Welcome to the Fediverse

Have commercial social networks had their day? Darien Graham-Smith looks at the free, community-run apps that could usurp Twitter, Reddit and the Meta empire

- Darien Graham-Smith

Online communities start out exciting and fun, but they have a sad tendency to go downhill over time. Popular platforms become plagued with misinformation, trolling and straightforward abuse – and the operator turns a blind eye, because it all drives engagement and pushes up ad views. The app itself may even degrade over time, as the management pushes through decisions and policies that prioritise profits at the expense of the user experience.

If that sounds familiar, it could be time to ditch the big-name social networks and dive into the Fediverse.

What theheck is a Fediverse? 

The Fediverse is a social networking model that’s designed to avoid the problems that afflict the major platforms. It does this by taking a decentralised approach: in the Fediverse there’s no management team, no CEO like Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg calling the shots. Anyone who wants can set up their own social networking server, host it wherever they like, and run it in whatever way they consider appropriate.

That’s all well and good, you might be thinking, but social networking works best when your friends and follows are all in one place. Fear not – as hinted by the name, all of the separate social network servers in the Fediverse are federated together. Even if you and your friends are all using different social networking services, you’ll still be able to follow and comment on one another’s posts.