The fediverse (commonly abbreviated 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]
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 like OStatus, the Diaspora (stylized as diaspora*) protocol and Zot as well. As of August 2024, diaspora* is the only actively developed project classified under the original definition for fediverse that doesn't support ActivityPub.[ citation needed ]
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. [5]
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 kbin instance, a similar service as well as microblog statuses from Mastodon. [6] [7]
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, [8] before being merged into the GNU social project in 2013 along with Free Social, with the two latter servers being a fork of StatusNet. [9] [10]
Over time, the limitations of the OpenMicroBlogging protocol became more apparent, being designed as a one-way text messaging system. [11] 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 protocol on March 3, 2010, with version 0.9.0, and 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". [12]
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. [13] 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. [14] 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), [15] [16] and the term fediverse has since come to mainly refer to the ActivityPub protocol and its supporting server software.[ citation needed ]
For most of its history, adoption of the fediverse from users had been minimal due to its poor user experience and over-reliance on technical details and complex terminology, [17] [18] as well as from existing platforms due to a lack of general interest among their userbase as well as development costs outweighing any potential benefits.
Following the acquisition of Twitter by Elon Musk in November 2022, certain major social networks, including Threads, [19] [20] 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 [update] , 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. [21] [22]
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, [23] and became available for all WordPress.com users in October of that same year. [24] [25]
Ghost, a blogging platform and content management system announced in April 2024 that they would be implementing fediverse support via ActivityPub. [26] [27] [28] The feature had been highly requested on its forums. [29] In July, 2024, Ghost started federating its first newsletter. [30]
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. [31] 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. [32]
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. [33] [34] In December 2023, select Meta employees began to federate with ActivityPub. [35] A roadmap was revealed in January 2024 that detailed the integration of ActivityPub in Threads. [36]
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. [37] [38] [39] 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. [40] The ability to view replies from the fediverse within Threads was added in August. [41]
This section needs expansionwith: Flipboard integration and Lemmy's growth during the Reddit API controversy. You can help by adding to it. (August 2024) |
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. [42]
While the fediverse has traditionally been the network most commonly referred to regarding the subject of decentralized social networks, alternatives to it and ActivityPub have been produced. A major competitor is the AT Protocol, which powers the Bluesky social network and has formed its own separate network dubbed the Atmosphere, [43] while smaller competitors such as Nostr and Farcaster have become popular within the cryptocurrency community. These protocols themselves have compared themselves to ActivityPub to showcase their differences, while also opting to use a different relay-based model for federation. Despite their differences, there have been attempts to allow bridging of user content between these protocols. [44] [45]
ActivityPub is the most widely used protocol in the fediverse and a W3C standard. Some popular fediverse software includes: [46] [47]
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 and Instagram can be viewed as collections of microblogs.
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 protocol that allows different microblogging services to inter-operate. It lets the user of one service subscribe to notices by a user of another service. This enables a federation of new communities, as potentially an organization of any size can host a service. OpenMicroBlogging utilizes the OAuth and Yadis protocols and does not depend on any central authority.
A distributed social network or federated social network is an Internet social networking service that is decentralized and distributed across distinct service providers, such as the Fediverse or the IndieWeb. It consists of multiple social websites, where users of each site communicate with users of any of the involved sites. From a societal perspective, one may compare this concept to that of social media being a public utility.
WebFinger is a protocol specified by the Internet Engineering Task Force IETF in RFC 7033 that allows for discovery of information about people and things identified by a URI. Information about a person might be discovered via an acct:
URI, for example, which is a URI that looks like an email address.
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.
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.
Distributed social network projects generally develop software, protocols, or both.
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".
PeerTube is a free and open-source, decentralized, ActivityPub federated video platform powered by WebTorrent, that uses peer-to-peer technology to reduce load on individual servers when viewing videos.
Mastodon is free and open-source software for running self-hosted social networking services. It has microblogging features similar to Twitter, which are offered by a large number of independently run nodes, known as instances or servers, each with its own code of conduct, terms of service, privacy policy, privacy options, and content moderation policies.
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.
ActivityPub is a protocol and open standard for decentralized social networking. It provides a client-to-server 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.
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.
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.
Bluesky is a decentralized microblogging social platform. The platform was created by Bluesky Social, a public benefit corporation based in the United States, as a proof of concept for the AT Protocol, a communication protocol for decentralized social networks. Jay Graber serves as the company's CEO and XMPP creator Jeremie Miller sits on its board of directors.
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.
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.
Misskey is a free and open-source social networking service. Created in 2014 by Japanese software engineer Eiji "syuilo" Shinoda, Misskey was originally developed as bulletin board software. A microblogging feature similar to Twitter was added to the platform, which eventually became the main format of the service. The name Misskey comes from the lyrics of Brain Diver, a song by the Japanese band May'n.
The AT Protocol is a protocol and open standard for decentralized social networking services. It is currently 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.
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: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)Our vision is that people using compatible apps will be able to follow and interact with people on Threads without having a Threads account, and vice versa, ushering in a new era of diverse and interconnected networks.