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= Fediverse =
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Introduction
======================================================================
The Fediverse (commonly shortened to fedi) is a collection of social
networking services that can communicate with each other (formally
known as federation) using a common protocol. Users of different
websites can send and receive status updates, multimedia files and
other data across the network. The term 'Fediverse' is a portmanteau
of 'federation' and 'universe'.
The majority of Fediverse platforms are based on free and open-source
software, and create connections between servers using the ActivityPub
protocol. Some software still supports older federation protocols as
well, such as OStatus, the Diaspora protocol and Zot, while newer
protocols such as AT Protocol connect via network bridges. Diaspora is
the only actively developed software project classified under the
original definition of 'Fediverse' that does not support ActivityPub.
Design
======================================================================
While a traditional social networking service will host all its
content on servers managed by the owner of the website, the
decentralized structure of the Fediverse allows any individual or
organization to host a social platform using their own servers
(referred to as an "instance").
Every instance is independent, and can set its own rules and
expectations. Nonetheless, much as users of one email service such as
Gmail can still send emails to users of another service such as
Outlook, users may still view content and interact with users on any
other instance in the Fediverse. A user on one Mastodon instance, for
example, may view and interact with posts made by a user on a
different instance.
Instances of different social networking services may also communicate
with one another. A user on the microblogging platform Misskey, for
example, may view and interact with posts made by users on Mastodon.
Some Fediverse networks also allow users to interact with different
social networking formats from the same platform. For example, a user
on a social news instance running Lemmy can interact with another post
from an instance of mbin, a similar service, as well as microblog
statuses from Mastodon.
Content moderation and user safety
====================================
Decentralized social networking platforms introduce new challenges and
difficulties for user trust and safety. The Fediverse by nature gives
the operators of an instance sole responsibility for moderating its
content. As there is no form of centralized governance or moderation,
it is impossible for an instance to be "removed" from the Fediverse;
an offending instance can only be defederated by other instance
operators' choice to make its content inaccessible from their
instances. Individual instances are responsible for defining their own
content policies, which may then be enforced by their staff.
Moderation of a Fediverse instance differs significantly from that of
traditional social media platforms, as moderators are responsible not
only for content posted by users of that instance ("local users"), but
also for content posted by users of other instances ("remote users").
Historical protocols
======================
The concept and the functionality of the Fediverse existed before the
ActivityPub protocol and the term itself. One of the first projects
that included support for a decentralized social networking service
was Laconica, a microblogging platform which implemented the
OpenMicroBlogging protocol for communicating between different
installations of the software. The software was later renamed to
StatusNet in 2009, before being merged into the GNU social project in
2013 along with Free Social, with the two latter servers being a fork
of StatusNet.
Over time, the limitations of the OpenMicroBlogging protocol became
more apparent, being designed as a one-way text messaging system. To
replace the ageing protocol, OStatus was devised as an open standard
for microblogging, combining various other technologies like Salmon,
Atom, WebSub and ActivityStreams into a single protocol used for
communicating between instances. StatusNet first implemented the
OStatus protocol on March 3, 2010, with version 0.9.0, and OStatus
quickly became the most popular federated protocol in usage.
Around the same time as OStatus was gaining popularity, the Diaspora
social network was formed, using its own federated protocol. To
illustrate the differences between the two protocols, the terms of
'the Fediverse' and 'the federation' began to enter common usage,
mainly after 2017. The term "the Fediverse" was used to describe the
network formed by software using the OStatus protocol, such as GNU
Social, Mastodon, and Friendica, in contrast to the competing diaspora
protocol under "the federation".
ActivityPub
=============
In December 2012, the flagship StatusNet instance at the time,
identi.ca, transitioned away to a new software named pump.io, with a
new federation protocol to replace OStatus. The new protocol was
designed to be useful for general activity streams and not just status
updates, and replaced many of OStatus' external dependencies with
JSON-LD and a REST API for its messaging and inbox systems, as well as
making more use of ActivityStreams. While not as utilized as its
OStatus predecessor, it would later become influential in the
development of the ActivityPub standard.
In January 2018, the W3C presented the ActivityPub protocol as a
recommended standard. The standard aimed to improve the
interoperability between different software packages running on a wide
network of servers and to supersede both the OStatus protocol and
Pump.io. By 2019, almost all software that was using OStatus had added
support for ActivityPub. While Mastodon began to remove OStatus
support, other projects maintained it in their code, such as Friendica
(which also maintained diaspora support along with ActivityPub).
ActivityPub is the most widely used protocol in the Fediverse and a
W3C standard. Some popular Fediverse software includes:
* Microblogging
** Mastodon
** Misskey
** Pleroma
* Image sharing/video sharing
** Pixelfed
** PeerTube
* Social networking
** Friendica
* Social news
** Lemmy
* Events
** Mobilizon
* Content management
** Ghost
** WordPress
AT Protocol
=============
A major protocol often contrasted with ActivityPub is the AT Protocol,
which powers the Bluesky social network. While both protocols aim to
create decentralized social networks, they employ different technical
philosophies regarding user identity.
Developers of the AT Protocol, including Bluesky CEO Jay Graber, have
stated they chose not to use ActivityPub because it did not natively
support easy "account portability", the ability for a user to move
their account, data, and social graph to a new provider without
relying on the original server to authorize the move. In the
ActivityPub model (used by Mastodon), a user's identity is typically
tied to a specific server, similar to an email address; if that server
goes offline, the identity can be lost. The AT Protocol aims to solve
this by separating identity from hosting, allowing users to switch
providers without losing their identity.
Although the two protocols are technically incompatible by default,
third-party "bridges" such as Bridgy Fed have been developed to allow
users on ActivityPub networks to follow and interact with users on the
AT Protocol network, and vice versa.
* Bluesky
*Skylight - A Tiktok alternative with AT protocol as its connection.
*Smoke Signal - A decentralized event management and RSVP application.
Other Fediverse protocols
===========================
While the Fediverse has traditionally been the network most commonly
referred to and used as an example regarding the subject of
decentralized social networks, alternatives to it and the accompanying
ActivityPub have been developed and deployed. Smaller competitors such
as Nostr and Farcaster have become popular within the cryptocurrency
community. These protocols have used ActivityPub as a frame of
reference for which to design their own architecture, as these newer
protocols use a different federation model based on publishing content
to relays for distribution rather than ActivityPub's server-centric
model.
Despite their differences, software exists that permit the bridging of
user content between these protocols, including "double-bridges" that
span multiple protocols for the purpose of distributing the same
content.
Adoption
======================================================================
Users have been slow to embrace the Fediverse due to poor user
experience and excessive complexity.
Following the acquisition of Twitter by Elon Musk in November 2022,
certain major social networks, including Threads, Tumblr and
Flipboard, expressed interest in supporting the ActivityPub protocol,
as a large number of users began to migrate to Mastodon, a server that
supports the Fediverse and was also the most popular alternative to
Twitter at the time. Flickr also expressed support in supporting
ActivityPub. , no information had been released by Flickr after the
initial tweets by the CEO, with support for ActivityPub suspected to
be on hold or cancelled.
In 2024, the local government of the Stary Sącz municipality in Poland
launched their own PeerTube instance in order to 'de facto' abolish
its presence on YouTube. According to the government, they stopped
using YouTube for official communications "in order to adhere to the
appropriate regulations". In the same year, VIVERSE, HTC Vive's
metaverse platform, implemented support for ActivityPub in their chat
feature, allowing users to send direct messages to other fediverse
users.
Government and public-sector use
==================================
Several European public bodies operate ActivityPub services. The
European Commission hosts an official Mastodon instance. The European
Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) published a data protection notice
laying out the legal framework for operating a Mastodon service. More
recently, Mastodon offers paid support aimed at larger institutions.
However, the decentralized architecture of the network cannot
centrally enforce age verification because verification data is left
to individual server operators.
Content management systems
============================
WordPress has an officially supported plugin that integrates WordPress
blogs into the Fediverse, allowing for comments to be exchanged
between the comment section of a blog post and a Fediverse instance's
reply function. The plugin was acquired by Automattic in March 2023,
and became available for all WordPress.com users in October of that
same year.
Ghost, a blogging platform and content management system, announced in
April 2024 that they would be implementing Fediverse support via
ActivityPub. The feature had been highly requested on its forums. In
July 2024, Ghost started federating its development newsletter for the
feature.
Microblogging
===============
Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg tweeted in November 2022 that Tumblr was
adding support for ActivityPub interoperability, in response to a
user's complaints about Mastodon's complexity. However, no further
information was revealed for over a year, and the project was expected
to be cancelled after a leaked reorganization that moved most of
Tumblr's staff to other Automattic projects. However, following a
question from a TechCrunch reporter during a questionnaire about the
leaked memo, he revealed that the interoperability feature was not
cancelled and that there was a small team working on studying the
potential of implementing the protocol. The plan was once again
affirmed by Automattic in January 2025, with the ActivityPub plugin
for WordPress most likely being the main method used for
interoperability with the fediverse.
The release of Threads by Meta in July 2023 had included in its press
release that it planned to support interoperability with the
ActivityPub protocol. In December 2023, select Meta employees began to
federate with ActivityPub. A roadmap was revealed in January 2024 that
detailed the integration of ActivityPub in Threads.
A faction of fediverse server admins, some of whom have listed their
names under a pledge named "Fedipact", have expressed resistance to
open federation with Threads over concerns that Meta would adopt an
"embrace, extend, and extinguish" policy towards the network, or that
Threads' moderation would fail to prevent the spread of abusive
content targeted towards marginalized communities.
In March 2024, Threads implemented a beta version of Fediverse
support, allowing Threads users to view the number of Fediverse users
that liked their post, and allowing Fediverse users to view posts from
Threads on their own instances. On April 2, the official Threads
account for President Joe Biden enabled federation on its profile,
making Biden the first President of the United States to have a
presence on the Fediverse. The ability to view replies from the
Fediverse within Threads was added in August.
News aggregators
==================
In December 2023, the social magazine app Flipboard began integrating
with the Fediverse by federating publisher accounts via ActivityPub.
CEO Mike McCue stated the move was intended to break away from "walled
garden" ecosystems, making Flipboard content discoverable and
interactive for users on platforms like Mastodon.
During the 2023 Reddit API controversy, the decentralized link
aggregator Lemmy experienced a significant surge in growth as users
sought alternatives to Reddit. The platform saw its monthly active
user count rise from approximately 1,000 to over 66,000 within weeks
of the protests, exacerbated by Reddit's decision to temporarily ban
communities and users promoting the migration to Fediverse
alternatives.
Others
========
; Social networking
* GNU social - One of the earliest Fediverse projects, historically
using the OStatus protocol to enable federation before the widespread
adoption of ActivityPub.
* Diaspora - A decentralized social network that uses its own custom
protocol.
; Content management
* Drupal (via third-party plugin)
* WordPress (via official plugin)
Further reading
======================================================================
* 2022. [https://arxiv.org/pdf/2204.12709.pdf Toxicity in the
Decentralized Web and the Potential for Model Sharing]
* 2021. [https://arxiv.org/pdf/2110.13500.pdf Exploring Content
Moderation in the Decentralised Web: The Pleroma Case]
* 2019.
[https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1369118X.2019.1648536
The disinformation landscape and the lockdown of social platforms]
* 2019. [https://arxiv.org/abs/1909.05801 Challenges in the
Decentralised Web: The Mastodon Case]
* 2018. [https://arxiv.org/abs/1811.09292 Recommending Users: Whom to
Follow on Federated Social Networks]
* 2018. [https://arxiv.org/abs/1807.05013 Multi-task dialog act and
sentiment recognition on Mastodon]
* 2015.
[http://twentysix.fibreculturejournal.org/fcj-190-building-a-better-twitter-a-study-of-the-twitter-alternatives-gnu-social-quitter-rstat-us-and-twister/
FCJ-190 Building a Better Twitter: A Study of the Twitter Alternatives
GNU social, Quitter, rstat.us, and Twister]
* 2015. [https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2056305115604338 The
Case for Alternative Social Media]
License
=========
All content on Gopherpedia comes from Wikipedia, and is licensed under CC-BY-SA
License URL: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
Original Article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fediverse
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