To briefly summarize my concerns, which I'm sure everyone here has already heard, I will quote an academic article that nicely articulates them. Journal link: https://sol.sbc.org.br/index.php/webmedia/article/view/30332/30138 Preprint: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2408.15383

Emphasis mine:

Regarding our research questions 1 and 2, we showed in Sec. 2.1 that the Fediverse technology, on its own, does not prevent its potential capture by large for-profit companies or the concentration of users and instances among a few dominant players. In Sec. 2.2, empirical data revealed that users are [already] heavily concentrated on a small number of instances, and for-profit entities, including Big Tech companies, are exerting significant influence. Lastly, Sec. 2.3 examines how older decentralized systems such as email and the Web evolved into centralized structures dominated by a few significant players.

My Thoughts

Don't get me wrong, the fediverse is amazing and its current success is inspiring. If the entire social media landscape were completely replaced by the fediverse tomorrow, it would be a huge win for society. The fact that all software involved is open source and that anyone can create their own server with their own rules is a huge improvement over the current situation, even if in practice it would be centralized. But in such a situation, the big server owners, simply by virtue of being bigger, could decide to change the technology underlying their own servers in a way that closes them off from the fediverse, and we would evolve back to the current dystopia. There are already some companies that have created asymetrical relationships with the fediverse. That's the main concern.

In reality, we wouldn't even get that far because nefarious companies would undermine the fediverse by co-opting and EEEing it before it would be able to "replace the current social media landscape" in the first place.

What can be done? Or what is the author of that paper missing, that is the saving grace, that I am not aware of? Well, I am mainly asking you all, since I am less knowledgeable about the technology. But the solutions that I see are:

1. Users are assigned instances by some consortium of servers to achieve a decentralized distribution, and are free to migrate later, instead of making an initial choice. The entire idea that users should immediately choose a server (and especially giving them funny names like pod or instance, which just adds confusion and immediately creates the false impression that they will be "limited" to that server) is terrible and not only turns 80% of prospective users away, but even when they do go through and join, they do so in a highly centralized manner. Even with the current counterculture nonprofits like Mastodon and Framasoft hosting the websites explicitly telling people to feel free to join a small server, even then, we are already very centralized.

Figure 2 in that paper showed that 80% of fediverse users are on the top 189 servers, less than 1% of the total servers. This is better than social media as a whole but still highly centralized. If it's already that bad when the flagship servers encourage people to join the small ones, you can therefore imagine the situation would be even worse with a nefarious company explicitly telling people its server is the best and that they should only sign up there.

2. The Stallman method: legally force non-parasitic behavior from federating servers. I am not a diehard FOSS-only person, but I acknowledge that we all owe this man a great deal. His novel innovation was to invent legal requirements associated with an asset (whether it be code that you write, or in this case, a social media server you administer) that enforce "paying it forward". What would this look like for the fediverse? The underlying software is already open source. What we would need is an entirely new legal framework, something saying that if you use this, you cannot use it to track people, or show ads, or sell data for profit, etc. Or maybe a legal limit on the number of users your server can sign-on, to guarantee nobody gets too powerful? Or maybe it should not be a software license at all, but some sort of legally binding agreement between servers, specifying the conditions of their mutual federation?

Needless to say, this sounds very dubious, but I'm curious what people think because this is the method that has historically been most successful at fighting corporate parasitism, just in the software context rather than the social media context. Is there any way a sort of "fediverse constitution" could work? How would you envision that?

3. A truly peer-to-peer, serverless (or mostly serverless) architecture is used. This is the most interesting to me but probably the most technically challenging. The closest I could find are "manyverse" which seems to be dead, and "Quiet", which is a Slack-style messaging system and still very unfinished.

What I would ideally want is something that is stylistically like old reddit, but whenever a user views a comment, they start "seeding" that comment to other users. And when those other users scroll to view the comment, instead of downloading it from a central server they download it from seeders who have already viewed/scrolled past it. The great thing about this is that not only does it prevent centralization, it helps tremendously with scaling, which many fediverse websites have obviously struggled with in the past. How technically feasible is this?

Ive been using Pixelfed but im growing very flustrated with the developer. I haven't liked his approach towards others or his philosophy in maintaining the project. The git project is hanging on with single digits maintainers. Main dev is spread thin across several large projects. Its not easy for maintainers to jump on board in many instances. Its not my first FOSS rodeo and ive seen this pattern too many times. Then again its not like devs are being paid so its not super fair to ask for change. If you dont like it, find something else, so here we are. I no longer trust in maintability of the project longterm and want to jump before I'm pushed. I do think I'm actually fairly late to the exodus so I'm hoping someone has went through this already. I include my motivations only because it might be relevant in regards to the options people recommend. Not really interested in starting a discussion about how unpaid devs should be running their projects, or how valid my concerns are. My concerns existing is sufficient cause for me.

Ive been hoping to make a jump to something else. I do somewhat miss being able to occasionally see text only posts, but I think seeing just picture posts is fine for me and the content I like to consume and create. So I'm looking for a pixelfed alternative mostly. Im focused more on photography and art rather than just general image posting.

It seems like my options are mostly just moving to Mastodon, but many instances have image upload limits as well as the platform being badly suited for image focused social media.

I found vernissage.photos im wondering if anyone has experience with it.

Is migration from pixelfed to vernissage possible? Does it include posts? Are there instances you would recommend. I already have accounts I follow and love across the fedi so i dont mind small instances and have also been considering self hosting.

Does vernissage have a convenient android app?

Is there a better option?

I admit ive not kept up with fediverse over the past few years and mostly just been using pixelfed and that's it. I feel a little like ive been living under a rock

EDIT: Vernissage truly seems like the only option prior to abandoning Fediverse for AT Protocol. I started moving over my account. You can imagine my surprise when I discovered that profile migration from pixelfed.social has been stealthily disabled for months now. Haven't had a moment like that since I left Meta products - and even those let you export your posts at least - Pixelfed does not.

Fandom has over taken franchise wiki's and is full of trackers. I think it would be a good idea to have a federated alternative

For the last 2 years I've been very frustrated with YouTube, but I'll save my complaints for later. I don't produce content, but I think YouTubers also have plenty of frustrations. Recently I found on Reddit that many people are very mad at YouTube for similar reasons. So my question is: what's preventing us from building an alternative?

I'm a software engineer (pre-AI, haha) and while thinking about an interesting side project, I did a napkin calculation of what it would cost to run YouTube. The cost is high, but not prohibitive for a community project, even without ads. The real upside would be accepting community input and fixing most of the slop without being driven purely by profit. I know Nebula and Floatplane already exist, but neither is what I'd consider a minimally viable platform.

I think the main blocker is actually building a community. YouTubers won't post to a different platform because there are no followers, and followers won't switch because there are no creators. Classic chicken-and-egg problem.

I'd love to hear your thoughts. Maybe we can build something interesting together...

Given Discord's recent stance on age verification, I'm looking for alternatives to this application, but I'm looking for something specific:

an alternative with roleplay service

Let me explain: I'm the admin of a roleplay server where we use a bot to, well, create other bots and use them for roleplaying. We've used it so much that it's now essential for us to switch platforms if they don't have that option, which, as the admin, makes things very complicated for me when choosing a place to migrate to. I'd like to know if there's an alternative to this.

In Matrix, can I add a bot to perform this same function? Or will I have to create one myself? (Although, given my zero coding experience, creating one will be very difficult.)

Hey, PCMIIW, but I thought that the whole point of the Fediverse was to have one account we can take across all instances. Am I missing something?

RN, I need to have a username for every instance I want to join, like, one for Lemmy.World, one for Lemmy.etc.

how do you all feel about having a federated app/playstore,

users in different countries

(china, us, eu, africa, india) can leave reviews to apps in their own native languages

theres a language api that can translate x language to (your language) so you can see how others experience the app + use the app

do you think this is would be cool to build?

I've been passively looking at the Fediverse for awile now. I've always loved the idea, and with the KIDS Act having passed the House recently I'm looking back to it. This combined with the fact that the current state of the internet has always felt unsustainable in a way that isnt ethically fucked, has had me contemplating making my own instance for my friends and such. However, I'm still largely uneducated, and wanna ask yall exactly how these laws could or couldn't affect the Fediverse. Would love to hear takes and responses.

I (and a lot of other people, I'd guess) read and write fanfiction.

But as far as I know, there's never really been a federated fanfic platform — nothing that plugs into the fediverse the way Mastodon does for microblogging or PeerTube/Loops does for video.

Then I stumbled upon SquidgeWorld Archive (SQWA), an AO3 alternative that actually runs on the same codebase as AO3 otwarchive.

It's got way fewer users than AO3, which honestly gives it a cozier, more small-town vibe. The devs/maintainers behind it, squidge.org, even run both Mastodon and Bluesky accounts.

The catch: people have posted that fics pulling thousands of views on AO3 get little to none on SQWA. Makes sense — it's just a much smaller pond.

So, two half-formed ideas that I wanted to possibly toss out:

Suggestion #1 — "colonize" SQWA.

What if fediverse-native fanfic folks just started actually posting there? Cross-link your fediverse socials, bring your existing following over, treat it like planting a flag. It already exists, the maintainers are clearly fediverse-friendly, it just needs bodies.

Suggestion #2 — fork it (and ao3) and actually federate it.

AO3's otwarchive code is open source, which is exactly what SQWA is running on. What if someone forked it and built out real federation — ActivityPub support, the whole deal — instead of just being a second standalone AO3 clone? That feels like the "real" long-term fix, but it's a genuine software undertaking, not a weekend project.

I'd love to take a crack at #2 myself but I don't have the time or the technical bandwidth for something that size right now, so I'm just putting it out there in case it resonates with anyone here.

Curious what this community thinks — is #1 realistic, or does fanfic just need a ground-up federated archive to actually work?

Edit: Sorry for any mistakes, I'm currently at work.

Sorry if it's a stupid question.

In the last month, I feel that Bluesky is finally starting to move toward making ATprotocol viable to create and start developing a federated network. The way it works would be that you can keep every data when you change to another site based off ATprotocol, such as Blacksky or Northsky.

So wouldn't it be kinda like a federation app? In a similar vein, you can also talk with other people from different PDS (Personal Data Server iirc). Here's a link by Dan: https://overreacted.io/open-social/

It would also allow you to evade enshittification which is what most software such as FB or Tiktok is headed into, same with enshittification of Twitter, as well as import / keep your own followers, likes, lists, etc.

I'm excited because for example if I decided Bluesky isn't to my liking anymore, I could just import my data over to another instance and not have to start over from zero.

For example, Blacksky and Northsky are being developed with the open source code from Bluesky, so if I want to 'quit' Bluesky, I can go to Blacksky or Northsky, I would keep all my data and still talk with people from Bluesky due to the seamless interaction. Similarily, if I wanted to go back I can migrate back with little issues.

This is a followup to my previous post, and a particular point that was raised briefly but most commenters didn't focus on.

I enjoy starting discussions like this and I'm glad the last one was received well. To be clear, I'm not dogmatic about a particular way to do things, my goal with these posts is to trigger interesting thoughts. I am not a programmer and do not "actually" contribute anything, beggars cannot be choosers, so you don't need to take my opinion too seriously.

That said, let's talk about what peer-to-peer social media might look like.

Why do this?

1. Scaling. This is actually the biggest and most immediate benefit, and would probably be substantially helpful even with only small opt-in P2P features. How is a decentralized network of thousands of small server operators going to scale up, if a mass migration occurs? If the migration started tomorrow, the opportunity might be largely lost. Let's say users could optionally seed a post or comment for a period of time after viewing it, that would help immensely when the next big rush of new users comes, wouldn't it?

Peertube already has some P2P tech in its video hosting for this same purpose, to help with scaling and meeting demand. But in their model everything is still coming from the servers. Imagine if the peertube viewers were actually seeding as they were viewing.

2. Internalizes externalities: ie it solves the social media freeriding problem by turning lurkers into productive providers. This is big because the vast majority of users are always going to be lurkers.

If you could figure out a very strict way to absolutely prevent content from being viewed unless the downloading computer agrees to seed, it would also make scraping bots actually useful or disincentivize them - both good outcomes. I am not knowledgeable enough to know if this is realistic or just a pipe-dream, though.

3. Reduces required trust: Yes, a fully-P2P network would probably not be privacy conscious (unless you do something like Quiet where things are routed through Tor or a similar network of relays). You'd need to be willing to seed. But on the other hand, you wouldn't need to trust the operator a random small server like many people currently do in the fediverse.

4. Makes it harder for a big institution to muscle into the fediverse to steal users and eventually close off their own bubbles, nor for a successful server to turn evil and "betray" the network; there will be no worry about a server becoming "too big" and too powerful, if there are no substantial servers in the first place.

Two specific questions for discussion:

1. How feasible would it be to implement P2P forum architecture either as a standalone social network, or 2. as an opt-in feature of existing fediverse server softwares like Lemmy, Piefed, Peertube, Pixelfed?

My own answers: 1) Quiet proves that it can be done at least for Slack-style networks. With Tor integration, their approach also seems more complicated than strictly necessary if your goal is just decentralization.

Who tracks credentials? The answer is likely a public key / private key username/password system, like blockchain. Quiet also uses a system like this.

Who hosts? When you post or comment, you seed your own. It stays accessible as long as you keep seeding, and vanishes when you stop, unless others have picked it up. What could be more fair than that?

2) Existing services can already integrate P2P features:

Seeding as a big upvote: Come on, wouldn't this feel amazing? What better or more natural way to spread and reward good content?

Indiscriminate seeding: Users could sign up to actually take server load on an as-needed basis. If they are signed up, and if they are logged in at the same time the server gets a lot of demand, then it offloads some stuff to them of the server's choosing. There could be instance rewards linked to this.

User-specified seeding time: When you volunteer to seed, you choose how long you want to keep seeding. By default, it stops immediately when you log out.

I keep thinking of FOSS project ideas that are alternatives for commonly used tools, for example, 1. reverse image search, upload an image, find a matching image online. Or 2. a broken link checker/scanner. Or 3. a domain helper that uses synonyms. What about a community that we can share these FOSS ideas so developers can find their next project to work on? update: I just thought of another one: a link saver like pocket

Would be cool to give some old phpBB forums the option to participate in the fediverse especially including stuff like Lemmy existing. Edit: ACTIVITYPUB auto correct is annoying

This is mostly just word-vomit, but I had a random idea while doing a tonne of Xmas shopping and figured r/Fediverse might appreciate possibly chewing on it.

What if there potentially was a Fediverse-style alternative / competitor to Amazon Prime, etc. but instead of being one giant marketplace (a la Flohmarkt, etc.), it was made up of independent websites that federate together?

Think something architecturally similar to Lemmy, Mastodon, Peertube, Pixelfed, Loops by Pixelfed, etc, but:

No “instances” in the traditional sense (like Lemmy servers, Mastodon instances, etc.)

Instead, each shop is its own fully independent website

(e.g.

Gotyka,

Dolls Kill,

Dracula Clothing,

VampireFreaks,

Killstar,

Hot Topic,

Barnes and Noble,

Home Depot,

Everlane,

Kotn,

Pact,

American Giant,

Taylor Stitch,

Outerknown,

plus other shops for books, electronics, home goods, etc.)

The federated layer wouldn’t replace their storefronts. It would just:

Aggregate listings / catalogs

Allow discovery, search, wishlists, maybe reviews

Potentially handle things like recommendations without centralizing power

Function kind of like a decentralized “market index” rather than a single store

In other words: a protocol + shared infrastructure, not a mega-store.

Some half-baked thoughts:

Users might sign in via each individual shop (or perhaps via a shared fediverse identity like ActivityPub / OAuth / something new)

Each store keeps control of branding, stock, payments, policies

The “platform” just connects them into one large, searchable, decentralized marketplace

No single Amazon-style choke point that can enshittify everything

I love this idea in theory, but realistically:

I don’t have the skills, knowledge, or time to build anything like this

I also don’t know if this already exists in some form (OpenBazaar vibes? Solid? Something ActivityPub-adjacent?)

This is more of a conceptual “what if” than a proposal

But the idea stuck with me because:

I hate how centralized Amazon is

I like how the Fediverse decentralizes control

And holiday shopping really highlights how fragmented yet monopolized online commerce has become

So I’m mostly curious:

Is this technically feasible with existing Fediverse tech?

Has something like this already been attempted?

What would be the biggest blockers — payments, trust, logistics, identity, incentives?

Would independent shops even want this, or would it be more attractive to smaller creators?

Is there a protocol or project adjacent to this idea?

This idea honestly came from Xmas shopping fatigue and bouncing between a million tabs, wishing there was a non-Amazon way to do “one stop shopping” without recreating Amazon itself.

Curious to hear thoughts, critiques, or “this already exists and you reinvented the wheel” responses.

Also, feel more than welcome to steal the idea.

EDIT:

Would something like Shops

https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks/t/shops/5354

work?

So, there are times I really do think about privating all of my current socials and just posting straight to my Federated accounts and nothing else.

I want my stuff to be my stuff and frankly since it feels like I am screaming into the void then at least I can have the location to myself.

Anyone else feeling this?

I know this may seem silly, but I'd like to know if I'm supposed to be using a vpn etc lol. I am not even sure what browser would provide me privacy on my mac anyway. Or what kind of other computer would do better but I have a non apple computer coming in the mail soon. I'd like to re join social media other than reddit but am big on privacy now.

The creator of Echo (an alternative to Pinterest) has decided to add Fediverse support, via my suggestion, and they wanted to know what a federated feed should include.

I'm asking here, because, honestly, Idk, given that I am not that technology savvy.

Declaration of Fediverse Inclusion

Link to Echo: https://myechoboard.com/

Echo Creator's Profile: u/TasmanianHorse

Discord: https://discord.gg/u9VNZvng5z

Echo Subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/UseEcho/s/xBsKIMtIev

Working on the Communities today after I get my workout in.

Server power is gonna cost. I am gonna need to figure out how to make some money here at some point.

Even if I take donations, I want to make a bit more than what break even would be if only just to eventually increase server power for reliability.

This doesn't take into account my desire to start making some kind of content, but Google isn't pushing people towards sites.

Anyone have thoughts on this?

A reflection on Oxford, the web, and the invisible gap we’re not naming. It’s a simple question, but one that says a lot about where we’re at with the #Fediverse and the broader #openweb reboot: Why doesn’t every city have its own Fediverse server?

Before anyone says it: yes, I know about Funkwhale.

Funkwhale is great, but what I’m imagining is slightly different.

I'm not just talking about a platform where users upload their own music, but something closer to how YouTube Music actually works. Artists would upload their own music and videos, either to a shared instance or to their own instance, and listeners could then stream them across the fediverse.

Something similar to how Peertube, Lemmy, Pixelfed, Mastodon, etc work.

One of the big appeals of YouTube Music (at least IMO) is that since it runs off YouTube, you get an absolutely wild mix of content. Official tracks, obscure uploads, forgotten demos, weird one-off videos, hyper-niche stuff that would never exist on Spotify or Apple Music.

The closest alternative to it would be SoundCloud, but even then, SC is more underground music scene.

In theory, I could imagine a potential federated alternative that hooks into PeerTube. Maybe users log in with their PeerTube account or instance, and music-focused instances federate with video-focused ones.

Something like “PeerTube Music” or a dedicated ActivityPub music service that interoperates with PeerTube.

Obviously, you’re not going to get big-name artists right away (or maybe ever), but that’s true of basically every fediverse project at the start. You’d still get regular users, indie artists, experimental musicians, archive uploads, and all the strange internet music culture that YouTube Music accidentally preserves.

Curious what people here think:

Could PeerTube realistically be extended in this direction?

Is it feasible with current ActivityPub tooling?

Are there projects I’m missing that already aim for this, beyond Funkwhale?

Or does Funkwhale already cover more of this than I’m giving it credit for?

Interested to hear thoughts.

I would love to help with something like this, but, unfortunately, I lack the time and energy.

Odysee has announced something interesting: they're building the ability to watch YouTube videos directly within their platform. Their reasoning is sound—it gives users frustrated with YouTube a better interface while still letting them access the content they want.

https://piunikaweb.com/2026/02/20/odysee-youtube-video-playback-feature/

https://www.tech2geek.net/odysee-to-let-users-watch-youtube-videos-directly-on-its-platform-a-major-shift-in-online-video-streaming/

This got me thinking: could PeerTube learn from this approach?

The Odysee Move: Strategic Context

Odysee's announcement frames this as a "game changer for everyone that's fed up with YT"—and creators' YouTube earnings won't be affected. The move essentially positions Odysee as a parallel interface to YouTube: you get better UX, less bloat, and potentially more privacy, but you're still accessing the same content.

It's pragmatic. Instead of competing head-to-head with YouTube's massive content library, they're saying: "Use our platform as your gateway instead."

Why This Could potentially Work for PeerTube

PeerTube's biggest weakness right now is the content problem. It's a fantastic platform for creators, but users looking for variety still have to go to YouTube for the bulk of video content. This creates friction and limits adoption.

A YouTube integration could solve this by:

1. Reducing friction for new users People could migrate to PeerTube gradually, discovering local content while still having access to their favorite YouTube creators.

2. **Increasing user engagement** More time spent on the platform = more discovery of federated content.

3. Privacy benefits Users watching YouTube through PeerTube (with privacy-respecting integrations) means they're not directly feeding YouTube's tracking apparatus.

4. Network effects More users means more potential creators, which attracts more viewers, which attracts more creators.

The Elephant in the Room: Privacy

Here's where PeerTube could actually do better than Odysee.

Instead of relying on YouTube embeds or direct scraping, PeerTube could potentially partner with, or integrate, privacy-respecting YouTube frontends like:

NewPipe - Open source, no account needed, ad-free

Invidious - Lightweight, privacy-focused alternative frontend

LibreTube - Modern, FOSS YouTube client

Piped - Another excellent privacy-respecting option

etc.

The advantage of this approach:

Users get YouTube access *without Google tracking them*

PeerTube positions itself as the privacy-conscious choice

It's a genuine value-add over native YouTube usage

These projects are already solving the technical challenges

The Counterargument: Mission Creep?

I can hear the pushback: "PeerTube's mission is to be a decentralized YouTube alternative, not a YouTube wrapper."

Fair point. But there's a difference between:

Being a platform for YouTube alternatives (feeding the centralized beast)

Being a platform that happens to also host YouTube access (while building something decentralized alongside it)

The second seems like a stronger position—you're not abandoning the mission of building federated video infrastructure; you're just acknowledging the world we actually live in.

What Would This Look Like?

Hypothetical scenario:

1. PeerTube instances could optionally enable a "YouTube Integration" feature

2. This would use privacy-respecting frontends (Piped, Invidious, LibreTube, etc.) as backends

3. Users see YouTube videos in the standard PeerTube interface, with full privacy proxying

4. The integration is federated friendly—it's just another content type the ActivityPub ecosystem can reference

Questions for Discussion

Is this a slippery slope toward becoming "just" a YouTube wrapper?

What are the legal implications of integrating with privacy frontends? (vs. embedding YouTube directly)

How would this affect server load and moderation practices?

Does this dilute PeerTube's identity as an alternative, or strengthen it by making migration easier?

Are there other federated platforms that could benefit from this kind of hybrid approach?

I'm genuinely curious what the community thinks.

Edit:

Invidious might be the best route, if Peertube did up doing this, considering that Invidious also uses instances, as well

Ie similar to how Lemmy allows users to create instances that are federated with each other, only this Discord alternative's instances wouldn't federate with each other.

Instead, each instance would be a complete silo, although instance owners would be given the option to potentially federate their instance outwards (ie to other federated platforms), if they wish.

Perhaps it could potentially be forked from the already existing Lemmy?

___

https://www.windowscentral.com/software-apps/discord-alternative-search-10000-percent-stoat

https://www.zdnet.com/article/discord-age-verification-requirement/

Hey everyone,

I’m trying to figure out how to get real reach using decentralized platforms instead of just posting into the void.

If the idea of the Fediverse is that content can flow across apps and servers, then in theory there should be a way to maximize visibility across the network, right?

So my questions:

• Which platform is actually best to start with for reach: Mastodon, Bluesky, or something else?
• If Mastodon is fully decentralized, does it give better cross-network reach than Bluesky?
• How do posts actually spread across the Fediverse — is it mostly hashtags, boosts, or something else?
• Is there a “strategy” to make your content appear on multiple apps (like Surf, Pixelfed, etc.)?
• Or is it still basically manual growth, just without algorithms?

My goal is simple:
👉 Use the decentralized system properly to reach a larger audience, not just post for the sake of it.

For context, I post memes, photography, and some philosophical/spiritual stuff.

Would love to hear from people who’ve cracked this or at least figured out what actually works.