I'm frustrated with the fact that only public posting works on this server right now.

Nothing I post with a more limited scope, like to "Friends" or "Mutuals" etc., is visible to anyone else, and I can't see anything posted by anyone else that isn't public. Nor do Direct Messages seem to work. On other social platforms I rarely post publicly. I primarily post with limited scope to my network or DM someone.

That's how I want to use Friendica, but right now I can't. It seems weird to me that I can post publicly and get engagement from other servers, even other federated platforms, but I cannot communicate privately or in limited scope with anyone on the SAME server. You'd think it would be the other way around?

As it is, I can't really bring anyone else to this server from Facebook until it is working properly, and they are frankly losing interest. They're all going over to Bluesky instead even though it's more like Twitter than Facebook. 😕

The main reasons I picked this server were that it seems to be on proper hosting rather than on someone's home hardware and is operated by non-profit organization rather than an individual, and - unlike a LOT of Friendica servers - it was open to new users. But until it works right I can't recommend it or use it the way I used Facebook. I don't want to have to migrate to another Friendica server and I definitely don't want to try running one myself.

I know the server admin is desperately trying to fix it. This post is not a dig at him. But at this point, if wiping the server and starting over would fix it, even if I had to re-sign up, I'd be okay with that. I just want everything to work!