The Fediverse: A Non-Manipulative Social Network
What is the Fediverse? Will the Fediverse work? Will it solve the current issues in the present social media environment? Why even create the Fediverse?
Fediverse
Well the whole goal of the fediverse to mitigate issues that a centralized social network creates. The Fediverse was created using the Activitypub protocol.
The Activitypub protocol basically allows users on different social networks to comment on and share with one another instead of doing everything on the same social network. This idea of sharing between each other on different networks using the same protocol is called the Fediverse.
So essentially the goal is to go from locked down manipulative spyware social applications where every needs an account to post anything to a free open source community driven applications where anybody can interact with anybody so as long as they have an account on the Fediverse.
Instances
Instances are the confusing part and where I think everyone gets stuck. Each social network has servers and each server has an instance. Each instance has its own rules and style.
Think of instances like Subreddits or Discord Channels. It's really nice and you can have your own community of users on your own virtually created social network.
However, the problem that I think gets people confused is they can only see and interact with content from the instance they made their account on and not other instances with other cool content. This is the biggest problem with the Fediverse. The solution is to have a centralized framework where you can consume, interact, and find people regardless of the instance, but still retain the powers of your own instance. If this can be implemented correctly then I will get really excited. So far app developers for Mastodon, and Lemmy has implemented features like this so you can browse all content regardless of the instance, but I still feel like it needs more work.
Security And Privacy
As for privacy, this isn't an Imageboard. The same rules that you use for traditional social media still apply meaning, everything is still connected to your account regardless of what you post. So the rule is don't post anything you wouldn't be comfortable with an employer or a family member seeing.
However, unlike traditional social media there isn't this tracking spyware manipulative algorithm selling all your data to third parties. So that part is nice.
Security wise, proceed with caution. Data breaches can happen anywhere. Unless there are secure protocols in place that protect messages and voice calls I'll treat it like I treat traditional social media meaning I won't use it or post anything. The good news for the Fediverse though is that a lot of apps are open source meaning I can actually see the technology behind it, so I know if it's spyware and I know if it is using secure protocols. I will constantly assess app's all the time and assess whether they're truly secure depending on the way they were designed to be used.
Community And Moderation
This is the most controversial problem. For the big instances, the rules will pretty much be the same for traditional social media. Meaning they have to conform to the laws of certain countries or certain countries will block users from using it. So no, you're not going to get your large anarchy server with hundreds millions of people supporting overthrowing the oligarchy and posting tons of illegal NSFW content.
For smaller instances, the situation is a lot more tricky. Just like discord servers, since the instance is relatively unknown moderators can pretty much set up any rules they want to. Meaning you can get smaller ideologies posting illegal content. We've already seen this happen with discord grooming servers. The only way discord was able to solve this was by basically going into the software and forcefully removing smaller servers one by one which opened up a huge privacy and ethical problem. There are questions regarding how certain communities in the Fediverse will handle this.
Mobile
Something like 95% of people browse social media on their phone. So for the Fediverse to become popular and usable it needs to be able to integrate successfully on mobile apps. This is a sort of interesting dilemma because I feel like what made social media crap was the integration of mobile apps. I feel like phone posters and mobile users dumb down the content the discussions in general, so I don't really like them.
However, that being said apps can really get the Fediverse to a much wider audience. Developers are realizing this and implementing various features to make it more user-friendly. I am excited to see what kind of new apps will be on the horizon. Especially for Peertube. If Peertube has a really good mobile app then I could see it potentially competing with YouTube.
Also, these third party apps are not spyware unlike traditional social media apps. The problem with traditional social media apps is they take all the data off your phone. In my opinion, that's highly unethical and morally wrong.
Comparison To Traditional Social Media
So compared to traditional social media, the Fediverse is a lot quieter. People are not trying to manipulate your attention or get you to like them. It's just people posting what they want to post. People doing what they want to do. The biggest problem with traditional social media is the incentives huge corporate interests have to control the ego and socialization through various manipulative propaganda tactics. This was in large successful whether people know it or not. The only way the Fediverse can exist is through public funding. Because of this there is no incentive for corporations to manipulate users - this encourages a real active community rather than a fake passive community.
An active public community is what I love about the Fediverse. The users seem much more intelligent, reasonable, and informed. The users on traditional social media seem a lot more toxic, fake, and garbage. And now since AI can pretty much generate any content it's hard to see where the value will be besides coddling your psychological thoughts and emotions to make more money off your ego. Hopefully the traditional form of communication like using Snapchat or Instagram to make friends will die down and alternatives will appear in the form of the Fediverse. God knows we need it.