Fedecan

We are a registered non-profit organization based in Canada, and our goal is to provide a safe and welcoming space for people to connect with each other on the Fediverse.

❓ If you're not sure what the Fediverse is, you can read our guide here

Why we exist

The Fediverse enables a world of new possibilities for online connections. However, federation alone doesn't solve everything.

When you sign up on a website, you are trusting that website with your data and your online experience. We believe that this trust should be earned, and that it should be maintained. We want you to feel confident in your choice to sign up with us, and to stay satisfied with that choice long-term.

Why a non-profit?

As a non-profit organization, our fundamental priorities are different from traditional social media platforms. We don't need to maximize engagement for advertising revenue or chase rapid growth to satisfy investors. Instead, we can focus entirely on serving our community's needs.

Our non-profit structure allows us to:

• Maintain full transparency about our operations and decision-making
• Reinvest our resources directly into improving our services
• Ensure long-term sustainability, so you can trust your account will be around for years to come without fear of sudden changes

What do we actually do?

In addition to users, a social media platform needs to take care of 3 other areas:

1. Software: Someone needs to write and maintain the code that makes up the 'social media platform'
2. Servers: Someone needs to set up and manage the computers that run the software
3. Organization: Someone needs to manage the user data, moderate the platforms, provide support to users, and any other administrative tasks

With most older social media platforms, all three areas were managed by the same company.

In our case, and with much of the Fediverse, the structure is different.

• The software is made by separate teams of developers, often made up of passionate volunteers and funded by donations. They release the code for their software under an open-source license, so that anyone can use it freely.

• Anyone can set up their own servers to run this software. Whether that server is a small computer in someone's home, or a large data center, as long as someone has the means to run the server, they can run their own instance of the software.

We run our servers in a data center in Vancouver. If you are curious about the specifics of our setup, you can read more about it in our announcement here. In addition to managing the servers, we moderate the platforms, support users, and handle the financial and legal aspects of running the organization.

Thanks to this structure, our overall costs are very low. In fact, as of 2025, it only costs us around $1.10 per user per year.

This should put into perspective how cheap it is to run a social media platform such as ours, and how it is possible to fund everything through donations and grants alone.

If you are interested in supporting this work, check out our donation page. You do not need to donate to use our platform. Please only donate if you are able to.

Still have questions or feedback?

You can ask us publicly on our main community on Lemmy, or send us an email at [email protected].