Over time I’ve been on the lookout for social media for family to use. I haven’t really found anything suitable, key thing is that posting photos and videos needs to be user friendly. For example, Friendica all but requiring you to upload your video to YouTube and post the embedded video is just not gonna fly.
I’ve seen Zusam in the past, which looks like it could become something but I don’t think it’s ready for me to try to get extended family into. (It’s worth mentioning here that certain extended family have shown interest in using something like this)
Recently I’ve had a look around at some Enterprise social solutions, and have had a play with HumHub. It has a much more familiar look, things are separated into spaces that are similar to Facebook groups, and while media uploads aren’t perfect I think they will work well enough.
HumHub has modules, many of which cost a decent amount of money, because they target the enterprise market. However, the community version is open source and the base features and free modules seem to work well.
Does anyone have experience using it? Any warnings I should know about? Any similar software that does a better job?
We tried it and didn’t like the clunky UI.
We also tried Lemmy but it was a bit of a nuisance to maintain.
In the end we settled on a forum with a wiki.
We tried a few forums but in the end Flarum was the nicest, Just a bit of a pain to set the domain to be dynamic but it can be done with some PHP, alternatively, just use a reverse proxy with dnsmasq and wireguard pointing to that DNS.
As for a Wiki We have tried mediawiki, WikiJS And a couple others. I would recommend dokuwiki. (I hear good things about bookstack too).
Do you want this social media to be for your family to use only with family members or for them to use with family and beyond?
Revolt could be good as a local family group chat if you like the discord style. You’ve probably already tried it but Pixelfed/mastodon/misskey sound like the easiest to get family on board with and seem like they would be good family social media platforms IMO.
I could never get mastodon to work with an app without using SSL.
I much prefer setting up a VPN and reverse proxy without having to deal with SSL. So it was really annoying not being able to use an app on the phone to connect to it.
In my experience none of the federated platforms handle video well, especially the facebook like platforms. They are built around things being public, and expect you to upload to youtube or some other video site in order to post a video. If they let you upload videos at all, it’s as an attachment. Admittedly HumHub is a bit like that, but it’s not too janky from a user experience perspective.
One thing I liked about Zusam is the automatic resizing of videos to make them reasonably sized. If I record a 2 minute video, it can be 300 or 400MB. Zusam can be configured to resize the video to a set maximum size in order to make it more reasonable for people watching. HumHub doesn’t do this, but I have wondered if I could use a cron job and ffmpeg to do it.
Do you want this social media to be for your family to use only with family members or for them to use with family and beyond?
I haven’t decided yet. Initially we’d start with people who know our kids. But if some of those people wanted to set up a page for their own kids, they wouldn’t want some of the people on our page who they don’t know. And they might want people on their page that don’t know our kids. So then all the HubHub privacy settings come in handy where people can create a space and control who can see what.
Revolt could be good as a local family group chat if you like the discord style.
I don’t really think that’s something that will be familiar enough to people, especially grant parents and other family of that generation. And I don’t think a group chat is what I’m after, self hosting a group chat doesn’t seem to have many advantages over say a Signal group chat.
You’ve probably already tried it but Pixelfed/mastodon/misskey sound like the easiest to get family on board with and seem like they would be good family social media platforms IMO.
These are generally public, and even if you have it set up as a private instance with no federation then it still feels like a shouting at the void kind of platform. None of the family I have in mind use twitter or mastodon, but everyone uses facebook. So I’m aiming for that sort of a feel. But IMO Friendica is not something I feel is good enough yet from a user experience point of view, the same with Diaspora*.
Why not a private Lemmy instance?
I don’t think Lemmy is really a good format for this. Many of the users won’t be familiar with Reddit or forums, and it’s better suited to strangers ranking things with the votes. Facebook style I think works better for people who now each other, and especially when they are only familiar with facebook.
Man ive been looking for something like this for a long time and never found a suitable option.
Post i had before about this same topic.
Humhub wasnt a solution for me since most of my family uses iPhones and not having a dedicated app would confuse them.
I notice their website says they are working on releasing apps for Android and iOS by the end of 2023. I can find the Android one but not the iOS one :(.
Luckily most of my family uses Android.
Now you mention it, I remember seeing your post. Disappointing that you never found something. Was the lack of iOS app the only thing that put you off HumHub?
The lack of ios app deterred me from even testing it. I play tech support for my family enough to know an app would be necessary.
It really is an enterprise solution and I doubt your family will be happy with it.
Why not just set up a Snikket server and use that? You can easily create group-chats and share pictures and videos there and the interface is similar to WhatsApp.
The idea of a snikket server is good, but I feel it’s not much different that any other chat app. HumHub works on both mobile and desktop, and provides many features above a chat app. It’s more similar to Facebook groups (which people are already familiar with) but without the spying, whereas I don’t get the benefit of Snikket over say Signal.
What is it that makes it unsuitable for families? It seems to be pretty familiar feeling to people used to Facebook.
Since Snikket is just an XMPP server, it can be used with desktop apps like Dino as well.
All the corporate gamification feature are probably quite annoying.
All the corporate gamification feature are probably quite annoying.
I might have missed that. What features are you thinking about? I haven’t seen any points or badges or things like that?
Isn’t Snikket just a fork of Conversations for Android? It doesn’t look like it’s any better either.
Conversations+Prosody all the way.
Conversations says to purchase on the play store. I don’t think I’m gonna get good uptake it every user has to pay money.
It’s free on f-droid, though? https://f-droid.org/packages/eu.siacs.conversations/
Fdroid is not suitable for the average person. The average person can install an app from google play, but Fdroid is quite a jump in steps, not to mention all the warnings that Android gives them, all but telling them not to do it.
I wholly disagree with everything you just said, including that your friends and family by your own assessment are unable to rise above average skills. But you know them better than I do, of course 🤷
It’s simple enough for me. And many of the people who have grown up with technology can probably work it out. But there is a huge difference in effort between the two.
Say my 70 year old uncle (that does not live nearby) needs to install Conversations.
Fdroid version
Please go to this fdroid website. Click the button to download the APK. Now when you get a warning that you aren’t allowed to install software from this source for security reasons, click the button to take you to settings, then switch the toggle to allow from this source. There’s a message telling you that your phone and personal data are more vulnerable to attacks and you need to take responsibility for any loss of data that results from this, but just ignore that. Now once you’ve installed it please go and disable it. When someone messages you a link to an APK you should never, ever install it. That’s a common scam and it will put a virus on your phone. We need to reenable this setting so you don’t accidentally do that since a link can just start the download.
Next, please open the Fdroid app, and search for the Conversations app. For some reason I can’t send you a link because the fdroid website doesn’t seem to have an open in Fdroid button, I dunno why, maybe it depends on your phone or your browser, just search it up and make sure you install the right one.
Right, now when you click to install this, you’re gonna have to go through all the above stuff about accepting the security risk of losing all your data again, because it’s another app we are granting this permission to. Don’t remove this permission though, we’ll just leave this one open.
Installed that? Great, now depending on your phone it may or may not keep the app up to date so make sure you open Fdroid from time to time, click the button to update, wait for it to download the update, then tap the button to install and then tap the button to install (again). Make sure you remember to do this because security updates are important.
Now whenever you want to invite someone else in, make sure you send them these instructions so they don’t go thinking they have to buy the Play store app.
Compare this to the Play store version when it's a free app
Hey here’s a link, click it, and an app page will open in the store. Tap to install it.
Maybe we should agree to disagree, but I do not think I can just leave people to invite other people and sort it out on their own. I’m gonna be spending my days hand holding people. Maybe my family is dumber than average.
Hey there! HumHub sounds pretty promising for what you’re looking for. It’s great that it has that Facebook group-style setup since it’s something a lot of people are familiar with. The community version being open-source is definitely a plus too. I’d say give it a spin and see if your family vibes with it.
What I’m trying to avoid is on boarding a bunch of people to some platform then working out that it doesn’t work for us and having to get everyone set up on a new platform! I was hoping to hear from others who had tried it, or others who have other solutions that work for them.
