We can have a different experience on social media

If you experienced the internet before 2010, you may remember we were in control of our feeds in social networks: You explicitly followed your friends and you saw their posts in chronological order alongside other profiles you followed, until you had caught up with the latest posts.

Today, if you create a fresh Instagram account, it’s very likely that you’ll instantly see posts and recommendations from profiles that you don’t follow and haven’t heard of, generally the popular ones, with a large number of followers, verified accounts or from public personalities.

Many social networks use algorithms that prioritize content likely to keep users engaged. The longer you stay on the app, the more ads the platform can show you based on your activity, so your feed may not reflect only the accounts you chose to follow.

Doesn’t it seem that we are using these social networks out of habit rather than because we enjoy them? I feel the same, and that’s why I asked myself why I kept using them. That’s when I discovered the Fediverse.

What is the Fediverse?

According to Wikipedia , “The Fediverse is a collection of social networking services that can communicate with each other using a common protocol.”

A good analogy for such a protocol is email. Regardless of your choice (using Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo Mail, etc…), you can send an email to anyone in the world without knowing or caring what service they use, even if it’s a new email service provider. This is not the case when we talk about social media. If you’re on Instagram or TikTok, and your friends or celebrities you like are on X, or Facebook, you will have to sign up for each separate service to stay in touch with them.

In the Fediverse, social networks can communicate with one another once they share the same protocol, generally ActivityPub . You just have to sign up in one of them and follow accounts you want inside the federation, even accounts in a different social network. There are some limitations, of course, because some of these networks can block connections or can’t be reached by everyone, but this is true in most of the cases.

Here’s an excellent video by Elena Rossini explaining more about the Fediverse and why she argued it was a good time to join it and leave social media owned by Big Tech behind.

Some common terms in the Fediverse

• Instance means an individual server running software for a social network that connects to the wider Fediverse. For example, Mastodon (a platform widely known in the Fediverse) has multiple instances, like Hachyderm.io or Mastodon.social , each one managed by different people and having different rules and policies.
• Federation is the process/ability of different instances to send posts and data to each other.
• Decentralization means that since each instance is managed by people and can be part of a large federation, no single company or CEO controls the whole network.

Some instance recommendations

Here are some instance recommendations if you want to start in the Fediverse and don’t know where to create your profile yet.

Don’t worry too much about this as you can migrate to other instances if you want or even create multiple accounts in different instances.

• Hachyderm.io . A network of tech industry professionals from around the globe, focused on building a respectful community.
• Techhub.social . A Mastodon instance for passionate technologists.
• Orgânica.social . A Brazilian instance for Mastodon.

If you want to follow me, my account is @diogomoreira@hachyderm.io

Further reading

• Observatório do Fediverso (In Portuguese)
• Join the Fediverse (In English)