On To The Fediverse

Federated applications have long interested me.  Admiring them from afar, I set aside the idea of actually using them until now.

Social media was a fun place to hang out electronically, at one time.  The last few years, virtually all sites and apps became toxic places to have a presence, and I made a decision around the time of the pandemic to simply not use them at all.  I really did think that was the last of me socializing on the internet.  I had my friends, and the ones that counted had my number, and they could text or call any time.

Recently, I reflected on this Augustine-level of online existence, and realized that even for an introvert, you need to interact with some people.  Furthering this was the realization that social media is toxic by design.  Younger people may be surprised to hear that there were times when Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, were fun places to interact.  These apps were all funded by venture capital, and eventually they demanded they make a lot of money.

What you got were hostile and enshittified “features,” like Timelines that prioritized content and left you out in the cold unless you paid for the “boost,” or were so obnoxious online that you created negative attention.  Normally adjusted human beings with normal content found themselves artificially ignored.  Hence, this nice hangout became the province of Influencers, Online Ragers, or people foolish enough to pay for Likes.  If you were none of the above, you didn’t count, except somebody to serve up content from the former to.  It has changed the brains of people who are Terminally Online.

It never had to be that way.  What if you could have a product that didn’t do any of those awful things, didn’t surveil you at every turn, and didn’t tell you what content was good for you.  What if you could get a genuine sense of community without the Big Tech destruction of humanity?

For me, this began by getting the non-federated BlueSky app.  I originally got an account back when you needed an invite code, more or less to say I had one.  I had grown to loathe Twitter to such an extent that I finally decided to delete my account, with no concern whether somebody would try to take my alias or not.  I had a group of friends who had moved over to BlueSky, as well as a sports writing community from my favorite sports website.  I lurked more than engaged with the community.  It is important to go back to the point that BlueSky, while a welcome improvement over Twitter, is not a federated application.  It is centralized, and the challenges that come with that design.  In addition, it too is funded by venture capital.  What this means is that all the free and easy services you get from BlueSky have no guarantee to stay that way.  At some point, somebody is going to influence them to do more to be profitable, and we have decades of Big Tech to show what behavior comes from that.

Finally taking the plunge that friends like Alex have long been advocating, I could only laugh as I joined Instances in Mastodon and Pixelfed.  This was clearly a community, of people with passionate interests similar to mine.  They were active and supportive.  It should be noted that I posted the photo below, and received about a year of Instagram’s worth of feedback.  I am not posting for praise, but it was eye-opening to see that people really were supporting each other, and having a good time.  That such a “small” community of Fediverse users can provide so much more community that huge monolithic apps with literal billions of users should tell you all you need to know about what Big Tech really thinks about people.

And what if I come to not like the Instance I selected?  Well, this ActivityPub protocol allows me to simply change Instances!  I can pack up, and take all my followers, and mentions with me.  This is far better technology than the Big Tech apps have designed in years.

The other thing I failed to notice until now is that a huge part of the community I know online were already here.  It is clear that people are finally waking up to the fact that Big Tech is hostile online to users by design, and their architecture of surveillance advertising followed by stoking the embers of mob rule is what they want.  Why spend even a minute there when you have such a better alternative?

Is the Fediverse going to rule the online world now?  Likely not.  This is still a niche product, and requires an average user to understand centralized vs. federated applications, and why it benefits them.  At point, the user base will crest, and that will be what we have.  That being said, if even 20% of social media users move over, and ActivityPub means it doesn’t matter where they move to, because they can talk to everybody on every Instance, then it is a huge win.  Think of the Linux community.  Linux never came to dominate the desktop world, but it is a large enough group that they have a significant sense of community together (this doesn’t include the dominant position of Linux in servers, storage, and mobile devices).  That is what I foresee with the Fediverse.  It may be smaller than Big Tech, but will be large enough that you won’t mind at all.

For now, I will keep my personal Instagram, that is private by default.  This is because I am aware I won’t be able to get all friends and family to migrate off the app, and they will want to know how my child and I are doing.  I am in the process of deleting my Landscape Photography Instagram, that I haven’t even used in 5 years, and letting some of those folks I am moving on out.

Using these products is free, but I wanted to make one last point.  You can join any ActivityPub Instance, and you don’t have to pay for the privilege.  That Instance isn’t free though, as it is usually supported by the admin or relies on donations.  I am going to make a point to budget some money to donate to these Instances, to thank them for the online real estate, and help defray the costs.    Considering the benefits you get from a community of real humans without the surveillance, advertising, and toxicity, it is totally worth it.

If you read this and have interest (and not there already), you can follow me on the following non-Fediverse and Fediverse apps.

Non-Fediverse

Follow Me On BlueSky

Fediverse

Follow Me On Mastodon

Follow Me On PixelFed

Follow Me On Lemm.ee

tmschultze

T.M. Schultze is a San Diego-based photographer, traveller, and writer. He writes, photographs, and draws things of the outdoors that have inspired humans for thousands of years. He co-authored the Photographer’s Guide to Joshua Tree Park which can be purchased here.