) sounds good, but you need a shit-ton of extra features on top (and be it diaspora* connectivity), and you don’t mind an even steeper learning curve: Hubzilla. Also made by the guy who made Friendica.
If you absolutely, absolutely, absolutely must have a dedicated native app on your phone, you’re on Android, and you can live without features such as nomadic identity, multiple channels per account and advanced, fine-grained permission control: Friendica.
If you absolutely, absolutely, absolutely must have a dedicated native app on your phone, but you’re on iOS: Wait for Relatica to have a stable release, then Friendica. (Caveats see above.)
Forget diaspora*. It’s fading out. Shortly before New Year’s Eve, a bunch of big diaspora* pods shut down, and at least according to one stats site, diaspora* lost more than haf its users.
And Pleroma is a Twitter replacement that, just like Mastodon, started out as an alternative UI for GNU social.
Facebook Marketplace is my favorite part of Facebook. Thoughts about what might replace that?
Not ironically craigslist never went away in some places.
I think the number of scammers went way up though
That also applies to FB marketplace
Work in progress: https://codeberg.org/flohmarkt/flohmarkt
I’m going to tell you my core problem, just to get some feedback/vent a little: i’ve wanted to end my Facebook account since Cambridge Analytica. I hate the feed. But Facebook has one key thing keeping me locked in at the moment - Events.
Back in the pre and early Facebook stages, there were websites that had well-curated, broadish event calendars for my city. These are now universally dead. Websites dedicated to the local music scene? Also pretty much dead (RIP punkottawa.com). Some have tried to get something going independently in later stages, but all have failed. Even my favourite college radio station, which has folks super tied into the community and local music scene and plug stuff on the air frequently, has pretty much abandoned their community events calendar. The problem gets worse if I’m travelling outside of the city, in that I have no clue where to even start looking effectively outside of Facebook (@ me, Montrealers and Torontonians in particular). Stuff like bandsintown is ok, but misses a lot when you’re more into bar gigs than concerts
I’ve yet to find a non-Facebook approach that captures events I’d be interested in that doesn’t miss something. RSS feeds from websites for known gig spaces (either natively or with a web2rss thing) can get part of the way there, but there’s been cases of stuff happening at new/unexpected venues (a hot sauce store here, at some point, became a gig venue) that I’ve only found out about via Facebook. And this ignoring non-music related stuff that occasionally comes up serendipitously.
I’ve yet to come up with a great solution, and that kinda ticks me off.
I just don’t go places
Thanks Blaze! This looks really interesting. Network effect is a factor in what I’m bitching about, but we’ve got OK enough general fediverse participation where I am that this could be/get real useful for me.
Appreciate it, and what you do to promote fediverse stuff in general. Said it before and I’ll say it again - you’re doing good work.
Friendica is probably the best choice. It’s the most popular with the most servers and users, and is explicitly designed to be like facebook, and uses Activitypub.
Pleroma, judging from the FAQ; strives to be more like twitter. And as for diaspora, I don’t know much at all about it.
@petrescatraian @fxomt @sith Diaspora is part of Fediverse https://fediverse.party/en/diaspora/
What do you hope to gain from leaving one Facebook to join another Facebook? Break the addiction. Free yourself from needing this in your life.
A social media platform to keep up with friends/family, while arguable not great (for comparison reasons), it not at all the same as what Facebook is right now. Facebook is no longer what it was originally created to be, it is just a dopamine slow drip.
If you want to keep up with friends/family, you can do a chat group on any of the many messengers. Or even use an RCS/iMessage group. You don’t need a full-blown social media thingy for this.
I need
No you don’t
