4 Open Source Alternatives To Facebook

The best Social Media, and Communication tools similar to Facebook

Mastodon stands out as a leading open-source alternative to Facebook. For those seeking different features or workflows, we've curated a comprehensive list of Facebook alternatives, each offering unique strengths.

Notable mentions in the Facebook alternative space include: Friendica, Movim, Okuna.

The Facebook ecosystem primarily consists of Social Media solutions, with additional options in Communication. Explore these alternatives to discover tools that align with your specific Facebook-related requirements, whether you're looking for enhanced features, different user experiences, or specialized functionalities.

Mastodon iconMastodon

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Mastodon screenshot

Mastodon is a free, open-source, decentralized social media platform that puts the control back in the hands of the users. Unlike traditional social networks, Mastodon is not controlled by any single entity, allowing for a more democratic and user-centric experience. It enables users to create and manage their own servers, known as instances, which can interconnect globally to form a unified social network without the influence of corporate algorithms or advertisements.

  • Decentralized Network: Each Mastodon server operates independently but can communicate with others, forming a global network.
  • Self-Hosted: Users can host their own Mastodon instances, providing full control over data and moderation.
  • No Algorithms: Content is displayed in chronological order, ensuring users see what they want, not what an algorithm thinks they should see.
  • Privacy-Focused: No ads, no tracking, and no data selling. Your data remains yours.
  • Rich Media Support: Supports audio, video, pictures, polls, content warnings, and more, allowing for diverse content sharing.
  • Community-Driven: Each instance can set its own rules and moderation policies, fostering unique communities with shared values.
  • Open Source: The platform is open-source, allowing anyone to contribute to its development and ensuring transparency.
  • Interoperable: Built on open web protocols, Mastodon can interact with other platforms using ActivityPub, expanding its reach.

Mastodon offers a refreshing alternative to traditional social media by prioritizing user autonomy, privacy, and community. It empowers individuals and organizations to create their own spaces online, free from corporate control and intrusive advertising, fostering a more authentic and engaging social experience.

Friendica iconFriendica

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Friendica screenshot

Friendica is an open-source, decentralized social network platform designed to seamlessly connect users across various networks without central authority. It aims to provide a privacy-focused, interoperable solution for social networking, allowing users to connect with friends and family while maintaining control over their data and communications.

  • Decentralization: Friendica's decentralized architecture ensures that there is no central authority or ownership. Relationships can be established across any compatible system, creating a network of Internet scale made up of smaller sites. Users can enjoy seamless wall-to-wall posts and remote comments, even across different network nodes.

  • Privacy: Friendica offers robust privacy features, including access lists for every item, private conversation groups, one-to-one private messaging on supported protocols, and the ability to optionally expire old content. Users can also download their personal data, ensuring it all belongs to them.

  • Interoperability: Friendica supports multiple protocols such as ActivityPub, OStatus, and diaspora*, allowing it to interact with various platforms like Mastodon, Hubzilla, and GNU social. It also supports email contacts and communications via IMAP4rev1/ESMTP, and can import arbitrary websites and blogs into your social stream via RSS/Atom feeds. Additional services can be integrated via plugins.

  • Posts: Write, edit, comment, like, and dislike posts from your contacts.

  • Photos: Share photos selectively with chosen people.

  • Events: Organize events and invite people.

  • Profiles: Create public profiles and private aspects for close friends, or keep everything private.

  • Extensibility: Friendica is extensible via third-party plugins and themes, allowing users to add functionality, personalize the look and feel, and connect to third-party services.

Friendica is a powerful, user-controlled social networking platform that prioritizes privacy, interoperability, and decentralization. It is suitable for anyone looking to maintain meaningful connections while having full control over their social data.

Movim iconMovim

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Movim screenshot

Movim is a decentralized social and chat platform that serves as a powerful web frontend for the XMPP network. It centralizes chatrooms, blogs, and video-conferences, making it easy to communicate with colleagues, friends, or family across various devices, from smartphones to desktop computers.

  • Unified Communications: Centralizes chatrooms, blogs, and video-conferences in one simple interface.
  • Device Compatibility: Fully adapts to all devices, from smartphones to desktop computers.
  • XMPP Standard: Connects with other XMPP clients such as Conversations and Dino.
  • Blogs & Communities: Simplifies publication management and supports Markdown syntax for rich text content.
  • Chats & Chatrooms: Offers end-to-end encrypted messaging, file attachments, and multimedia sharing.
  • Global Search: Find posts, chatrooms, communities, tags, and contacts instantly.
  • Push Notifications: Receive notifications about likes, mentions, and comments on all your devices.
  • Night Mode: A feature to rest your eyes during nighttime use.
  • Open Source: Source code is open for study, improvement, and redistribution.
  • Decentralized: Based on a fully decentralized and standard network.
  • Progressive Web App: Can be installed on all your devices directly from the browser.

Movim aims to provide a seamless and enriched communication experience by leveraging the XMPP standard, ensuring compatibility with other XMPP clients, and offering a wide range of features to enhance social interactions and content sharing.

Okuna iconOkuna

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The Okuna Social Network API is an open-source backend service that powers the Okuna social network platform. It provides a robust and scalable infrastructure for managing user interactions, posts, and other social features in a seamless manner.

  • User Management: Handle user registration, authentication, and profile management with ease.
  • Post Handling: Create, read, update, and delete posts, including multimedia content like images and videos.
  • Social Interactions: Manage likes, comments, and shares to foster community engagement.
  • Notifications: Real-time notifications to keep users updated on their interactions and activities.
  • Privacy Controls: Advanced privacy settings to give users control over their data and interactions.
  • Analytics: Gather insights on user behavior and platform usage to inform future improvements.

The Okuna Social Network API is designed to be highly customizable and easily extensible, making it a versatile solution for building modern social networking applications.