Fediverse

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Symbol for the Fediverse Fediverse logo proposal.svg
Symbol for the Fediverse

The Fediverse (commonly shortened to Fedi) [1] [2] [3] is a collection of social networking services that can communicate with each other (formally known as federation) using a common protocol. Users of different websites can send and receive status updates, multimedia files and other data across the network. The term Fediverse is a portmanteau of "federation" and "universe". [4]

Contents

The majority of Fediverse platforms are free and open-source software, and create connections between servers using the ActivityPub protocol. Some software still supports older federation protocols as well, such as OStatus, the Diaspora protocol and Zot. Diaspora* is the only actively developed software project classified under the original definition of Fediverse that does not support ActivityPub. [5] [6]

Design

While a traditional social networking service will host all its content on servers managed by the owner of the website, the decentralized servers that make up the Fediverse allow any individual or organization to host their own servers (referred to as an "instance").

Every instance is independent, and can set its own rules and expectations. Even so, much like how users of one email service such as Gmail can still send emails to users of another service such as Outlook, users may still view content and interact with users on any other instance in the Fediverse. A user on one Mastodon instance, for example, may still view and interact with posts made by a user on a different Mastodon instance. [7]

Instances hosted by different social networking services may communicate with one another as well. A user on the microblogging platform Misskey, for example, may view and interact with posts made by users on Mastodon. Some Fediverse networks even allow users to interact with different social networking formats from the same platform. For example, a user on a social news instance running Lemmy can interact with another post from a mbin instance, a similar service as well as microblog statuses from Mastodon. [8] [9]

History

Historical protocols

Excerpt of common protocols and platforms in the fediverse (2024) A view into the Fediverse.png
Excerpt of common protocols and platforms in the fediverse (2024)

The concept and the functionality of the Fediverse has existed before the ActivityPub protocol and the term itself. One of the first projects that included support for a decentralized social networking service was Laconica, a microblogging platform which implemented the OpenMicroBlogging protocol for communicating between different installations of the software. The software was later renamed to StatusNet in 2009, [10] before being merged into the GNU social project in 2013 along with Free Social, with the two latter servers being a fork of StatusNet. [11] [12]

Over time, the limitations of the OpenMicroBlogging protocol became more apparent, being designed as a one-way text messaging system. [13] To replace the aging protocol, OStatus was devised as an open standard for microblogging, combining various other technologies like Salmon, Atom, WebSub and ActivityStreams into a single protocol used for communicating between instances. StatusNet first implemented the OStatus protocol on March 3, 2010, with version 0.9.0, and OStatus quickly became the most popular federated protocol in usage.

Around the same time as OStatus was gaining popularity, the diaspora* social network was formed, using its own federated protocol. To illustrate the differences between the two protocols, the terms of the Fediverse and the federation began to enter common usage, mainly after 2017. The term "the Fediverse" was used to describe the network formed by software using the OStatus protocol, such as GNU Social, Mastodon, and Friendica, in contrast to the competing diaspora* protocol under "the federation". [14]

ActivityPub

The various platforms of the Fediverse, as well as other federated networks, visualized as a tree Fediverse branches 1.2.png
The various platforms of the Fediverse, as well as other federated networks, visualized as a tree

In December 2012, the flagship StatusNet instance at the time, identi.ca, transitioned away to a new software named pump.io, with a new federation protocol to replace OStatus. The new protocol was designed to be useful for general activity streams and not just status updates, and replaced many of OStatus' external dependencies with JSON-LD and a REST API for its messaging and inbox systems, as well as making more use of ActivityStreams. While not as utilized as its OStatus predecessor, it would end up becoming influential in the development of the ActivityPub standard.

In January 2018, the W3C presented the ActivityPub protocol as a recommended standard. [15] The standard aimed to improve the interoperability between different software packages running on a wide network of servers and to succeed both the OStatus protocol and Pump.io. [16] By 2019, almost all software that was using OStatus had added support for ActivityPub. While Mastodon began to remove OStatus support, other projects maintained it in their code, such as Friendica (which also maintained diaspora* support along with ActivityPub), [17] [18] and the term Fediverse has since come to mainly refer to the ActivityPub protocol and its supporting server software.[ citation needed ]

Adoption

Users have been slow to embrace the Fediverse due to poor user experience and excessive complexity. [19] [20]

Following the acquisition of Twitter by Elon Musk in November 2022, certain major social networks, including Threads, [21] [22] Tumblr and Flipboard expressed interest in supporting the ActivityPub protocol, as a large number of users began to migrate to Mastodon, a server that supported the Fediverse and was also the most popular alternative to Twitter at the time. Flickr also expressed support in supporting ActivityPub. As of November 2022, no information had been released by the company after the initial tweets by the CEO, with support for ActivityPub suspected to be on hold or cancelled. [23] [24]

In 2024, the local government of the Stary Sącz municipality in Poland launched their own PeerTube instance [25] in order to de facto abolish its presence on YouTube. According to the government, they stopped using YouTube for official communications "in order to adhere to the appropriate regulations". [26]

Content management systems

WordPress has an officially supported plugin that integrates WordPress blogs into the Fediverse, allowing for comments to be exchanged between the comment section of a blog post and a Fediverse instance's reply function. The plugin was acquired by Automattic in March 2023, [27] and became available for all WordPress.com users in October of that same year. [28] [29]

Ghost, a blogging platform and content management system announced in April 2024 that they would be implementing Fediverse support via ActivityPub. [30] [31] [32] The feature had been highly requested on its forums. [33] In July 2024, Ghost started federating its development newsletter for the feature. [34]

Microblogging

Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg tweeted on November 22, 2022, that Tumblr was adding support for ActivityPub interoperability, in response to a user's complaints about Mastodon's complexity. [35] However, no further information was revealed for over a year, and was expected to be cancelled after a leaked reorganization that moved most of Tumblr's staff to other Automattic projects. However, in an AMA[ clarification needed ] following the leak, he revealed that the interoperability feature was not cancelled and that there was a small team working on studying the potential of implementing the protocol. [36]

The release of Threads by Meta in July 2023 had included in its press release that it planned to support interoperability with the ActivityPub protocol. [37] [38] In December 2023, select Meta employees began to federate with ActivityPub. [39] A roadmap was revealed in January 2024 that detailed the integration of ActivityPub in Threads. [40]

A faction of fediverse server admins, some of whom have listed their names under a pledge named "Fedipact", have expressed resistance to open federation with Threads over concerns that Meta would adopt an “embrace, extend, and extinguish" policy towards the network, or that Threads' moderation would fail to prevent the spread of abusive content targeted towards marginalized communities. [41] [42] [43]

In March 2024, Threads implemented a beta version of Fediverse support, allowing Threads users to view the number of Fediverse users that liked their post, and allowing Fediverse users to view posts from Threads on their own instances. [44] [45] [46] On April 2, the official Threads account for President Joe Biden enabled federation on its profile, making Biden the first President of the United States to have a presence on the Fediverse. [47] The ability to view replies from the Fediverse within Threads was added in August. [48]

News aggregators

In December 2023, Flipboard announced that it started federating selected profiles and magazines with the Fediverse. It had previously run its own Mastodon instance, flipboard.social, as a test of the Fediverse. [49]

Alternatives

While the Fediverse has traditionally been the network most commonly referred to and used as an example regarding the subject of decentralized social networks, alternatives to it and the accompanying ActivityPub have been developed and deployed. A major protocol in competition with the Fediverse is the AT Protocol, which powers the Bluesky social network and has formed its own separate network dubbed by developers as the Atmosphere, [50] while smaller competitors such as Nostr and Farcaster have become popular within the cryptocurrency community. These protocols have compared themselves to ActivityPub to showcase their differences. These newer protocols use a different federation model based on uploading content to relays for distribution rather than ActivityPub's server-centric model. Despite their differences, software exists that permit the bridging of user content between these protocols, including "double-bridges" that span multiple protocols for the purpose of distributing the same content. [51] [52]

Software

Many Fediverse platforms have applications to use them on smartphones. Fediverse smartphone apps (photo by Elena Rossini).jpg
Many Fediverse platforms have applications to use them on smartphones.

ActivityPub is the most widely used protocol in the Fediverse and a W3C standard. Some popular Fediverse software includes: [53] [54]

See also

Related Research Articles

Microblogging is a form of blogging using short posts without titles known as microposts. Microblogs "allow users to exchange small elements of content such as short sentences, individual images, or video links", which may be the major reason for their popularity. Some popular social networks such as X (Twitter), Threads, Tumblr, Mastodon, Bluesky and Instagram can be viewed as collections of microblogs.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">GNU social</span> Microblogging social networking service

GNU social is a free and open-source microblogging social networking service that implements the OStatus and ActivityPub standards for interoperability between installations. While offering similar functionality to social networks such as Twitter, GNU social seeks to provide the ability for open and federated communication between different microblogging communities, known as 'instances'. Both enterprises and individuals can install and control their own instances and user data.

OpenMicroBlogging is a deprecated communication protocol that allows different microblogging services to interoperate with each other. It lets the user of one service subscribe to statuses from a user of another service. This enables the creation of a federation of new communities, as an individual or organization of any size can host a service that supports the protocol. OpenMicroBlogging utilizes the OAuth and Yadis protocols and does not depend on any central authority.

A distributed social network is a network wherein all participating social networking services can communicate with each other through a unified communication protocol. Users that reside on a compatible service can interact with any user from any compatible service without having to log on to the origin's website. From a societal perspective, one may compare this concept to that of social media being a public utility. Federated social networks contrast with social network aggregation services, which are used to manage accounts and activities across multiple discrete social networks that cannot communicate with each other. A popular example for a federated social network is the fediverse, with more niche examples such as IndieWeb complementing the network.

OStatus is an open standard for decentralized social networking, allowing users on one service to send and receive status updates with users from another. The standard describes how a suite of various standards, including Atom, Activity Streams, WebSub, Salmon, and WebFinger, can be used together, which enables different microblogging server implementations to communicate status updates between their users back-and-forth, in near real-time.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Friendica</span> Free software for distributed social networks

Friendica is a free and open-source software distributed social network. It forms one part of the Fediverse, an interconnected and decentralized network of independently operated servers.

pump.io Decentralized social network and protocol

pump.io is a software package containing a social networking service and communication protocol that can be used as a federated social network. Started by Evan Prodromou, it is a follow-up to his previous microblogging software StatusNet and its OStatus protocol. It is designed to be more lightweight and usable for general activity streams instead of the predecessor's focus on microblogging timelines, with its goal being to achieve "most of what people want from a social network".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">PeerTube</span> Decentralised video hosting network

PeerTube is a free and open-source, decentralized, ActivityPub federated video platform. It can use peer-to-peer technology to reduce load on individual servers when videos get popular.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mastodon (social network)</span> Open source, self-hosted, social media service

Mastodon is an open source, self-hosted, social networking service. Mastodon uses the ActivityPub protocol for federation which allows users to communicate between independent Mastodon instances and other ActivityPub compatible services. Mastodon has microblogging features similar to Twitter, and is generally considered to be a part of the Fediverse.

Micro.blog is a microblogging and social networking service created by Manton Reece. It is the first large multi-user social media service to support the Webmention and Micropub standards published by the World Wide Web Consortium, and is part of the Fediverse, supporting ActivityPub.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">ActivityPub</span> Decentralized social networking protocol

ActivityPub is a protocol and open standard for decentralized social networking. It provides a client-to-server (C2S) API for creating and modifying content, as well as a federated server-to-server (S2S) protocol for delivering notifications and content to other servers. ActivityPub has become the main standard used in the fediverse, a popular network used for social networking that consists of software such as Mastodon, Pixelfed and PeerTube.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pleroma (software)</span> Self-hosted social networking software

Pleroma is a free and open-source microblogging social networking service. Unlike popular microblogging services such as Twitter or Weibo, Pleroma can be self-hosted and operated by anyone with a server and a web domain, a combination commonly referred to as an instance. Instance administrators can manage their own code of conduct, terms of service, and content moderation policies, allowing users to have more control over the content they view as well as their experience. It was named after the religious concept of pleroma, or the totality of divine powers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pixelfed</span> Open source photo-sharing platform

Pixelfed is a free and open-source image sharing social network service. The platform uses a decentralized architecture which is roughly comparable to e-mail providers, meaning user data is not stored on one central server. It uses the ActivityPub protocol, allowing users to interact with other social networks within the protocol, such as Mastodon, PeerTube, and Friendica. Pixelfed and other platforms utilizing this protocol are considered to be part of the Fediverse.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bluesky</span> Social media service

Bluesky is a microblogging social media service. Users can share short posts containing text, images, and videos. It is owned by Bluesky Social PBC, a benefit corporation based in the United States. The site is similar to Twitter.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Eugen Rochko</span> German software developer and creator of Mastodon

Eugen Rochko is a Russian-born German software developer, best known as the creator of Mastodon, a decentralized open-source social networking platform consisting of a large number of independently run nodes, known as instances, each with its own code of conduct, terms of service, privacy policy, privacy options, and moderation policies.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lemmy (social network)</span> Open source social media software

Lemmy is a free and open-source software for running self-hosted social news aggregation and discussion forums. These hosts, known as "instances", communicate with each other using the ActivityPub protocol.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mobilizon</span> Open source event planning software

Mobilizon is an open source software for event planning and group management, launched in October 2020 by Framasoft to offer a free alternative to the platforms of GAFAM. Mobilizon gained much visibility in hacker circles relatively fast, but also soon within cultural scene in Europe and more recently in the mainstream IT media.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Threads (social network)</span> Social networking service owned by Meta Platforms

Threads is a social media, microblogging service operated by Meta Platforms. Threads requires an Instagram account to use the service and features integration between the two platforms. Upon its launch, Threads became the fastest-growing consumer software application in history, gaining over 100 million users in its first five days and surpassing the record previously set by ChatGPT.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Misskey</span> Open source, federated, social networking service

Misskey is an open source, federated, social networking service created in 2014 by Japanese software engineer Eiji "syuilo" Shinoda. Misskey uses the ActivityPub protocol for federation, allowing users to interact between independent Misskey instances, and other ActivityPub compatible platforms. Misskey is generally considered to be part of the Fediverse.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">AT Protocol</span> Decentralized social networking protocol

The AT Protocol is a protocol and open standard for distributed social networking services. It is under development by Bluesky Social PBC, a public benefit corporation originally created as an independent research group within Twitter to investigate the possibility of decentralizing the service.

References

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Further reading

The Fediverse Explorations website contains studies, research papers, and informal polls that explore the fediverse.

Statistics and software overview

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