Friendica
Decentralized social network linking you across the Fediverse
Friendica is a self‑hosted social platform that federates with Mastodon, Diaspora, Misskey, and many others, letting you share, import, and control privacy across the Fediverse.
Overview
Overview
Friendica is a self‑hosted social communication platform that joins the Fediverse, allowing users to interact with accounts on Mastodon, Pleroma, Diaspora, Misskey, Peertube, Pixelfed and many others through standard federation protocols.
Capabilities
It aggregates content from external sources such as Tumblr, WordPress and RSS feeds, and supports add‑ons like IFTTT and Buffer for mirroring posts. Fine‑grained privacy settings let you define the audience for each update, keeping your data out of corporate harvesting.
Deployment
Built with PHP and MariaDB, Friendica can be installed on typical LAMP stacks or deployed via Docker for quick provisioning. The platform is released under AGPL‑3.0 and benefits from an active community that contributes plugins, themes, and regular security updates. Extensible through a rich plugin ecosystem, you can tailor the look with themes like Frio and add functionality to suit personal or organizational needs.
Highlights
Pros
- Full data ownership and control
- Broad protocol support across the Fediverse
- Extensible via plugins and add‑ons
- Active community with regular updates
Considerations
- Requires technical setup and server maintenance
- PHP stack may be unfamiliar to some developers
- Higher resource usage than lightweight micro‑bloggers
- Feature set can be overwhelming for casual users
Fit guide
Great for
- Individuals or groups wanting control over their social data
- Communities seeking federation with multiple Fediverse platforms
- Organizations that need content import from existing blogs or RSS
- Developers who want to extend a social platform via plugins
Not ideal when
- Users who prefer plug‑and‑play SaaS solutions
- Those without server administration experience
- Environments with strict low‑resource constraints
- Projects requiring native mobile apps (Friendica relies on web UI)
How teams use it
Personal social hub
Consolidate Mastodon, Tumblr, and RSS feeds into one timeline, staying connected without juggling multiple accounts.
Community forum
Host a self‑run discussion space that federates with other Fediverse groups, enabling cross‑platform conversation while retaining moderation control.
Non‑profit outreach
Mirror blog posts to social feeds via IFTTT/Buffer, amplifying content without manual reposting.
Privacy‑focused networking
Share posts with custom audience scopes, maintaining control over who sees each update.
Tech snapshot
Frequently asked questions
What federation protocols does Friendica support?
Friendica works with ActivityPub, Diaspora, OStatus and other common Fediverse protocols, enabling interaction with Mastodon, Pleroma, Misskey, Peertube, Pixelfed and more.
Can I import existing blog content?
Yes, Friendica can pull content from WordPress, Tumblr and RSS feeds, allowing you to migrate or mirror your existing posts.
Is there a native mobile app?
Friendica provides a responsive web interface for mobile browsers; there is no dedicated native app at this time.
What are the basic system requirements?
A typical LAMP stack (PHP 7.4+, MariaDB/MySQL) or Docker environment is sufficient; recommended at least 1 GB RAM for moderate traffic.
How does Friendica protect my data?
Data resides on your own server under the AGPL‑3.0 license, giving you full ownership and the ability to configure privacy settings per post.
Project at a glance
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Last synced 3 hours ago