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Social Networking: The Fediverse Tries to Break Free from Big Tech
Mark Zuckerburg says that the future of Facebook and Social Networking is the Metaverse. But others are saying that there’s an alternative that might arrive first: the Fediverse.
The Federverse (‘Federation’ + ‘Universe’) is a collection of social networking apps connected via a decentralized network. There is no master Facebook-like entity overseeing the entire operation. Instead, there are very many independently hosted social websites, called ‘identities’, that communicate with each other. The different sites can be microblogging, blogging, and social networking sites.
For example, apps like Mastodon and Diaspora are becoming popular apps within the Federverse. Mastadon is a Twitter-like alternative. Diaspora provides social networking capabilities and is an alternative to Facebook. Pixelfed is an alternative to Instagram. PeerTube parallels the capabilities of YouTube.
Richard MacManus, writer and technology journalist, wrote on the NewStack that “this is the crux of the problem with centralized social networks like Twitter — the vast majority of us are mere “readers” of Twitter because our feeds are clogged up with the likes of @elonmusk and other power users. We can write all we want, but relatively few people will see it in their feeds. This is not that different from the pre-internet era when mass media controlled the narrative. Only now, it’s increasingly Musk and his fellow power users who control the narrative.”
James Holloway, writer and editor, wrote for New Atlas that “at the moment the Fediverse feels like a scrappy insurgency, and for now that’s very much its appeal. Whether it can tempt across mainstream web users (or indeed, whether it wants to) remains to be seen. And what that means for moderation, business models and the overall health of the Fediverse is far from clear.”
