Federating Social Media

“Imagine Instagram allowed users to follow and like Tweets through the Instagram app; vice-versa”

Social media is about connecting people right? Such Corporate speak! Much like the earlier days of the internet where you can host a personal website, not having to worry about walled gardens or ‘signing-up’ to view simple photos & posts. Modern centralized social media isn’t about ‘connecting people’ - excuse the Mark Zuckerberg corporate speak.

Protocols, not new platforms

Turns out, the clever people at W3C have already proposed a protocol; Protocol you ask? Just like email or like HTTP websites, the ActivityPub protocol - powers the next generation of social media platforms. Since, it’s a protocol just like email, you get to use any server you want, use any client or develop features as you like. All these servers can federate together.

The Fediverse

On the fediverse you can like a Pixelfed photo from your Mastodon account. Watch and comment on a PeerTube video on your Mastodon feed, any ActivityPub powered platform. That’s the beauty of the Fediverse. There’s probably a clone / alternative to popular centralized social media platforms.

Mastodon, PeerTube, Pleroma, FunkWhale, Lemmy, WriteFreely, Pixelfed & many many more you can discover

Honeypots

Before I made the switch - I used Twitter, Snapchat, Reddit, YouTube, & Telegram [channels] all these apps on my phone - to stay updated. I still use (some) even today, via RSS feeds & proxied-frontends.

People shouldn’t have to be locked into a platform, when you post something they always access it in-freedom. Platforms should be fast, scalable, easy to port should I need to switch servers. Now, I exclusively use the fediverse. All the platforms I use run free/libre-software - the user remains in control. Most of them run not-for-profit, and are self-funded by the community. No ads, or promotions, or algorithms pushing propaganda.

Some embedded examples

Do not “compromise for data mining monsters like TikTok or Facebook ~ bEcAuSe eVeRyOne’s uSiNg iT”

You got to defend for yourself. Tell people when you decide to shift from Twitter/Instagram/YouTube to Mastodon/Pixelfed/PeerTube, or whatever works for you. They can always get your posts via RSS or visit your handle regardless they have an account or not, unlike their centralized counterparts.

I use the PWA sites for my Mastodon, Pixelfed instances. For Android I use Tusky. For Desktop there’s Toot a TUI Mastodon client.