Decentralized Online Communities

Welcome to the Fediverse!

The Fediverse, which means “federated services”, is a collection of services where individual instances are independently owned and operated, but work with other instances under standard protocols. Just like with basic e-mail, anyone can run their own e-mail server and exchange messages with other ones across the internet. Other federated (or decentralized) services work the same way.

It’s for those reasons that we encourage their adoption over platforms like Twitter and Facebook. Here are some more benefits:

• Data portability - You can often export your account with all your data and move to other instances.
• Privacy - Decentralized services don’t run on the business model of selling your data.
• Open algorithms - Take comfort that you’re not being fed rage-bait to keep you “engaged”.
• Censorship resistance - Decentralization makes is harder to quash dissenting opinions.
• Smaller communities - It’s easy for your voice to be drowned out by the massive user base like Twitter’s.

Resources about Decentralized/Federated Services #

• Article What Is the Fediverse and Can It Decentralize the Web?

• /r/decentralization

• Alternative Internet - “A collection of interesting networks and technology aiming at re-decentralizing the Internet.”

• Fediverse Party - A small list of federates services

Notable Decentralized Alternatives #

• Twitter -> Mastodon
• YouTube -> PeerTube
• Twitch -> Owncast
• Instagram -> PixelFed
• Spotify -> Funkwhale
• Reddit -> Lemmy, kbin
• Facebook -> Friendica, Diaspora
• Google Drive -> Storj

Join LibreTechnica on Lemmy! #

We’ve started our own Lemmy instance at LibreTechni.ca. Check out the blog post here for how to get started.