After Meta changed their moderation policy to allow for overt hatred towards LGBTQ groups, people all around me have only one thing on their mind. How the heck do we stop using TwitterX, Facebook, Instagram, Threads and WhatsApp? What if we also want to stop using Google, Microsoft, Apple and Amazon? Is that even possible? Where do we go!?
I’ve been talking to people about these topics since 2020, when I started the Queer Haus project together with some friends in Berlin. We had lengthy discussions and tried to re-imagine social media from the perspective of a queer club. It was a fun time with many entertaining video calls during the pandemic and even some live workshops and demos!
The Queer Haus project unfortunately sizzled out with time, but we learned a lot. There are alternatives out there, and they offer a different perspective of what a social web can be.
Summary#
If you are eager to just try something new, this is the super short summary.
Download one of these apps, create an account and try it out! With these you can reach millions of users across the fediverse and there are NO ADS!
Or, continue reading for all the juicy details ⚡️
Some basics#
Federation#
Federation is a concept that you will encounter a lot when reading about alternative social media. It means that a social media platform works like email does.
For example, if you have Instagram and a friend has Tiktok, there is no way for you to interact with each other. Instagram and tiktok are fully isolated corporate silos of imprisoned content.
What makes email and federation unique is that you are free to select your own service provider. You can sign up with hotmail.com, but still send messages to a user on gmail.com. This works because both service providers use the same underlying email protocol, that was established back in the 70s.
The Fediverse#
You might also hear about a mystic place called the fediverse. This is the unified network of many different platforms that all share the same underlying protocol. So just like with email, this shared protocol called ActivityPub lets servers talk to each other.
Thus making it possible for you to see posts from people across the network, even if your accounts are on different servers, with completely different communities, you can still interact with them. You can even fairly easily migrate your account from one community to the next, if you for any reason want a change of scenery.
So where can we go?#
There are many new places to explore with varying degrees of separation from big tech. Here is my attempt at giving some tips and recommendations.
| Bluesky | Mastodon | Pixelfed | Mobilizion | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| profit? | for profit | non-profit organisation | non-profit but single developer | non-profit collective |
| based in? | US | Germany | Canada | France |
| users? | 27 million | ~15 million + entire fediverse | ~500 thousand + entire fediverse | ~50 thousand + entire fediverse |
| federated? | not really | fully federated | fully federated | fully federated |
| groups? | no | no group support | no, but “soon” | GROUPS! |
| nudity? | yes | rules decided by server admins | rules decided by server admins | rules decided by server admins |
| ads? | has ads | ad-free | ad-free | ad-free |
| events? | no | no | no | EVENTS! |
Bluesky#
Started as an experiment within twitter and was then turned into a separate company by twitter founder Jack Dorsey in 2022. Lots of people are currently moving here, because it works and feels very similar to good old twitter.
To me, they are the lesser evil. They technically support federation, but aren’t actually doing it. So in essence it is a centralised platform.
They are a “benefit corporation” so are obliged to use their profits for “the public good”. But it’s still a private for-profit company headquartered in the US. They are certainly better than twitter and others right now, but they can still decide next year that ads are nessecary or certain things are not allowed.
They do allow nudity and porn tho… so there is that 💦
Mastodon#
Mastodon is the first federated social media software project that got really big. It is well made and stable since many years. Usage wise it feels a lot like twitter, has short posts with hashtags that can include photos or short videos. In difference to twitter, they also offer content warnings by default and of course the big one, federation.
There are now thousands of mastodon servers out there, all with their own vibe and moderation rules. Most are run by small communities and some by corporations. You are free to make your own choice of who moderates your posts and you can really find a place with suits your personality and identity.
Here are some Mastodon server tips:
kolektiva.social - anarchist activism
lgbtqia.space - European LGBTQIA
mastodon.art - art focused
if you have more, let me know!
Pixelfed#
Pixelfed is a more recent addition to the fediverse. It is created by an openly gay developer in Canada and tries to mimic the old style of Instagram as closely as possible. The user experience is probably quite familiar to people coming from Facebook/Instagram. Pixelfed is mainly focused on photo sharing, you cannot create text-only-posts.
I’ve had my eye on pixelfed for a long time, and have been thinking of restarting the Queer Haus project using pixelfed for years. I was unsure though since there were no official Pixelfed apps yet. But now just last week the developer finally released the iPhone and Android apps.
Launching the apps at this very moment turned out to be a success. Pixelfed’s main instance now has around 60 thousand new user per day.
I worry though that with only a single developer maintaining both the main server and also developing the platform, what will happen when he eventually has to ask for help from others to run it?
These concerns aside, Pixelfed has a very user friendly UI and lots of momentum, bringing many new users to the fediverse. So go try it out!
Here are some Pixelfed server tips:
pixelfed.de - german server
pixelfed.social - run by main developer
Mobilizion#
Mobilizion is a smaller and more specialised project in the fediverse, aiming to replace facebook events. It was started in 2019 by french organisation Framasoft during a campaing to get people to move away from GAFAM (Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft).
Instead of the usual posts and feeds, Mobilizion has forums where you can post discussions. But the main thing is of course that you can create events and let people RSVP easily.
Another nice thing about Mobilizion is that it actually supports creating groups. So you can sign up, create a group with your friends and then manage events together.
Mobilizion does not have a big main server, so instead you have to find a local server that you can join, focused on the type of events you want to find or host.
Here are two Mobilizion servers I know of:
mobilize.berlin - focused on Berlin
organisera.org - focused on Sweden
Other fediverse projects#
There are even more projects in the fediverse space. Here’s a quick list of some popular ones:
PeerTube - federated youtube
Funkwhale - federated soundcloud
Lemmy - federated reddit
Bookwyrm - federated reading lists
Write freely - federated blogging
Remember, these all connect together for a social web without borders!
Paradigm shift#
Phew that was a lot of different alternatives to try!
Yes, during the Queer Haus project we learned that unfortunately there is no perfect replacement for all those for-profit services we have become used to. Facebook, Instagram, Tiktok, Youtube, Google, etc, all have the same agenda. They have made themselves incredibly addictive and almost impossible to replace, permeating all aspects of our lives.
The alternatives I describe in this article are just that, alternatives. They do not work exactly the same way as we might be used to, the user interfaces are not always effortles, the apps are not developed by thousands of highly paid interface designers. But on the other hand, they usually do not have ads, there is no tracking, no profiteering.
So I would say, stop looking for the perfect alternative. Yes, you might have to try a few different ones, you might have to use multiple new services, and that is okay. Pluralism and alternatives are a good thing!
Build your own#
With the fediverse being so open, federated and modular, each server is usually run by small activist communities that gather around a shared idea. This puts them in control of their own data and enables that community to decide on their own moderation rules.
If you have the technical knowledge, you can even start a new Mastodon, Pixelfed or Mobilizion server for your community! The time for experimentation and exploration is here!
If you know how to manage web servers and are interested in hosting alternative digital services for queers in Europe, then please reach out to me: https://fosstodon.org/@exstral
But what about messaging?#
One last thing to keep in mind about the fediverse is the focus on public sharing of posts. The fediverse is not encrypted, so it is not intended to be used as a secure place to share intimate information. For that purpose we have encrypted messaging apps.
The secure messaging I recommend to people is Signal,
it is run by a non-profit and works just like WhatsApp.
https://signal.org/
For securing your email, I suggest one of these email providers:
Protonmail - https://proton.me/mail
Tutamail - https://tuta.com/
I have much more to say about messengers and email, but that feels like a topic for my next blog post. Have a lovely day! ✨
More reading#
- Beginner guide to the fediverse - https://fedi.tips
- Explain again please - https://www.theverge.com/24063290
- Wikipedia’s Fediverse article - https://en.wikipedia.org/Fediverse
- Inspiring collectives with servers - https://monoskop.org/
- Even more fediverse projects - https://fediverse.info