I very much agree. I created a pod with the idea of posting content there instead of Facebook, and would then invite friends and family to create an account and join in. But if they look at my profile and see nothing then they’re going to leave and not come back. Promises of future posts is not going to cut it.
There might be philosophical or technical reasons for the way it is, but if a diaspora goal is to get lots of people to move over from Facebook then this is a big obstacle in the way.
I’m aware that diaspora is free software, and am happy to contribute to a bounty to solve the problem.
I’m new to Diaspora, but my reason for joining and the problem I’m having is all stated above. I’ve managed to get a few friends over who are interested in helping me expand our overall contacts, but this seems to be the issue holding us up on interacting more or getting family involved. I don’t want to make my posts public as that’s defeating the purpose as far as I’m concerned: I want my posts only shared with people I directly chose. It’s even more important for a friend who joined, who want a place to better control pictures of her kid for family and friends, has she has had someone use those photos for ill intent. I jsut wanted to comment and hope this got pushed again.
Any progress on this? It’s quite logical, should just be an on/off function per pod: allow new contacts access to old content. Or, a feature/checkbox on adding a new contact I guess.
Without this it really is hard to grow a non-public community and threatens diaspora’s success or survival. :\