(i've written about this before here but it was a pretty crappy post that hardly made sense so here i go again)

centralised social media is getting worse and worse for you? are you getting sadder and sadder with how terrible it is and how the bigwigs who run them don't care about what happens to the community on it and how they only want to use them as money generators?

well grab your hat, space cowboy, because next stop: the interplanetary good vibe zone. aka, the fediverse!

the fediverse is a full on better alternative to social media in general. instead of having different social media platforms that you have to sign up to individually; the fediverse is made up of different servers running different kinds of social media platforms that all connect to each other. it's kind of like your telephone provider; you don't have to subscribe to each provider to talk with your friends, you can call all your friends regardless of what provider they're using.

this is all done with a very fun magic protocol called ActivityPub. and this protocol is an open standard, so anyone can use it to make their own part of the fediverse. this part of the fediverse is called an instance, which runs a piece of software with the magic protocol to provide you, the user, with a not too dissimilar social media experience. you can sign up to any one of them — mastodon, firefish, lemmy, pixelfed, whatever (there's a lot of them) — and you can interact with everyone on every one of those servers! pretty cool eh? no walled gardens now!

the community is very friendly on the fediverse, it's a rare occurrence for you to find an absolutely rotten unfunny person here (cough, twitter). why's that? every server has their own home rules, and are moderated by real people. yeah, I know, surprising. real people. not bots like the terrible social media platforms use. on top of that, if there is an instance that is filled with really really bad people, your instance and plenty of other instances will defederate and cut ties with that instance. simpler than banning them individually, and they can go on with their lives being terrible in their own space.

if you're hankering for some fun, you can host your own instance on the fediverse! get a server, install your fediverse software of choice, and you have created another instance to be part of the fediverse! use it for yourself, or open it up for everyone to use: it even helps spread out the load on servers and keeps the whole thing decentralised.

wanna get in on the fun? you're more than welcome to! joining the fediverse is as simple as choosing your preferred platform (the software) and an instance (or host your own)! there's a plenty of platforms to choose on, it just depends on what you prefer, you can still interact with everyone on the fediverse (with the minor exception of platforms like peertube or lemmy where the interaction is mostly one-way across different software).

• if you like microblogging (twitter-esque): there's the obvious choice of mastodon. but i personally implore you to try firefish or misskey, the former being what I recommend more. it's a way more fun experience while interacting with others!
• if you enjoy posting images and videos, pick pixelfed and peertube. they aren't too dissimilar to YouTube and Instagram; of course, minus the terrible corporate decisions.
• link aggregator? lemmy is your go to. the fediverse successor to Reddit! don't worry, it doesn't inherit all the bad Reddit characteristics.

and of course, there's more. you can go find an instance on this fine site!

oh, and when you do, come say hi to me over the fediverse! i be @ivy@lethallava.land (yes, two @ signs. first one for your username, second one for your instance)!

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