Pick Your Fediverse Social Media Adventure

I'm an advocate for making the Fediverse your home for social media. There are plenty of reasons for this:

• You are tired of your data being used to target advertising to you and track your behaviors online
• You're tired of the politics of the owners of the commercial social media sites, and/or the politics of the world getting in the way of your enjoyment of the platform
• You're done with the algorithm deciding that this week you want nothing in your feed but posts about Cajun and Creole cooking because you liked somebody's gumbo recipe post
• You're tired of EULAs you don't read but are supposedly bound by making your content property of the site owner to use as they see fit, including profiting off of it without any compensation to you
• You don't want to see anything but your friends posts - you're tired of all the other stuff filling your feed
• You no longer feel safe posting on these platforms

Maybe all of these apply to you, and maybe only one or two do. Any way you look at it, the Fediverse offers robust options to migrate to. But that's a challenge in and of itself. Much like the "Choose Your Own Adventure" book series of my youth, there are a lot of options for you to choose from as you consider migrating. These options will likely determine if you enjoy your time in the Fediverse or if you find yourself pining for the days of Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

To help with that, let's first figure out what it is you want to do with your social media experience.

I Use Social Media Primarily To...

When you pop on social media what is it you're interested in doing the most? What is your biggest use case? What is your second need?

Let's start by discussing if you're primarily a content creator or a content consumer.

Create Content For Others

The Fediverse won't charge you for creating content. It also won't pay you for content. You won't have the option to pay to get your content in front of a bigger audience (buying ads), but you also won't have to worry about an algorithm pushing your content to the bottom of your followers feeds. You'll have to grow your following from scratch again. And you'll find that advertisers and mainstream media won't likely notice you on the Fediverse for a while - they're still focused on the corporate social media websites.

Hashtags are the best way to help people find your content. The Fediverse is built on allowing people to set up searches, lists, and feeds based on following particular hashtags, so learn to love them.

Does this sound like I'm telling you not to start building on the Fediverse? Heck no. In fact, you need to start NOW so you build your audience as fast as possible. But I want you to recognize that this is a different place, and you'll have to adjust accordingly.

Consume Content From Others

I know, you sometimes post too. You create some interesting stuff, and you forward memes like nobody else you know. Or like everybody else you know. On the Fediverse you're going to have to rebuild who and what you follow. There is no "here are suggested people or topics for you to follow" that will help you build your list out. If you only follow 3 people and they only post twice a week your feed is going to be bare.

Good news though, if you know "who" you want to follow, the Fediverse is interconnected with Bluesky and Threads, and you have access to interact with both platforms, though you want to remember that both of those are also corporate owned and may suffer from the same issues that are causing you to want to migrate to the Fediverse in the first place.

If you're less interested in following particular people and more focused on following topics, hashtags are your friend. You'll have a feed full of content if you pick the right hashtags to follow ("right hashtags" meaning the ones you're interested in that are being used by content creators).

What Is Your Preferred Content Style?

Some of us like to read. Some of us love pretty pictures. Some like long form video, and others have just enough attention span for 30 seconds or less of video. Well, just as there are different varieties of corporate social media there are different flavors of Fediverse social media. For every TwiXer there's a Mastodon, and for every Instagram there's a Pixelfed. In general, here's a partial breakdown:

I know, lots of stuff you didn't know existed. That has something to do with budget. These are all open-source projects that are run by volunteers, hobbyists, and people who just want to make this stuff work. They don't tend to spend much on marketing and advertising. It will be up to you to help your friends learn about these offerings, the same way I'm trying to help you learn about them, because you're not likely to see the "Mastodon Bowl" college football game next year, nor are you liable to see a billboard ad for PeerTube next time you're at the old ballpark, and Max Verstappen's Formula1 car is never going to have a Pixelfed logo on the side of it.

Not sure which one(s) are right for you? That's OK. Most of these services allow the public to see posts without accounts (WHAT? Yup, you read that right) so you can explore them a bit before you sign up.

OK, What's the Catch?

There are a few things that generally throw people when they join the Fediverse - especially if they're expecting the "same" experience they had on their former platform.

The Interface Isn't As Polished

Welcome to the world of not-for-profit applications! Find someone you know who works for a big tech company and ask them how many people work in their "front end" software development team. Ask them how involved Marketing is in the design of the site or the app. Ask them how much research they do in interface design.

Getting the idea? Good interface design costs a lot of money. The Fediverse runs primarily off of donations. If you're still confused go ask your local charity how much of their income they spend on doing their charitable work vs. on making their website look pretty.

There Are a Gazillion Instances To Pick From

If you're the kind of person who dreads choosing a paint color because there are too many choices, well, the Fediverse may cause you some headaches. By design the Fediverse is a federated group of servers, not a single provider. That means you don't just join Mastodon, you join "Kelly's Mastodon Server," or "Steve's Mastodon Instance." And there are hundreds, if not thousands, of Mastodon instances. (and that's just Mastodon)

Breathe easy. This is by design and it really can help you if you let it. Here's how.

1. Know that, short of choosing an instance that is about to shut down, you can migrate your entire experience from one server to another. Yes, that means you can move yourself if you ever feel the need to, without losing posts or connections to accounts you follow, etc.
2. Every instance has their own content moderation rules. For example, the instance I use infosec.exchange allows federation to Threads. However, the same administrator also runs infosec.space, which is literally the same in all other respects but it blocks Threads. Some instances allow "adult content," others don't allow the hosting of such content, and may even block federation to sites that do.
3. Instances often have particular communities they're focusing on. Again, my instance is cybersecurity focused. But there are instances out there that are LGBTQ+ focused, instances that are arts and crafts focused, instances that are sports focused, etc. Infinite variety means you can find the instance you like the best as your "home." This comes in handy for following local content on your individual instance.
4. Instances are hosted around the world. You can choose an instance based on how "close" it is to you, or on the privacy and security rules in that jurisdiction. (Lots of privacy minded folks choose instances in the EU where they are governed by GDPR, though the full legalities and coverage are a bit up for grabs)
5. You can even be brave enough to host your own instance. There are multiple providers that offer a "Mastodon server in a box" turnkey solution, but you have to pay to host them.

Most of the services have some sort of menu site for choosing the right instance for you. I especially like the one for Friendica because it includes a "health" metric that helps you choose an instance that's being well maintained, in addition to all the other criteria.

It Costs Money To Develop and Run Instances

Facebook, TwiXer, YouTube and the rest have payment models that are based on tracking you and serving up targeted advertising (as well as selling your personal info). The Fediverse has no such income model and relies on donations at two different levels:

• Development - The people who develop these platforms are either volunteers or are paid by a not-for-profit to do this work. We need them to continue to do so, and that means donations from those of us who can afford to do so.
• Hosting - There are real costs to hosting these environments. The gentleman who hosts my instance has a real data center that he's hosting physical servers at. It costs real money, and if that money stops coming in his options are to either consolidate and shutter parts of the solution he hosts (he has multiple Mastodon instances as described above, as well as a PeerTube, Pixelfed, and several other services) or pay out of pocket to keep it running. The instance owners need financial help too.

Please, think of it as the cost of NOT dealing with an algorithm designed to maximize revenue for the social media provider.

Ready To Dip Your Toe In?

Look, even I didn't go "cold turkey" into the Fediverse. But every day I use those other platforms less and less. I left one platform 2 years ago and I've been making progress ever since. The thing holding me back the most are friends and family still on one of those platforms, and the decades worth of "stuff" I built on that platform that doesn't exist anywhere else.

But it's time for me to take my next steps. How about you?

You don't have to go it alone. Here are resources that can help you out.

The fediverse, explained

It’s Mastodon, it’s Threads, it’s the future, and it’s extremely confusing

The Verge

friendica – A Decentralized Social Network

friendicaTobias

Mastodon - Decentralized social media

Learn more about Mastodon, the radically different, free and open-source decentralized social media platform.

Decentralized social media

Pixelfed - Decentralized social media

Learn more about Pixelfed, the free and open-source decentralized photo sharing social media platform

Pixelfed

What is PeerTube? | JoinPeerTube

A free software to take back control of your videos! With more than 600,000 hosted videos, viewed more than 70 millions times and 150,000 users, PeerTube is the decentralized free software alternative to videos platforms developed by Framasoft

JoinPeerTube

Movetodon: Finds your Twitter Friends on Mastodon

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