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?
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, it uses its own protocol, so i’m not sure if it can federate with software that uses activitypub.
The issue is going to be: what are my friends already using? Can I find and friend all my new acquaintances on this platform?
It’s not so much whether or not it has the capacity to be a great service, it’s what is the current population on the service? That’s what people are really asking.
If there’s not millions on it already, most are going to pass on it.
We’re on Lemmy, that puts us a bit outside of that perspective, but that’s still going to be your fat middle of the bell curve on peoples willingness to move.
That’s generally how all services start out, though. It sucks, but you can’t just wait for a platform to get big, you have to actually use it, you have to be the change you want to see.
A big advantage of federation too is that all platforms can interact with eachother; a user on mastodon can interact with this post on lemmy, an iceshrimp user can interact with users on bonfire; etc etc. Platforms on the fediverse have the advantage of not needing to start from scratch.
And, there is nothing stopping them from using facebook alongside friendica, i use redlib when lemmy doesn’t have a community i’m interested in, for example (although i definitely main on lemmy). we don’t have to completely stop from using a platform, both is fine :)
Maybe blue sky? I’ve seen quite a few family/friends move lately and it’s made subscribing to them via mastodon/mastodon adjacent like GoToSocial workable.
A microblog app is not what I’m looking for.
GL!
I wish Friendica had an iOS client
Friendica is compatible with mastodon’s api, so you can use the mastodon app. That’s the only way i think of on iOS :/
You can also use the website as a PWA, safari has partial PWA support
It’s so cool that in the fedi you have quite a few options for front ends/phone apps. Unlike other websites that charge for outside access.
Thanks! Yeah, I realized Pleroma isn’t what I was looking for.