Episode #96: What is the "Fediverse"?!

For most of us, social media is a daily part of our lives. We use it to connect with friends, share our experiences & cat photos, and debate strangers about Star Wars trivia. That’s the upside. But the downside is pretty awful… Social media platforms offer little or no control over our own data and images, they bombard us with tons of targeted advertising based on our click history, and they manipulate not only what and who we see but also when we see it. Back in Episode 49, I explained why the Facebook empire run by Dark Lord Zuckerberg is a manipulative, destructive, and greedy corporate entity that refuses to protect its users’ privacy or the spread of disinformation. Not that Twitter, Instagram, or Snapchat are any better because they’re not, but that’s by design. The design of today’s social media results in substandard products that are based on a parasitic premise: you and your data are the product. But… what if there were a better design? What Is The Fediverse? First, the name: Fediverse stands for “Federated Universe”. The name is a good descriptor: The Fediverse is a network of interconnected social platforms that offer the features we’ve come to love — micro-blogging, photo sharing, music and art posts, or interactive messaging boards — but which collectively operate on open standards and protocols. My fellow Trekkies will already understand this concept because #obviously… Here’s why this design is a big deal: today’s biggest social media platforms are owned and controlled by a single, corporate entity and are run on closed standards using software code that we’ll never see. This allows a few, select people to wield enormous power and control over billions of people’s daily experiences. Because of that, let’s call this The Dictator Approach to social media: “I’m in charge! You have no choice but to trust me! Me and my teams know what’s best for you and for data so we’ll take care of things from here, thanks.” The Fediverse goes in the opposite direction. Instead of having a single, corporate owner, The Fediverse is a federation of independently operated “instances”. Instances are simply servers that an individual or a company uses to run the software and services that are used to access The Fediverse. Let’s call this The Democracy Approach to social media: “Lots of people share control! That includes you! And, since you know better than we do what’s best for you and your data, you get to decide how it is managed.” How Does It Work? I’ll use Mastodon as an example. For those who haven’t heard of Mastodon, it’s a federated social media platform that looks and works a lot like Twitter… only it isn’t owned by an arrogant, anti-semitic, douche-canoe control freak who likes giving white supremacists a place to amplify their vile hatred. That’s why I now call it “Shitter”. Ahem. I’m guessing that’s why millions of people - myself included - have left it and flocked to greener pastures. Joining Mastodon is easy: users register by signing up via an instance that best represents their region, interests, or personality. There are thousands of different servers and some specialize in catering to gamers, artists, the LGBTQIA+ community, and, of course, tech. As I’m a writer on Medium, I created the Tech Talk Mastodon account on their instance. Once I’m logged in, I can interact with other users on that instance. However, the real magic is this: as long as I’m logged in to Mastodon via my instance, I can also read, follow, or chat with people on ANY OTHER instance. That’s possible because The Fediverse is built on open-source communication protocols. This decentralized design ensures that there is no single point of failure or censorship, as no one person or corporation has complete control over the network. Neat, right? Only… doesn’t that sound familiar? Well, it should. What I just described is, essentially, how email works. Anyone can sign up for any email provider. But even if I sign up for ProtonMail and you sign up for Outlook, we can still send each other emails. That’s because email servers all use the same standard protocol to communicate. The goal of The Fediverse is to bring that model of communication to social media. How Is It Designed? The design of The Fediverse is what sets it apart from Facebook, Shitter, and Snapchat. It operates on a decentralized model, allowing for greater user control and privacy. The Underlying Technologies At the core of The Fediverse's design is the communication protocol that allows interaction between instances. It’s called ActivityPub and it’s an open-source and decentralized protocol for social networking. ActivityPub allows instances to exchange messages, share content, and follow each other, creating a network of interconnected platforms. Sidebar: open-source means that ActivityPub’s code is publically shared, so anyone can view it, confirm that it is secure, and - more importantly - find bugs and improve it. For these reasons, open-source is considered “The Gold Standard” of software. To best demonstrate how powerful ActivtyPub is, let’s do a thought exercise… Imagine if a user on Facebook user could seamlessly share messages with users on Instagram, Snapchat, or MySpace. Wouldn’t that be cool? Of course, that’s not possible because there IS no interconnectivity between social media platforms. Only now, there is! And ActivityPub is the reason why. This is why I think of it as THE ROOT of the Fediverse tree: What About Security? Security and privacy are major concerns when it comes to online interactions. This is why privacy advocates despise Facebook and Shitter. The Fediverse addresses these concerns by incorporating security measures into its design. Decentralization Design is important. In this case, the design of the Fediverse network is, itself, a security measure. In a decentralized network, no single point of failure or vulnerability can compromise the entire system. That means the Fediverse will continue to operate, even if ten, 100, or 1000 servers are hacked or shut down for any reason. Not true for Facebook. Back in October of 2021, they had a global shutdown that lasted for 6-7 hours. BILLIONS of people couldn’t log on to any of Facebook’s kingdom of social media websites, including WhatsApp and Instagram. And, while I’m no fan of Facebook, a global shutdown event like that is terrifying. BILLIONS of people who rely on the Facebook empire of apps to communicate with one another… suddenly could not. YOU Own Your Posts and Data One of the fundamental principles of The Fediverse is user ownership and control. On traditional social media platforms, your data and posts are owned by the platform, not you. By comparison, The Fediverse puts you in charge. You retain ownership of your posts and have the ability to decide who can view and interact with your content. In practical terms, that means you can: * Set your posts to auto-delete after a certain amount of time * Leave one server and join another without losing your followers * Export your posts, media, and follower lists That second item is amazing to me, in particular. It’s like saying, “I don’t like you anymore, Facebook! So I’m gonna MOVE all of my friends and followers over to Snapchat or CompanyB where I’ll interact with those same people.” Amazing… but there are limits. Currently: users cannot migrate their posts and their media from an old server to a new one. Instead, old posts will remain posted unless a user opts to delete them. Additionally, anyone interacting with posts from an old account will be redirected to that user’s NEW account. Neat. For the moment, users can only download an archive of their posts and media, but cannot bulk upload them onto a new instance. While that sucks, I’m guessing that - in the not-too-distant future - Mastodon and other services running on ActivityPub will make that possible as well. Caveat Emptor It’s worth remembering: on a decentrali… This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.technologytalk.net/subscribe