Welcome to the Fediverse
If this is your first time hearing about the Fediverse, we're very excited to be the ones to introduce you to it!
Background
When you want to send an email, you don't need to use the same email provider as the person you're sending it to.
The same is true for phone calls. You can sign up with any phone network, and still call your friend regardless of which network they are on.
This is possible because of open standards. Email providers and phone networks use these standards to federate their services.
Open standards allow you to communicate with anyone, without needing to be on the same service!
💡 You already use 'federated' services
Email and phone calls are both examples of federated services.
Old Social Media
Most older social media platforms are centralized. If you wanted to leave a comment somewhere, you needed to make an account on that website / app.
As the userbase of individual platforms grew, it became a problem with how much power the platforms had. It became very difficult to leave them, or for better alternatives to compete.
It has gotten to the point where a few companies have a near-monopoly on social media, and your online experience along with it.
So why aren't social networks federated?
The Fediverse
Faced with this problem, in 2018 the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) published the first version of the ActivityPub standard. W3C is the main international organization responsible for the web's standards, including HTML and CSS.
ActivityPub is an open standard and federation protocol for social media. It allows different social media platforms to communicate with each other!
Since then, a number of independent projects have adopted ActivityPub to make new social media platforms.
Do you like reading short text posts from your friends and celebrities? Join one of the many microblogging platforms, and you will be able to follow people from any of the other platforms.
Do you like sharing photos? Watching videos? Upvoting and commenting on forum posts? There are platforms for all of these, and much more.
All of these platforms make up a 'federated universe' of social media, known as the Fediverse.
How does this help?
- Decentralization: No single entity has control over the entire network, and it is much harder for a single entity to take over a social media format.
- Freedom to Choose: You can pick the server that best fits your needs, moderation preferences, and values. If something changes, you can easily move to another server and still see the same content.
Many of these platforms are being built from the ground up, by teams of volunteers, to fix the problems we saw with older social media platforms. As such they are often better about privacy, transparency, and user control.
Our Platforms
Ready to start already? See below for some of the platforms that we run.
Remember that you can always join other instances of these platforms, while still being able to interact with our users and content.
