Plus: changes are coming!
I have a provocative question for Fediverse old timers and frequent users. Borrowing powerful words from John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address, I’d like you to think about this: “ask not what the Fediverse can do for you - ask what YOU can do for the Fediverse.”
A tech revolution from the bottom up
After witnessing in horror the spectacle of the new American president’s inauguration and its attendance by the leaders of the Big Tech world, a familiar feeling came over me: the urge to channel my rage and frustration over the tech oligarchy into a creative project. I don’t want to spend the next four years stewing in anger. No, I want to turn this frustration into something positive instead.
A week ago I posted this toot:
The responses from people on the Fediverse were overwhelmingly positive and encouraging. This happened last Wednesday. By Friday, I had begun jotting down ideas for a script. By Sunday morning, I had a version of the voice-over narration that I really liked.
It’s still very early on, but a theme discussed in the video is worth repeating here: if the Fediverse is so great (ethical, devoid of advertising or toxic, addictive algorithms, with the goal of genuinely connecting people) why is it that the general public has not heard of it?
That’s because the Fediverse has been built by the people for the people, has no marketing budget and has been growing slowly, organically, mostly by word of mouth.
If we want it to succeed, to be sustainable, and to rival the empires of Meta, X and TikTok, we need to organize and actively help it out. From the bottom up.
My tiny contribution: a photo for the Fediverse
The idea for the video occurred to me last Wednesday. I spent the weekend working on its script. Then Monday arrived.
When I woke up at 6 I saw that the top article on Lemmy was something wholly unexpected about the Fediverse.
This toot I posted is a perfect representation of my feelings at the time:
When I opened up Lemmy this morning I could not believe my eyes. The top story was a headline from Forbes stating: « ‘Open Source And Ethical’ TikTok, WhatsApp And Instagram Alternatives Could Transform Social Media ». The article mostly focused on Pixelfed and did a fairly good job explaining how ActivityPub works. But they spelled Mastodon « Mastadon » over and over again with no links to it. Yikes. B for the effort, but please editors do better!
https://www.forbes.com/
Source: https://mastodon.social/@_elena/113898840034447698
My toot was shared widely on the Fediverse and - long story short - the amazing @elduvelle saw it and decided to write to the author of the article, pointing out the typo. The author fixed it and even added a link to joinmastodon.org. All this in the span of a couple of hours.
Because my original toot kept being shared, I would see over and over again the article’s cover image. And then another thought occurred to me: wait, the piece is about the Fediverse but the stock image used to illustrate it is showing apps by Big Tech platforms.
I have never seen stock images showcasing Fediverse apps on a smartphone; articles about the Fediverse invariably use stock photos showing Big Tech apps. So, I had another thought: maybe I can try to produce such an image and make it widely available?
And that’s precisely what I did.
Let’s pause for a moment though. I cannot believe this idea had not occurred to me before. I am a photographer super passionate about the Fediverse. Right by my desk, where I sit down to write posts for The Future is Federated, I have a shelf with all my cameras on it, along with my favorite lenses. And yet, I had never thought of putting my photography skills to the service of the Fediverse. Kind of incredible, right?
I grabbed my Canon 5D Mark IV, left on it its 50mm f/1.4 lens (because of its gorgeous bokeh), put in on a tripod and awkwardly attempted to stretch my arm as far as possible in order to achieve focus. I took a couple of photos, my hand looked weird, so I grabbed my phone in a different way. 5 photos total. I transferred them to my computer, opened Pixelmator Pro and attempted to put my phone’s screenshot over the photo, using masking. I’m typically terrible at this – I’m a portrait photographer - but via a stroke of luck I got a decent result. All this took - from start to finish - about 30 minutes.
I posted the photo on my Mastodon account, got great feedback and when I woke up the next day I thought: maybe for maximum visibility and for ease of use I could upload it to Unsplash, instead of my website? Unsplash is THE website most bloggers and content creators use to find photos to illustrate their posts.
So I created an account on Unsplash and did just that. (Side note: I embedded my photo in this blog post via Unsplash).
Because I share my process on the Fediverse (reason: super smart feedback and advice) a new idea soon emerged. Pen (@nacly) encouraged me to upload the photo to Wikimedia Commons as well. And so I did.
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Nicolas (@nclm) read my toot about this and volunteered to edit the Fediverse Wikipedia entry and added my photo to its English and French versions. Davide Aversa (@thek3nger) did the same for the Italian version.
Why am I recounting all this? It’s not to pat myself on the back but rather, hopefully, to encourage others to imitate these actions. Creatives especially. We can all do something for the Fediverse. Every little action counts.
A new class of Fediverse advocates
I only joined Mastodon in October 2022 but the impression I got – and please correct me if I’m wrong - is that the Fediverse was initially embraced by FLOSS enthusiasts, then by a more varied group of people driven away from Twitter by its terrible new owner. Now there is a new wave: some 200k new Pixelfed users fed up with Instagram’s new policies.
Momentum is building: this is a golden opportunity for the Fediverse to cement its presence in the world of social media, as the ethical alternative to Big Tech platforms.
And don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that for the Fediverse to succeed it needs millions of new users. No, it’s not about numbers. I think scores of people are missing out on the Fediverse because they are simply not aware of its existence. And I would like to help - even in my small ways - to put the Fediverse on their radar.
For this new phase - maybe we can see it as the “normalization” phase of the Fediverse (normalization as in: propping it up as a valid contender to mainstream social apps) - we need advocates with other skills.
Developers and sys admins: thank you for your great service. You’ve been doing a phenomenal job building and sustaining the Fediverse so far. Please keep at it.
Early adopters: please keep posting on Mastodon, Friendica, Misskey, Pixelfed, Sharkey, GoToSocial, Pleroma, Akkoma, PeerTube, Castopod, micro.blog, Bookwyrm, Lemmy, Mbin, PieFed or the software of your choice.
Now we need a new class of Fediverse advocates to help support it: artists and creatives. I think we need more photographers, filmmakers, writers and content creators producing work to normalize how amazing the Fediverse is. And we need to share their work widely.
Like, for example, this video series by Doc Pop about the Fediverse:
During the super brief TikTok ban (which lasted a whopping 13 hours I think) I noticed a fantastic video explainer of the Fediverse by TikToker Angie Marie:
As far as I can tell, sadly Angie Marie has not posted anymore on the Fediverse since the reinstatement of TikTok (her latest post is from January 20th). But her video explainer is great and worth sharing.
The video – which lasts 1 minute 46 seconds – does a far better job introducing the Fediverse to people not familiar with it... than I did with 18 articles in this series over the last 7 months. Like, really. Bravissima Angie Marie, your video rocks.
On Reddit earlier this week I came across this Loops video about the advantages of the Fediverse by Frank (right click on the photo to open the video in a new window).
Here are a few things anyone could do for the Fediverse:
- recommend it to friends and family, volunteering to help them set up an account
- donate to your instance admin (if you are not self-hosting). I understand money could be tight for many, but you can surely forego a coffee or takeaway once in a while and use that money instead to support your admin's server costs
- donate to Daniel Supernault’s Pixelfed Kickstarter campaign. For two reasons: to support his incredible work on Fediverse projects (7+ years and counting) but also because mainstream media is paying attention, writing articles about it. The more successful the fundraiser, the better - so that the media can’t ignore the Fediverse (like they used to). Sadly it seems that only financial success seem worthy of attention for most publication (aw capitalism - yikes)
- if you are a blogger or you have your own site, you could normalize the use of Fediverse platforms on your links page. I went a step further with mine and included a long explanation: https://elenarossini.com/links/
But back to creatives.
Photographers: could you help produce more “stock” photos for the Fediverse? Showing platforms on desktop computers, laptops and mobile phones, so that journalists and content creators will have a lot of choice when picking media to illustrate articles about the Fediverse?
Video makers - YouTube and TikTok creators, filmmakers and editors: could you produce videos explaining what the Fediverse is? Or doing platform walkthroughs?
But what’s in it for me?
You may be wondering: why am I (Elena) such a passionate advocate of the Fediverse? What’s in it for me?
It’s very simple: I’m the mom of a 4-year-old girl.
So far it’s been easy to control what she is exposed to. But I am often thinking of the future. In 10 years, she will be a teenager. And what do teens do today?
According to a recent article by the Pew Research Center: “YouTube, TikTok, Instagram and Snapchat remain widely used among U.S. teens; some say they’re on these sites almost constantly” (source). Actually the “some say they’re on these sites almost constantly” amounts to almost HALF of them, “up from 24% a decade ago.”
And it’s not just about this article. Friends who are parents of teenagers - in France where I live and in Italy where I’m originally from - also report that their teens are online all day long.
Every day, when I'm at the park with my daughter, I notice the stark difference between small children (running, jumping, climbing, playing with each other) and adolescents (who are technically hanging out together but silently looking down at their mobile phones). It's such a jarring contrast.
The hollow values of popular social platforms - the unattainable beauty ideals, the filters, the popularity contests, the inane and sometimes dangerous "challenges", tying one’s self-esteem to the number of followers and likes - all this makes me worried. I’m actually disgusted and enraged by the current state of mainstream social media and how it has been poisoning the culture - especially for children, teenagers and young adults.
So I’d like to do something about it. I found the Fediverse, I think it’s a much healthier alternative to the unattainable ideals and brain rot promoted by Big Tech social platforms. And I’d like to help support the Fediverse however I can, so that in 10 years’ time my child and her friends could enjoy healthier online spaces.
There is no such thing as a little action to help the Fediverse. Every action counts. We need to come together and work towards a common goal - the success of the Fediverse - from the bottom up, in order to make a dent and rival the Galactic Empire of Big Tech.
I now know what I can do. How about you? Which skills could you use to help the Fediverse?
Elena
P.S.: an important note! The next issue of The Future is Federated will have a new home. I’m in the process of moving my Ghost blog from its Ghost(Pro) home to a self-hosted instance – still powered by Ghost (I LOVE it!) Its URL will be different, but it will remain a subdomain of my site elenarossini.com. If you receive these posts via email, nothing much will change (except the sender’s address - hoping I don’t mess things up with Mailgun). The new site will look absolutely identical. I think it would be very appropriate to discuss self-hosting on the Fediverse (via GoToSocial) on my new Ghost home that is self-hosted on my server. Keep an eye out for that post in about two weeks’ time. Thanks!