Fediverse: a new open and social web
How a new network revolutionise the web by bringing old values back to social media.
Few may know, but there is currently a network on the rise that brings back what made the internet so great in the early days before big tech corps took over: a direct, pure and open connection with people around the world. It's called the Fediverse.
What is the Fediverse?
The Fediverse is not just another big tech, venture capital owned platform that feels good at the start and gets more and more unpleasant to use over time. It's an network of platforms / services / apps (I'll get back to this later) that openly connects to each other. But let's give my friend Elena (check out her beautiful Fediverse series on her blog!) the word before we do a less technical dive into the the Fediverse:
Introduction to the Fediverse by Elena Rossini
A chronological timeline without distraction
Imagine everything you enjoyed on Instagram, Twitter and Co without the bad parts. Imagine scrolling through your favourite social media platform without being distracted by ads or forced recommendations. Imagine viewing all of your friends posts in a chronological order and not just a few "recommended" ones by an algorithm in an order it defined.
This alone would be a much, much more pleasing user experience for most social media platforms out there.
An open and interconnected network
Imagine you are active on Twitter, as you like posting short thoughts throughout the day but are not really heavy into posting your own images. However, you do love looking at images from space, and there are these awesome astro photographers who unfortunately only run Instagram accounts. To see their work, you would need to set up an Instagram account and start following them (and then see more ads and "recommendations" than their actual work).
Now imagine that you can view these accounts completely without being forced to log into Instagram. Even better: imagine that you can just follow these accounts with your Twitter account and see their newest images in your Twitter timeline whenever they post them on Instagram.
Private and owned by you
Imagine using a social media platform that doesn't spy on you. No algorithms analyzing your posts to determine "how well" they are doing. No trackers spying on your friends list, your messages, or your platform activities. No AI shuffling everything you upload and write into a void beyond your control to generate corporate profit. No app analyzing your address book, other installed apps, geolocation, or your entire smartphone to sell your data to advertisers.
Imagine being able to run your own Instagram on your home server (or with an independent hosting service you trust) and still be connected to everyone else on Instagram. Or imagine running your own Facebook just for your family, sports club or community.
Take you followers and move them with you
Imagine if you could transfer your account, including all your followers, from one platform to another. This means that you wouldn't need to start from scratch, and could continue to build on your network exactly where you left off.
This all is the Fediverse
All of these things exist in the Fediverse. It's a network of services that run without ads, algorithms or trackers. These services interconnect on a common, open and free technological basis, which is available for everyone to use and implement. It's an official World Wide Web standard.
Services by people for people
So, the Fediverse is a network, but what services are running on it?
As the basic technology behind the Fediverse is free and open to everyone, individual developers have started rebuilding the services they once loved that have now turned into data- and money-milking user experience nightmares: Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Facebook and more. There is a good chance that for every major social media network, there is an open and free alternative in the Fediverse. Let's take a quick look at a few of them.
Mastodon - when Twitter was cool
Mastodon is a Twitter alternative and the biggest service on the Fediverse. Mastodon is often the first go to place to connect with like-minded people across the Fediverse and transformed recently into a non-profit to guarantee it's full independence and to protect their community even better.
My account is currently on their flag ship instance. Check it out at sturmsucht@mastodon.social
Pixelfed - an Instagram alternative
Pixelfed is the biggest Fediverse alternative to Instagram. It brings back the joys of IG's early days without forced recommendations, ads or AI accounts. They recently added support for Stories, but keep videos (yes, that's what Reels are called in the real world) out of it as their community values sharing photos over doom scrolling video content.
I'm on their flag ship instance with my main account under https://pixelfed.social/chris.zielecki
Peertube - a Youtube alternative
PeerTube is a video hosting platform like Youtube that enables users to publish, manage, and share videos through customizable channels and playlists, offering a self-hosted alternative to mainstream video services.
Lemmy - a Reddit alternative
Lemmy replaces Reddit in the Fediverse. As its closed source big tech alternative it functions as a link aggregator where users can create communities, submit posts with text, links, or images, and engage in discussions through voting and comments.
Ghost - blogging like it's hot
Even this blog is automatically shared to the Fediverse. Since Ghost's last major update this summer (version 6.0), every Ghost blog can activate integration with the Fediverse to share and interact with their long-form blog posts, and even short-form notes, with everyone in the network.
Other services
The Fediverse is full of alternatives for even more services you might use and like. Not all of them are mature or come with an elegant UI (yet). The majority of Fediverse services are not backed up by a large company with a million dollar budget, but are passion projects of people sick of the current state of social media. But there are alternatives for Goodreads, Bandcamp, Facebook, Facebook Groups, TikTok, Tumblr, and even more microblogging services, while companies are working on integrating the technical bases of the Fediverse into their products like Ghost, Wordpress, Flipboard and even Threads (*irks*).
My take on the Fediverse
There are many things I left out of this article to keep it shorter as an overview of the network and to dive deeper into in future blog posts. A lot works differently here in the Fediverse, whether due to different technological approaches or the sheer absence of commerce that now rules big-tech social media platforms. Returning to good old Social Media 1.0 values comes with a learning curve - especially if you haven't crossed your mid-30s yet - but it's worth your attention.
For me, the Fediverse brought fundamental changes in how I interact with, and even within, social media-things I don't want to miss and that I truly believe will bring broader change to social networks in time. People are finally getting tired of Zuckerberg & Co. and are starting to understand that they need change. And change is already on its way.