
Ask HN: Tool for self-hosting your own Facebook profile after downloading it? - camillomiller
I was playing with the idea of a Facebook profile cemetery. It would be a tool to structure your profile data after you download it from Facebook, in order to self-host it on a space you own. The idea would be to keep alive your profile history, but on your own website, for friends and family to still browse it, or just as a way to claim and still show data that&#x27;s fundamentally yours to show around.<p>Before I try to figure out a way to do that and start building something, do you know any tool useful for this purpose?
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Jaruzel
The zipfile you download from Facebook is already in the correct format. All
you need to do it spin up a web server (apache nginx etc.) and unzip the files
into the webroot.

For security, just add the usual webserver/*nix security.

EDIT: Just unzipped an old download from my (pre-purged) profile into an empty
web folder, and it all works, mostly. FB specific icons are missing, and your
private messages are all in a subfolder called 'messages' which has no
security, and all the threads are folded into a long chronological list. So I
guess the format would need tweaking a bit.

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amelius
Wouldn't it be better to import the data into an open social network like
Mastodon?

What would be great is a tool that continuously does this (i.e. a one-way
sync). This could help people convert away from FB.

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digitalzombie
Mastodon is just twitter. I'm on it... unless I'm missing something.

It doesn't completely replace it at all and missing a lot of functionalities
that FB have. The ones being, chat room, event invitation/planing, birthday
reminder, photo albums, group, etc...

~~~
EGreg
My company is working on something to power that and more, for everyone as
open source

[https://qbix.com](https://qbix.com)

If you wind up trying it, please provide some feedback.

~~~
cddotdotslash
Honest feedback: get rid of the spinning globe GIF, it reminds me of Geocities
in the 90s.

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EGreg
Have you tried clicking on this GIF?

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anotheryou
the full-size globe itself looks cool indeed, it doesn't necessarily help the
gif feel of the small one though :)

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TazeTSchnitzel
When you ask Facebook for your archive it's already pure HTML. All you need to
do is to censor it somewhat (if appropriate, e.g. remove private messages) and
host it somewhere with access control.

~~~
gaius
You also need to remove the Facebook tracking pixels they have embedded in it.

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yqh
I've checked my own archive and they haven't embedded any tracking pixels.
Don't spread nonsense.

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FabianBeiner
I once created [https://github.com/FabianBeiner/Bela-Facebook-Archive-
Theme](https://github.com/FabianBeiner/Bela-Facebook-Archive-Theme), but I
don't know if this one still works with the current version of the exports.
But basically, you can just beautify the pretty decent export of Facebook with
some CSS and remove the parts you don't want.

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walterbell
The [http://indieweb.org](http://indieweb.org) community has prior work in
this area.

 _> Your content is yours: When you post something on the web, it should
belong to you, not a corporation. Too many companies have gone out of business
and lost all of their users’ data. By joining the IndieWeb, your content stays
yours and in your control_

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anyzen
No, but I am curious too - that would be a nice idea to kick-start a
distributed social network imho.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Opera had something called Unite just before it went under; it was a web-
server that ran on the browser and allowed you to connect to friends p2p for
sharing, etc., it wasn't quite there but it had the concept of the 'net as
_the_ social network without intermediates.

I was really excited by the concept and thought we were on track to have "the
next Facebook". Primarily it needed caching to handle self-hosted content not
being always on.

Still hopeful we can move on that direction so we can self-host and publish to
different platforms, etc..

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ibash
I deleted my Facebook. Two things I would’ve liked:

\- a tool to add exif location data back to my images. In the export the image
metadata (like location) is in a separate file. I ended up writing a quick
script to do this.

\- a tool to message people in messenger my phone number and email. I ended up
doing this manually, but it’d be nice to have an automated solution.

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verdverm
Does Mastodon use ActivityPub?

~~~
neckardt
Yes. First line in the README on Github:
[https://github.com/tootsuite/mastodon](https://github.com/tootsuite/mastodon)

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happppy
I think it would become public and anyone would be able to see who you are,
what you do. How are you gonna check if someone visiting is your family
member?

~~~
BerislavLopac
One-off passwords?

~~~
anyzen
Or invitation links (with auth tokens).

~~~
happppy
A secret is only a secret when only one person knows.

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mariapilar444
Try mastodon, I think it has a fb import tool

~~~
camillomiller
I’m not looking to create something to update in the future, more like a
public repository of my own content under my own direct control

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rabidrat
Is there any way to get a list of my direct friends with all their contact
information (email, phone, etc)?

~~~
robbyoconnor
This is a horrible idea

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rabidrat
Why? I have access to it anyway by clicking on their name and can cut-and-
paste by hand. And they are people who have agreed to share this kind of
information with me specifically.

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badsavage
Thanks for this idea! Will implement it next year into my website generator

~~~
camillomiller
Glad you liked it. Keep me posted.

