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.

  • MisterFrog@lemmy.worldOP
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    18 hours ago

    Damn, thank you for this response, I really appreciate it. This does make sense, and I do not understand a lot of the technical details, or how this problem would be solved. I just wish it was haha

    The circles project, at least claims, to be built on top of Matrix, where everyone who you accept to follow you essentially joins a seperate matrix room with your content in it, and the “timeline” compilation is done via UI.

    Can’t say I understand what happens technically when someone is kicked from a matrix room, so what what happen with the encryption keys I dunno.

    • onlinepersona@programming.dev
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      17 hours ago

      This does make sense, and I do not understand a lot of the technical details, or how this problem would be solved. I just wish it was haha

      :D same. I think the solutions could be applied elsewhere too. They’d be very interesting.

      Can’t say I understand what happens technically when someone is kicked from a matrix room, so what what happen with the encryption keys I dunno.

      That depends on the client. Some clients will exit, some will stay in the room. Encrypted matrix rooms use “perfect forward secrecy”, meaning new people can’t read the past, and old people removed from the group/chain/chat cannot read new messages. So, being kicked from a room would still allow you to see all the chat history you stored. Or if you sign in with a device that didn’t get the “kick” message yet, the server could still send you all the messages up until the point of the kick message.

      I’m not sure how Matrix implements it and server + client implementations can differ.

      Anti Commercial-AI license

      • MisterFrog@lemmy.worldOP
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        17 hours ago

        Perfect backwards secrecy what be a trade-off I’d personally be fine with. To speculate a bit, the fact it’s a 2 person room in the Futo Circles case inplifies things a bit. Your keys are different with every single person. It’s like sending a mass e2ee message to every single contact you have, just that it’s only fetched from the server if they go looking.

        Having to re-encrypt stuff does seem like the biggest downfall here (if this understanding is even correct 😅)

        This is indeed a complicated question, thanks for taking the time to respond :)