The Fediverse
Or taking back control over your feeds and private data on social media...
So I've been a Fediverse user for a couple of years now. My first experience with the Fediverse was like a lot of Fediverse users in response to the growing sense of unease with other media platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter/X etc, and the various reasons that might be.
What is the Fediverse?
Well, it's a protocol. A system of communication. A way of interconnecting various services so that your account on one service or server can communicate on another.
Ever used email? Imagine as a Gmail user only ever being able to send email to other Gmail users. Never being able to send an email to email users of another service unless you also sign up to their own privately-run and monitored email service...
That's how social media functions. Closed off, silo'd services, where you can't communicate directly with users of other services.
But did you notice how you can in fact send an email from your Gmail address to your friend who's on Hotmail? Or Outlook, or (preferably) Proton or Tuta mail?
That's interoperability of services that share a common communication protocol. These different email providers can talk to one another and exchange messages as though they were on the same service and server.
That's a lot like how the Fediverse works - services that share the ability to communicate with one another by using a common communication protocol (which here is called ActivityPub), regardless of the service or service provider.
Examples?
Here are a few examples of "Big Tech" services, and their Fediverse equivalents:
These are all services that live in the Fediverse. And the aforementioned interoperability means that users on Mastodon can interact with users on Pixelfed, Lemmy etc.
Disclaimer: It doesn't work perfectly IMO, but it does work. It can be a bit janky at times, but no less so than it would be getting Twitter and Facebook users to interact directly without an account on the other service (god forbid that unholy union ever occurs!).
(As an aside, this blog is also federated by Ghost via ActivityPub, but it's still in beta as ActivityPub uptake increases, and is a bit under-featured at this point in time, but it's a start!)
What are the benefits?
Now we get to the good bit. Why should you sign up for a Fediverse service?
Well, for one there are no algorithms. No "For You" or "Recommended" feeds. You're not being shovel-fed "content" that you don't necessarily want to see.
In fact when you sign up you'll see nothing at all in your feed. Not a single thing. You have to go searching for people and their posts or hashtags to follow. Because that is the only thing you'll ever see. The content you choose.
Take the Twitter alternative, Mastodon, which I'll use as my main example throughout this article:
All of these posts I see are in my feed because of the people I follow. No more, no less.
Either that, or I'm seeing them because they're using hashtags I follow, such as those related to ADHD, World of Warcraft, Linux etc, among a very wide variety of other topics and subjects.
Now, just note that you won't immediately see every single post on the Fediverse all at once. The way it works is that you have your server that you sign up to (my server is hosted on masto.ai), and on there you'll have two feeds - a local feed, featuring users on your server, and a wider public feed.
Now the public feed isn't a full list of posts from every other server. No, and there are reasons that that is a VERY good thing, but I'll come back to that. No, what you'll see there are a list of posts from servers that your own server is federated to.
So what does federation mean?
My understanding is that a server federates to another when a user on server A follows a user on server B. This sets up the communication between the two servers in your public feed and allows you to see more posts from server B. This spider-webs out as you, and your fellow home-server users, follow more posts and users from other servers.
So why is it a good thing that you can't see posts from every server?
Well, like most free to use platforms, there are servers out there set up specifically for topics and subjects that are... well, let's just say it proves that shutting down decentralised services like the fediverse would be very difficult. Topics that you DEFINITELY would not want to be seeing in your public feed. Put it like this: Porn doesn't bother me, hate speech I can block and ignore, but yeah, there are servers out there that you or I just don't want to know about.
And here's the great thing. The admin who is responsible for your particular home-server can de-federate from these types of servers. That's to say that they can block those servers and cut off all communication from them to all users on your server. When that happens on a wide-enough basis, then it cuts off these distasteful servers from being able to spread their "content" to anywhere else, isolating them completely.
Federation also means that I, as a Mastodon user on masto.ai, can interact with posts on other services, such as Pixelfed, the Fediverse's version of Instagram. Hell, you can even sign up for Pixelfed using your Mastodon account!
I chose to keep my two accounts separated, because I'm not sure what would happen if I change the Mastodon server I use and move my account to another server...
Because yes, that is a thing you can do too!
Now to be fair, it doesn't work great, and you'll lose* the posts you'd made on your old server when you move to a new one (so beware if your post-count is important to you for some reason). Effectively it links the two accounts together, directing your followers to your new account, making them auto-follow you on the new server where possible, and greys out your old account page, directing new followers/users to your new account. Not perfect, but a damn sight better than if you did the same on Twitter etc.
*And by lose, I mean they won't transfer over to your new account, but will still be visible and accessible on your old account, so they're not gone per-se, just not visible on your new account.
So, what's the catch? Ads, right?
The admins and people who run these services must be harvesting my personal data to feed me ads and stuff right?
Wrong. So very, very wrong 😉
Here's the thing - it costs nothing to sign up for and use these services, and they definitely don't use your data to target you with ads, because there are none.
Yes, you read that correctly.
None of these services use adverts to fund themselves. So how exactly do they pay for themselves?
Mostly? Donations and subscriptions. All of which are non-mandatory and completely voluntary. People can make one-off or monthly payments to the server admins, who will frequently have Ko-Fi, Patreon or PayPal donation links on either the server's About page, or the admin's own profile page, or more commonly both. And they'll normally have a nominal minimum payment of just $1/£1 per month.
If you do sign up and use a Fediverse service, please do consider doing so. These aren't run by big corporations with endless pockets. More often they're run by enthusiasts or members of the public with a passion. Every little bit will help them, because running these services, especially the larger servers, is both time-consuming and expensive.
For example, I pay a monthly Patreon donation to Stux, the guy who runs my server, as he runs some of the most popular servers such as https://mstdn.social, and of course https://masto.ai/.
Comparing to other services
Mastodon, last I checked, had over 10 million active accounts, and over a million daily active users (people who log in/use the service every single day).
While smaller in nature to the likes of Threads and Twitter, that's still a lot of people.
In terms of personal caveats on other services, Bluesky has been known to cow-tow to political interests, banning accounts of activists and other "troublemakers" at the behest of authoritarian regimes, and Threads is owned by Meta, along with Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp. The same Meta that actively courts authoritarians and their regimes, and helps shape and influence public opinion positively for these same regimes.
Other, more centralised services such as Twitter etc are larger, have more users, which by its very nature is both a good and bad thing.
Good in that there are more people for you to interact with. Bad in that there are more people to interact with you.
But that focus on growing users, driving engagement above all else, to harvest ad-clicks and revenue by any means necessary, can and does lead these companies to promote hate-fuelled agendas and content, because hate and rage-bait drives engagement better than anything else, sadly.
As a result, I had disengaged more or less completely from social media for the past lot of months, including the fediverse, caught up as a casualty in my social media burn-out. Not only that, but I had been busy in my real life, with work and my degree.
I've begun more recently, mainly thanks to the existence of this blog and publishing my posts, got back into using it. I also "use" Bluesky and Threads, but neither do what Mastodon can do while remaining ad-free, private and user-focused. And neither of them have my affection like Mastodon does. Put it like this, I would NEVER pay for either Bluesky or Threads.
Summarising
- No ads, so no data harvesting to target them at you.
- A home feed that will only show you the users and hashtags that you actively choose to follow, with no "For You" algorithm-targeted "suggestions".
- The ability to cross-communicate and sign up for other services using one account.
If you're tired of current social media, of being the product rather than the user, of being interrupted by ads that use your data to target your specific interests, of being fed a steady torrent of hate, vitriol and ideologies that are anathema to you, and just generally sick of so-called "big-tech" shovelling their world view down your throat in order to drive engagement with their platforms?
Sign up for a Fediverse service and start taking your first steps into a larger, friendlier and more privacy and user-focused experience. Trust me, it may be a wee bit different than what you're used to with other more traditional services, but the end result is a lot better for your mental health, privacy and engagement with social media.
Note, that all of the above is based on my personal opinion (obvs), and knowledge of how the Fediverse works. It is, to my knowledge, more or less accurate, but I welcome any corrections or suggestions, and you can get me on my socials, preferably Mastodon for obvious reasons! 😉
Also, check out Elena Rossini's excellent 4 minute video on the subject which inspired this post - she also supplied the featured image for this article!
