The Fediverse

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The “Fediverse” is the term we use to describe an open social web that one can describe as a federated universe. The Fediverse is not a single platform, but rather a network many diverse inter-operating platforms, distributed across a multitude of servers ¹. The decentralized nature has a number of inherent positive effects that no Big Tech “closed garden” platform can achieve.

As diverse as the Fediverse is, as many introductions there are into what the Fediverse is. A very good point to just start exploring can be found in the fedi garden. For a more detailed explanation you may visit jointhefediverse.net, or watch this exciting video by Elena Rossini.

The introduction given here has the specific goal of explaining why federation of social media is important for the health of our democratic society.

The Power of Interoperability Link to heading

Interoperability is the ability of platforms (or more generally speaking, pieces of software) to effectively connect and operate. In the Fediverse, platforms interoperate: If you have an account on a Mastodon instance, you can follow and interact with a video channel on a PeerTube instance. This interoperability is possible by the software on all Mastodon servers and PeerTube servers complying to the open ActivityPub protocol.

One channel for all Link to heading

Interoperability is really convenient. It means that you do not need to have an account on each social media platform, as you currently see the row of icons under any news article or artist web page. You simply publish using the platform that best suits your work and anyone in the Fediverse can see your update.

Freedom Link to heading

Convenience is great, but the much greater good coming with the interoperability of the Fediverse is freedom.

… of choice Link to heading

The interoperability does not only allow you to connect to anyone in the Fediverse, it also allows you to move whenever you want while keeping your social graph. This is pleasant if you realize that mastodon does not offer the best options for posting your pictures and you can easily move to a PixelFed server. You can also move from one Mastodon instance to another.

… from advertisement and propaganda Link to heading

The importance of this freedom to move cannot be overstated: It breaks the business model of Big Tech social media that is based on advertising. Interoperability is the reason why you don’t and never will see much advertisement in the Fediverse: When a server or platform would annoy their users with advertisement, these users would very quickly move to another place free of advertisement.

Advertisement is annoying, propaganda is dangerous. Since no one owns the Fediverse, no one can choose to silence political opponents, and no one can fan the flames of hate as easily as certain Big Tech entrepreneurs may be able to do today.

… from hate speech and misinformation Link to heading

Being freed of the advertising-based business model, there is no incentive of algorithms being developed that select content only for its quality of drawing our attention. As a result, in the Fediverse, content that sparks anger and envy does not get pushed onto our timelines. In the Fediverse, hate speech and misinformation tend to get suppressed instead of amplified.

… from mass surveillance Link to heading

For purposes of advertisement or worse, for spreading propaganda, Big Tech social media track their users across the web. In the Fediverse, creepy platforms that facilitate such surveillance would quickly become empty as a desert.