{"id":21696,"date":"2023-09-21T15:18:06","date_gmt":"2023-09-21T11:18:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/me-en.kaspersky.com\/blog\/?p=21696"},"modified":"2023-09-21T15:18:06","modified_gmt":"2023-09-21T11:18:06","slug":"what-is-fediverse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/me-en.kaspersky.com\/blog\/what-is-fediverse\/21696\/","title":{"rendered":"The Fediverse: what is it, what’s it for, and how does it work?"},"content":{"rendered":"

After Elon Musk \u201cbroke\u201d his Twitter<\/a> (now known as X) and Mark Zuckerberg released his Threads<\/a>, there\u2019s been a lot of talk on the internet about something called the Fediverse. Many see it as humanity\u2019s last hope to escape the current social network mess.<\/p>\n

In this post, we take look at what this Fediverse is, how it works, what it offers users right now, and what it may change in the near future.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s wrong with regular social networks?<\/h2>\n

\nLet\u2019s start with why Fediverse is needed in the first place. The main problem with today\u2019s social networks is that they\u2019ve become too closed and self-absorbed (not to mention there are an awful lot of them). Often, you\u2019re not even able to access a significant portion of a social network\u2019s content if you\u2019re not registered on it \u2014 and don\u2019t even think about further interactions on the platform.<\/p>\n

For example, to like a post on Twitter or leave a comment on a YouTube video, you have to be registered. When it comes to social networks that are part of Mark Zuckerberg\u2019s empire, it\u2019s even worse: without an account, you usually can\u2019t even get acquainted with the content, let alone like it.<\/p>\n

The second major problem with social networks is that they don\u2019t really produce anything themselves. Users create all the content on social networks, which the massive and powerful corporations behind the networks then profit from. And, of course, corporations have absolutely no respect for their users\u2019 privacy \u2014 collecting an incredible amount of data about them. This has already led to major scandals in the past<\/a>, and will most likely result in a whole bunch of problems in the future if nothing changes drastically.<\/p>\n

The way things are currently organized, there\u2019s another significant risk associated with the complete lack of user control over the platforms that they are, in fact, creating. Let\u2019s just imagine a huge social network, which just happened to play a significant role in global politics, being taken over by a person with rather peculiar views. Its users are left with no choice but to adapt \u2014 or look for another platform with a more reasonable owner.<\/p>\n

The Fediverse is designed to solve all these problems of conventional social networks: excessive centralization, complete lack of accountability, content isolation, collection of user data, and violation of user privacy.<\/p>\n

The theoretical side: what the Fediverse is, and how it works<\/h2>\n

\nThe Fediverse (a combination of \u201cfederation\u201d and \u201cuniverse\u201d) is an association of independent social networks, which allows users to interact with each other in much the same way as they would within a single platform. That is \u2014 read, subscribe\/follow, like, share content, comment, and so on.<\/p>\n

And each platform participating in the Fediverse is federated itself: it consists of a community of independent servers (referred to as \u201cinstances\u201d within the Fediverse).<\/p>\n

An essential feature of the Fediverse is therefore decentralization. Each instance within the Fediverse has its owners (who independently create and maintain the server and bear all expenses for its operation), its own user community, rules, moderation system, and often some sort of theme.<\/p>\n

The specially designed ActivityPub<\/a> protocol is used for interaction among all these independent instances. ActivityPub is developed by the organization that specializes in creating common protocols that the internet runs on \u2014 the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>

Mastodon.social<\/a> is the largest instance of Mastodon, the largest social network in the Fediverse<\/p><\/div>\n

Anyone can create their own instance within the Fediverse. All you have to do is:<\/p>\n