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.
This is where going a group is not what I’m after, as that’s what Matrix would be good for.
A XMPP room and a Matrix group are equivalent. You can, e.g, create a room, set it to “private” and only add the people you want to see your content.
As a matter of fact, I think you could have what you want even with a basic matrix client. This is actually what I do with my family: I didn’t want to share pictures of my kids on Facebook, so I created a “Family” group and we use to talk and share pictures.
Yes, I’m saying Matrix doesn’t satisfy my requirements of what I’m looking for, sadly :/
And I’m saying that your “end-to-end encryption” and “public timeline” requirements are conflicting. If you want e2ee, you will have to manage the rooms yourself. You can bet that even if you tried the Futo Circles client, you would still have to manage “who-can-access-what”, which implies that the room/group abstraction is still there.
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.
