The Fediverse

The “Fediverse” refers to a federated universe of diverse, inter-operating platforms, distributed across a multitude of servers ¹. This decentralization has a number of inherent positive effects that no Big Tech “closed garden” platform can achieve.

As diverse as the Fediverse is, there are many general introductions explaining what the Fediverse is, such as the fedi garden, jointhefediverse.net, or this exciting video by Elena Rossini.

This introduction has the specific goal of explaining why federation of social media is important for our mental health, and 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 made possible by the software on all Mastodon servers and PeerTube servers complying to the open ActivityPub protocol.

Convenience: One channel for all Link to heading

Interoperability is really convenient. It means that you do not need to have an account on each federated 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

Interoperability allows you to not only connect to anyone in the Fediverse, it also to move to a different platform 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 harmful content 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. When in the Fediverse, a server or platform would annoy their users with advertisement, these users would very quickly move to another place free of advertisement. This is the reason why you don’t and never will see much advertisement in the Fediverse.

More crucially, without advertisement, there is no incentive to design algorithms that promote the negative and harmful content which happens to grab our attention best. In the Fediverse, content that sparks anger, envy or annoyance does not get pushed onto our timelines. Instead, in the Fediverse, hate speech and misinformation tend to get suppressed.

… from propaganda Link to heading

On Big Tech social media platforms, harmful content may not be amplified by accident only. Considering how close Big Tech are currently connected to governments, there is a serious danger that social media platforms are weaponized to spread propaganda and steer the public discourse.

The Fediverse has no owner, meaning that no one can choose to suppress posts of 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 mass surveillance Link to heading

For purposes of advertisement, Big Tech social media track their users across the web, collecting personal data at an unprecedented scale. Such mass-surveillance is dangerous, in particular in the light of the close ties between Big Tech and governmental powers.

In the Fediverse, creepy platforms that facilitate such surveillance would quickly be deserted, and see their members happily moving to a friendlier place.

• More about why the Fediverse should thrive.
• More about this project.