The Fediverse is shaping up to be exciting and interesting

Recently, Meta launched a beta for it’s Threads application to share posts on Mastodon, or in other words, Threads is slowly taking steps to being apart of the Fediverse. The beta only applies if you happen to be living in the US, Canada, or Japan. Nevertheless, it’s an important step, and it’s showing how exciting the Fediverse is going to be.

Now you might be thinking; “What is this Fediverse anyway?”

To answer that question, you can listen to my podcast about this, or you can read on!

What is the Fediverse?

In a sentence, the fediverse is an interconnected social platform system that’s based on a protocol called Activity Pub, which allows you to export your data, such as your followers.

That might be a little tricky to understand, so let me give you an example.

Imagine if Facebook, X (or Twitter), and TikTok were all interoperable. So that you can post content from anywhere and all of your followers would see your content, regardless of which platform they use.

And let’s say one day you wanted to leave a platform, Facebook for example, and you wanted to join Mastodon instead. Since these platforms are interoperable, you could take all of your content, followers, everything, with you to the new platform.

The key part of the fediverse is the idea of interoperability. This is what is driving such interest in the fediverse.

Another appeal to the fediverse, is that you own your content, you just lend it to platforms.

Let’s talk a little about this protocol called Activity Pub.

The best way to describe this is that the user can read incoming messages that come from the rest of the world, but the user can also send content to the world.

The rest of the world can then read and send messages to users, which is where federation comes in.

A good way to think of it is that platforms and users share the same inbox and outbox.

Why is the fediverse being seen as the future of social media?

Mike Masnick published an essay at Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University in 2019 titled; Protocols, Not Platforms: A Technological Approach to Free Speech.

The essay talks about two current problems on big platforms:

• one; the drive to acquire an ever increasing amount of data from users, resulting in concerns from users and regulators that platforms are not protecting the data they have collected.
• and two; these platforms have become larger and more central to everyday life. There has been growing concern at these platforms about the content that can be posted, and the responsibilities that these platforms have in policing content.

These platforms can throw as much money as they want at these problems, but it’s not clear at how this problem ends with enough people being satisfied.

The essay says that although there is no silver bullet, a system of protocols would be better at protecting privacy and free speech, while minimising the impact of abusive behaviour and creating new business models that are aligned with users interests.

However, the essay does mention that there are several points why using protocols might not work. One of them, is complexity. Signing up to platforms such as Mastodon can be a daunting experience for those who are unfamiliar with the fediverse. When you sign up to Mastodon, you pick a server where you want your account to be.

Users don’t want to mess around with settings or anything like that, users want something that works. This is the major advantage that the current platforms have. Plus, the current platforms are too big that using a protocols based approach might not disrupt them.

Back to the Fediverse…

It’s understandable to be wary of Meta, they are responsible for building and maintaining Facebook and Instagram; some of the biggest platforms on the internet, and (controversially) harvest lots of user data. But I think what’s happened on Threads is a great step, it shows promise.

So what happens during the beta? You can cross post and view likes from other federated platforms, like Mastodon.

Peter Cottle gave a demo of this at FediForum and it’s exciting to see in action.

I’ve seen several accounts I follow on Threads start to post over to Mastodon as well. Giving users the option to share their posts to other platforms will not only boost their audience, but will allow other platforms to interact with them.

But it’s not just Threads which is getting involved with the Fediverse, Flipboard is making big strides as well. Here’s an example of an account that has been federated.

Another interesting application is Pixelfed, a federated photo sharing application. Maybe one day Instagram will be part of the Fediverse as well?

It’s important to note that accounts need to opt-in to federate. This means that some of your favourite accounts you follow may remain exclusive to one platform.

So why is the Fediverse exciting? Allowing users more control over their data is important. Being able to move to different platforms without losing your data is huge and sharing your content to the rest of the world is fascinating.

What’s next?

The fediverse feature on Threads is currently in beta, limited to three countries. Once this opens up to more countries, more accounts will be able to federate, and more data on usage along with feedback should be available.

And hopefully Threads will soon be able to let accounts see replies and follows from the Fediverse.

And who knows, maybe more platforms will begin to be a part of the Fediverse. The future of using protocols instead of platforms is very close.