Fair. Friendica stayed well below the radar for pretty much the entire time, even though it sounded a bit familiar for me when I created this account a few years back, and it is also kinda the oldest platform in the Fediverse.

It has many of the features that regular Facebook has, like creation and attending to groups (even this Lemmy community is displayed as a group) as well as events and pages, but also some extra stuff non-privacy related like following RSS feeds directly, as well as supporting BB Code for formatting your text pretty much everywhere (in your posts, comments, in your profile descriptions or in the event descriptions). Not only it supports ActivityPub, but it also supports Diaspora and RSS (as said) and Tumblr and Bluesky (if you have an account there). Server admins can also install add-ons which add all sorts of extra functionality - from compatibility with other networks (with Tumblr, Bluesky or WordPress) to stuff like content filter or collapsing posts if they are not displayed in a language of your choosing (stuff that Facebook, again, doesn’t have).

And of course, it is not owned by Meta, nor it has the privacy invasive features of it, nor it does spy you across the web whether you have an account on it or not, nor does it pump billions into failed projects like the Metaverse only to later pull the plug, nor it invests into AI projects or spy glasses.

If you’re more curious about it, I wrote a handy guide myself here a while ago (I’m not involved into the development of it, but this was the best way I could contribute - and sorry for the Google site). There’s a server list here where you can pick your server (if you want a recommendation, pick friendica.world for the largest server, or loma.ml for a bigger selection of add-ons) and a video guide on both YouTube and [https://peertube.stream/w/p/4K4MWYXMEYUtVDqKjjq4Uu?playlistPosition=1]PeerTube](https://peertube.stream/w/p/4K4MWYXMEYUtVDqKjjq4Uu?playlistPosition=1) if you’re feeling a bit overwhelmed. And there’s a support group at !helpers

Edit: oh derp, somehow I entirely misread your message as that you had not heard of Friendica’s entire existence. Sorry, ignore this if you like, or perhaps it’s interesting in a different manner now. 😜

Your instance is quite a bit cut off from the rest of the Fediverse, although even so the news of Friendica has made waves - e.g. https://beehaw.org/post/521802 with >800 comments.

Friendica is fairly niche though, and suffers from a lot of problems. For one, as a Facebook replacement it relies upon your family members and close friend group to also use it - but unless you act as tech support and install it onto their machines for them (alongside Linux and everything needed for them to self-host), then how else will you be able to communicate with them on that platform?

And it more or less does need to be either self-hosted or at least hosted exceedingly often, since it does not scale well and users of the project have started begging for technical support from outsiders (not a great example of the latter but see this informational post).

In short, there are reasons for its lack of spread so far. I do not know if those issues are solvable - though by now perhaps they already have been? It’s just a very different model from the more semi-anonymous platforms like the Fediverse, which can make things challenging.