@Mihai von Glogowatz @Marek Bachmann :friendica: Yes, he mentioned it in his original post:

(which I think is really great, for a computer science person, but not for the broad non-technical focussed public)

Hi @Mihai von Glogowatz I am there, passively but always have a look around there once in a while, mostly testing interacting with my self

@Marek Bachmann

@Matthew Exon

I'm using Emacs to write the post.

WOW, that's really cool and exactly my point when I say "great for a computer scientist, but not for the general non-technical public".

It's a great example of what my thoughts were when starting this thread:

I was under the impression (which could obviously be wrong!) that there are mainly tech and privacy enthusiasts at the Fediverse these days (Mastodon is a slight exception as it has become a sanctuary for Twitter users is).

That's perfectly fine, but in my experience, tech people tend to design a "world" for their needs, unintentionally excluding "non-tech people".

In my opinion, technology and science should serve all people and that developers and scientists have some responsibility for it.
Please don't get me wrong here, this is not meant to be a moral appeal, let alone a personal criticism of anyone associated with Fediverse.

In fact, I'm not at all altruistic when I talk about any kind of responsibility. Because offering my contacts who still use commercial networks today an adequate alternative in the Fediverse is my contribution to a Fediverse that meets my needs.

@Marek Bachmann :friendica: I think the question is misguided. Friendica isn’t a coherent entity. It’s developers, present and past (quite a few opinionated choices we’ve had to grapple with), server admins and users.

So ultimately Friendica ends up being what the people working on it want to spend their time on, regardless of any coherent central vision.

So far no developer has had any strong inclination working on image/video, but you can single-handedly change this, and you’ve already started with the wonderful image grid you came up with.

HI @Hypolite Petovan thank you for your precious answer. I can clearly see that my question seems "misguided" in terms of an open source project, which is perfectly fine since it was by intention:

I wanted to hear from you people who are just more experienced in the Fediverse world what YOU think about Fediverse in general and Friendica specifically.

And I think this valuable, not least because there is always the chance that someone's vision does not fit at all to the vision of the majority of other participants on such a project.

I admit that there is a certain amount of reinsurance included in my question, nevertheless.

@Marek Bachmann :friendica: Ah, if it's personal then I can answer! The main reasons why I use Friendica are the following:

• Threaded conversations à-la-Facebook.
• RSS support.
• Diaspora support (I mainly like the concept, I don't have many remaining Diaspora contacts).
• Twitter support (although my patience for the platform is rapidly dwindling).
• It's written in PHP so I can contribute!

I've looked in Hubzilla as well but I found it too unintuitive and I don't care much about nomad identity anyway.

I also run a single-user Pixelfed instance that I though would be a good complement for images, but I found out that I use it the same way I used Instagram before Facebook bought it out, which excludes casual image posts.

Still, I'm not a big image guy, I'm even less of a video guy, so I've never felt compelled to look into media support in Friendica myself. I've even resorted to post pictures on my Twitter account which would be mirrored on Friendica.

Thank you so much! This is exactly the kind of though exchange I was looking for.

I am not that much in media myself, what is driving me is that I would love to motivate many of my real life contacts to leave commercial platforms for the very reasons we are all know too well.

And I started talking to them already. What I learned so far is, as I elaborated above, they use Instagram / TikTok and so on to "show" their lives but to their own "handpicked" groups.

For me, it is desirable to offer such people a place in the Fediverse. Where they are not subject to advertising and data exploitation.

So I am looking at the Fediverse and its applications at the moment, asking my self:
"What might be required that the Fediverse, in terms of an alternative to commercial social media, will be a welcoming and attractive place for all the good people outside, especially when they do not care about the technology itself too much?"