When I was in college, studying Mass Communication, one key principle that was repeated to me and to my fellow classmates, time and time again, was: "Show, Don't Tell."
For the past five weeks I have been singing the praises of the Fediverse, setting up a contrast between it and the world of commercial social media; I have been listing all the advantages of this independent galaxy of social media networks, showing fleeting glimpses of what interoperability looks like. But this isn't enough: to really grasp how revolutionary the Fediverse is, you have to see things in action.
Today I will show you what interoperability looks like - between two of its popular networks: Mastodon and Pixelfed.
When you realize how cool the Fediverse is, you can’t help but feel enthusiastic about the future of the open social web.
The ultimate goal of The Future is Federated is to introduce the Fediverse to "regular people," encouraging them to try out one or more of its networks, allowing them to experience social media away from the walled gardens of Big Tech (and also away from surveillance capitalism and intentional data mining for AI training).
I'm putting myself in the shoes of a Fediverse newbie - but also: I, myself, am a newbie. So far I have only tried three Fediverse projects out of the myriad of networks/software there are and I am only using one (Mastodon) on a daily basis. Writing about interoperability has encouraged me to do things for the first time, seeing how one account appears in another software. I am simply blown away by the power of the Fediverse - and I can't wait to show you the magic made possible by it.
Fediverse 101 – a Glossary
If this is the first post you are reading on this topic or from this blog, a glossary may be useful in helping you navigate what I am about to describe. If you are already familiar with these terms, feel free to skip over this section.
The Fediverse is a galaxy of independent, interconnected social media networks that can talk to each other. In old parlance, imagine posting a photo on Instagram and seeing it pop up on a follower’s X feed, with comments syncing between the two apps. In the Fediverse, it’s possible. Bonus: there are no ads and no algorithmic shenanigans hiding posts of people you follow.
ActivityPub is a protocol (set of rules) that lets different social media platforms in the Fediverse chat with each other; it tells them how to share things like posts, follows and notifications, even though they're separate networks. What are other protocols you may already be familiar with? POP3, IMAP and SMTP – email protocols that help service providers transmit and fetch messages across servers. Email is a technology that’s provider agnostic: if you have a Proton email account, you can send emails to anyone in the world, irrespective of what their email provider is; all you need is your correspondent’s email address. The Fediverse works in a similar way, thanks to ActivityPub.
Mastodon is a decentralized text-based social platform – the Fediverse's answer to X (formerly Twitter).
Pixelfed is a decentralized photo sharing site – the Fediverse's answer to Instagram.
Prelude
For the purposes of this exercise I would like to demonstrate what interoperability on the Fediverse looks like - to a newbie - from the point of view of someone who is mostly using Mastodon as their main Fediverse hub, willing to try out Pixelfed.
Why do you need to have multiple Fediverse accounts to enjoy this galaxy of interconnected projects? You DON’T! You could stick to just one.
I am personally trying out various Fediverse projects so I can tell you about them for this blog series and also in order to concretely show you how one post from Network 1 shows up on Network 2 (I’m calling them “networks” in this post because the concept of networks is easier to understand for newbies, but “Fediverse software” would be the more appropriate term).
1: Setup – creating new accounts on Mastodon and Pixelfed
Ease of setup: ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐
When a malevolent, chaotic billionaire finalized his acquisition of Twitter, Mastodon witnessed a sharp rise in interest and an influx of new users. I was one of them.
Thing is, many potential new users were turned off by the sign-up steps for Mastodon, because they were asked to choose an instance. “What is an instance?” many wondered. And thus a new narrative formed: that the Fediverse was too complicated, too technical for “regular people.” In the ensuing years the sign-up process for Mastodon has been simplified and the default instance at sign-up is mastodon.social – its most popular, with 2 million users.
It only takes a couple of minutes to create a new Mastodon account at joinmastodon.org - the process could not be easier or more fluid. Way to go Mastodon team!
So, let’s assume you have a Mastodon account that you use to explore other Fediverse projects. But you are also curious to try out what a native Pixelfed account is like. You can sign up here: pixelfed.org/how-to-join Similarly, Pixelfed also asks you to pick an instance (because that’s how the Fediverse works). Why not opt for its most popular one, pixelfed.social?
2: Here is how Mastodon and Pixelfed “talk” to each other
Experience: ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐
It’s truly awe-inspiring how seamless the communication between Mastodon and Pixelfed is.
I follow my Mastodon account (@_elena@mastodon.social) in Pixelfed and my Pixelfed account (@elenarossini@pixelfed.social) on Mastodon.
In old parlance, imagine being able to follow an Instagram account from Twitter 1.0 - or vice-versa. Say, you are on Instagram and a Twitter account you follow publishes a post with a photo: this would appear in your Instagram feed, so you could comment on it and even re-share it. The comment would be synched between the two apps, so even if you wrote it on Instagram, it would also appear as a reply to the post on Twitter. Wild, no? Well, this is already a reality on the Fediverse. I have already mentioned this in a previous issue of this blog, but it’s worth repeating. It’s just so cool.
Ready to be impressed even more?
It doesn’t matter if you don’t have a Pixelfed account. You don’t need one! Any of your Mastodon posts that contain photos show up on Pixelfed, in a grid.
I discovered this when I looked up my Mastodon account from Pixelfed and I was simply amazed by it:
As you can see, I frequently post screenshots to Mastodon.
I love having a dedicated Pixelfed account because it’s a curation of the photos I’d like to share - devoid of any screenshots or other media:
You may think to yourself: so what? I don’t see what’s the big deal about this is. So, let me paint you a picture.
Imagine you have a friend called Maria who is a really talented photographer. Maria is not really comfortable posting to text-based social media, she prefers sharing photos on a photo sharing network. Conversely, you never post any photos and prefer to share thoughts and comments on a text-based network. In the current world of commercial social media, if you wanted to see and comment on Maria’s photos, you would be forced to create an account on her photo sharing platform of choice and you would have to log in to see her posts.
On the Fediverse, that’s not necessary! You could follow Maria’s Pixelfed account from Mastodon, comment on her photos and even boost her posts. Think: total interconnected freedom to communicate, that is software agnostic. Mastodon and Pixelfed allow that. Seamlessly.
3: Third party apps and platform interoperability
Experience: ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐
Ready for more ActivityPub magic?
Back in the day you might have been a Twitter 1.0 power user, like me, who enjoyed reading tweets on Tweetdeck.
The Fediverse has a Tweetdeck-like platform, but even more powerful: it’s called Phanpy and it’s simply amazing, especially because of its phenomenal catch-up feature (covered here on point no.5 "best web client").
Well, yesterday I logged onto Phanpy with my Pixelfed credentials (!!!). I was blown away by the fact it carried over the exact same functionalities, even if I was following accounts that were media-centric.
Are you confused? Well, imagine being able to log onto Tweetdeck with your Instagram credentials and seeing and interacting with photos of accounts you follow. Simply not possible in the world of commercial social media - but it’s already a reality in the Fediverse.
But there’s more.
Remember Tweetbot? It was a phenomenal third party client for Twitter, developed by Tapbots, that added sophisticated functionalities that were not available in the stock Twitter app. Tweetbot ceased to work and was removed from the Apple App Store in January 2023 when Elon Musk barred third party apps from accessing Twitter’s API. Tapbots turned its attention to the Fediverse and quickly released Ivory, a Tweetbot-like app for Mastodon.
You know what feels like magic? Being able to add my Pixelfed account to Ivory and browsing new posts on it. It works perfectly!
Again, if you are confused by this, imagine using Tweetbot to manage your Twitter account and adding to the app a second account to manage your Instagram account. Absolutely impossible in the world of commercial social media, but already a reality in the Fediverse.
This works on Android too. Disclaimer: I encountered issues adding a second account to my Mastodon Android app (it was pushing me to create a new Pixelfed account, instead of logging in with my existing one) so I logged out of my Mastodon account on Tusky, signed in with my Pixelfed credentials and voilà: I was able to read and interact with my Pixelfed feed that way - similarly to Ivory on iOS.
It's worth pointing out that @dansup - the developer behind Pixelfed - has created a superb Pixelfed app for iOS that is currently available in beta testing via Testflight; an Android version will be out soon.
I showed you what it's like to use Pixelfed inside Mastodon clients on iOS and Android because I find this so cool.
We’re Just Getting Started
The original goal of this post was to show what Fediverse interoperability looks like across numerous projects: how Mastodon, Pixelfed, Lemmy, PeerTube, Misskey and Friendica “talk to each other.” Alas, it took me 2000+ words to describe the magic-like interaction between just Mastodon and Pixelfed.
This is only part 1. I look forward to showing you more examples of interoperability in future blog posts.
Epilogue
When you learn about all the advanced functionalities of the Fediverse, don’t you start seeing commercial social media as something outdated and passé?
The Fediverse has so much potential and is so much more sophisticated than anything made available by Meta, TikTok and X. But more importantly: not only is it technically superior, it is also ethical and user-centric.
I love the words welcoming users to the joinmastodon.org page:
Social networking that's not for sale.
Your home feed should be filled with what matters to you most, not what a corporation thinks you should see. Radically different social media, back in the hands of the people.
The future is federated. Actually, scratch that: the present is already federated!
Elena
P.S.: you can find all previous posts for The Future is Federated at this link.
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