The internet is getting weird again. Twitter’s recent stumbles under new ownership have surprisingly shined a quick light on the world of federated and decentralized social networking services, like Mastodon. These services are peer-to-peer or community-run networks, depending on the particulars. Federated services are services that are managed by individual organizations or “offices,” such as the post office, email, or self-hosted forums.
If you were on the internet “back in the day,” you might remember when everyone connected through a variety of different forums or instant messaging client accounts while having their own personal pages on Geocities or Blogspot. The rise of federated services is reminiscent of that. If you’re used to “modern” social media from 2012 or so onward, all of this can be really confusing at first glance—which is understandable! A lot of jargon is being thrown around, and many of the established norms are being abandoned.
Have no fear! This is your guide to the federated universe (coined the “Fediverse”), and what it all means for you and for the future of social media and networking. Since the biggest crowd of Twitter refugees seems to be heading toward Mastodon, let’s look at what you need to get started there first. Then we’ll dive deeper into the underlying concepts and systems that make federated services work, as well as highlight some other specialized networks you can try—like PixelFed and PeerTube—which take that idea beyond mere Twitter clones into a full-on web experience.
By the time you’re done reading this you’ll have a full grasp of how federated services work—and their potential.
MEET MASTODON
Before we jump into the super nitty-gritty, let’s take a look at one of the big services gaining traction right now: Mastodon.
Mastodon has been exploding over the past few weeks, with over 1 million new daily active users getting involved just since the end of October. According to this Mastodon signup tracking bot, there are more than 7 million total accounts, with 2,000 made every hour. Momentum is gaining for Mastodon, which has been around since 2016.
Mastodon itself is very much a Twitter-like service. It’s a
