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?

  • Dave@lemmy.nzOPEnglish
    1·
    5 hours ago

    I think largely we are aligned on what we are looking for in a platform. The private blog idea is interesting. I normally consider blogs as public, are there private blog platforms?

    So much of PhotoPrism is built on free libraries; the project uses something like 120 OSS libraries. How much of their income do you think they contribute to those projects who’s work their taking advantage of?

    I don’t see it like that. OSS is people releasing their work allowing it to be used commercially without limitation (other , it’s what they wanted when they picked the licence, or they would have picked a different one.

    Actually, I don’t have any issue with anyone charging for their software, either; it’s just that I won’t use it, and I don’t trust quasi-free projects. That’s just from experience. Most end badly, either by being bought out and going totally commercial, or just slow enshittification for the non-paying customers.

    On the other hand, projects die when the maintainers lose interest. I would like a platform that I know is going to stick around. That’s a difficult ask though, if it’s a company like HumHub, it’s very possible if the company goes under it will just die. On the other hand, something like Zusam, if the maintainer loses interest it will likely also die. It would be nice to have some confidence in the longevity of the platform before diving full steam onto it. But I guess at this point, finding something that works is hard enough, without worrying about that!

    I do have reservations about HumHub, but it’s the first platform I’ve seen that even comes close to being a familiar feel for users. I’m considering the other idea of using Dokuwiki as well, which I guess comes in as being more similar to your blogging idea.