Decentralized social media

Welcome to the Fediverse

Article from Issue 227/2019
Author(s):

If you're looking for social media options where the user has more control, you'll find a range of options to explore in the Fediverse, including the popular Mastodon.

Despite what it may seem, despite its promise of unbridled communication possibilities and its supposed gift of giving voice to the traditionally voiceless, current social media is a walled garden at best, although a slimy cesspit with bars over the top would be a more apt description.

The problem with the current social media status quo is that the platform does not have your interests at heart. The companies that run proprietary social media platforms gradually introduce more and more restrictive terms of service, package your personal data and sell it off to other companies and governments, make their algorithms more manipulative, and so on.

In the Beginning

You could renounce social media altogether and go and live as hermit, but why throw the baby out with the bath water? The Fediverse [1] is the FOSS community's response to walled-gardened, personal data-leaching, closed, and proprietary social media. Strictly speaking, the Fediverse would cover all social media services (and some services that are not related to social media at all) that do not rely on a centralized and controlling entity (like, say, Facebook, Twitter, or Google), but instead allow a user to run their own server (often called a "pod") and to connect it to a network of similar servers to share the media between them. This allows user A to post to pod X and user B to read it from pod Y.

[...]

Use Express-Checkout link below to read the full article (PDF).

Buy this article as PDF

Express-Checkout as PDF
Price $2.95
(incl. VAT)

Buy Linux Magazine

SINGLE ISSUES
Print Issues
Digital Issues
 
SUBSCRIPTIONS
Print Subs
Digisubs
 
TABLET & SMARTPHONE APPS
Get it on Google Play

US / Canada

Get it on Google Play

UK / Australia

Related content

  • Social Skills

    Creating a custom application that toots text to Mastodon (the Fediverse's version of Twitter) is simple and straightforward. But we can mix it up by adding images and video, scheduling posts, and changing privacy settings.

    more »
  • Mastodon

    Get started with free microblogging, interact with others who share you interests, and even help expand the Fediverse with your own Mastodon instance.

    more »
  • Mastodon Clients Post Line

    The open and simple Mastodon API makes it easy to create applications to interact with this federated microblogging platform. Here are some of the clients that the community has come up with and how you can use them.

    more »
  • toot

    If you are looking for a Twitter alternative, toot lets you interact with Mastodon from the command line.

    more »
  • Status Quo

    Creating your own clients to interact with your friends in the Fediverse is easy. A bit of Python and an off-the-shelf module will do the trick.

    more »
comments powered by Disqus
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters

Support Our Work

Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.

Learn More

News

Tag Cloud

Administration Community Events Hardware Linux Linux Pro Magazine Mobile Programming Security Software Ubuntu Web Development Windows free software open source