The internet. We have also debunked the myth that the dark web is only for nefarious purposes and things along those lines. Today I want to talk about decentralized applications, specifically, we’re going to kind of focus on some of the things in the Fediverse.
Before we get into these decentralized applications or social networks and things. I want to talk about something like we did with the dark web quickly because I know someone’s going to leave the comment that these services are for extremists or political hate groups.
I just want to go ahead and put that idea to bed, these services are decentralized like a Fediverse, do not mean that they’re moderation-free zones, they don’t mean that you can go anywhere. You want to say whatever you want, do illegal activities and get away with it.
I am going to make the argument that the Fediverse has far better moderation capabilities and allows you as an individual to take control of the content, you see, and you don’t see better than any large centralized platform like Facebook or Twitter could ever do so.
What I want to do is take you through some of these services that are out there and tell about them you.
Let you see how awesome they are and then we’ll talk about why they’re a much better alternative and, in my opinion, far safer and better for our privacy and security than the centralized platforms out there that you may be used to.
1. Mastodon
Mastodon has over 4 million users on it. It is equivalent to Twitter. If you’ve been on Twitter before you’ve got a limited character set that you can send out called a tweet and in this case very similar, you send out a toot.
Fun fact: Mastodon is an elephant thing like Twitter is a bird thing.
Mastodon is a very popular decentralized social application and the great thing is it’s not centralized, so you can have multiple instances. I can even create my instance.
Because there are protocols in place that allow me to communicate across these. So open-source standards that allow me to communicate across these various servers and connect them all, my instance can talk to your instance or the main instance of the mastodon. Also because I own that server nobody can take that down, and I can control and moderate what takes place on Mastadon.
If I decide instead, I want to join somebody’s existing instance. Then I’m under their moderation rules and they have plenty of moderation tools in mastodon to make sure that certain content is not allowed. They can be removed and people can be banned and other such things.
It doesn’t take away these decentralized applications, moderation. What a good decentralized application does, it allows you to be back in control of what you see and what you do on those social networks. So if you don’t want to see certain content, you can create your instance or join one that doesn’t allow that, and then the community itself moderates.
It’s not some gigantic facebook entity with 300 million-plus photos uploaded a day which is impossible to hire enough staff to moderate or create ai capable of moderating that and allows people to post hundreds of millions of posts every single day, which is impossible to moderate. As we’ve seen, the smaller subsets and communities and servers that are owned by the individual, these communities can moderate much much easier with the tools that are provided through mastodon.
2. Diaspora
The other great social network out there to check out is diaspora. It is very similar to mastodon. It is also decentralized and uses the Fediverse. So again those common protocols work together in this case you’re creating what they call pods.
So you set up your pod if you want, and you can host your content and be in full control of it. You can also join other people’s pods that are out there.
If mastodon is like Twitter, then diaspora is like Facebook. So, if you’re more of a Facebook person you’re finally looking to get away from it, you want something decentralized where you’re in control, Diaspora is your platform.
I am in control – if I don’t want to see politics, which I don’t and I don’t care about your politics, which I don’t then I don’t have to subscribe to anybody here – that talks about politics.
I get to know about computers, geeks hardware, open-source, python, security technology, the things that interest me.
Trivia: How does a decentralized network make money?
This is one of the most powerful parts of this decentralized network. It really wouldn’t make sense to start throwing ads and things onto these networks. So the way people make money in these services is you donate to them, for the servers that you use, you’re not gonna, create your server then donate to these servers that are out there.
There are also fundraisers and things like that that go on for this project overall. Instead of one company deciding what you should see, what you can’t see, what you’re allowed to post, and moderating to the best of their ability, millions and millions of people, which means they make tons of mistakes and you could lose access to all your friends.
All of your history of things that you’ve done or you won’t be able to ever go back and remove things because they keep it forever. Sell your data you’re, not in control of anything and that’s very different here in these types of services.
3. Peer Tube
Peer Tube is an alternative to something like youtube. Now, a lot of people who got kicked off of youtube for various reasons that a lot of times had nothing to do with politics or anything else, just unfair policies across the board. People decided they didn’t like them. So they reported them or what companies were doing.
Copyright strikes against things that they didn’t have any right to copyright strike against, and that’s where services like Peer Tube come in now. Peertube is very interesting because it also uses the Fediverse. You can host your content, both on youtube and Peer Tube. You can join people’s instances and host your videos there. You could, of course, host your video if you want to.
4. Lbry
Lbry is a very similar service to Peer Tube which I like better – and this is interesting because it doesn’t use the Fediverse, Lbry uses blockchain.
Lbry is something where you can download an app and do your surfing. If you want to do it from a browser, you can go to the odyssey browser.
Using Odyssey browse you can know what’s happening in Lbry from your browser, and there are all kinds of different content.
If there is content you don't want to see, you can decide what you want to see and what you don't want to see. But these are more of an alternative to the platform like youtube, which can decide tomorrow to take away your entire paycheck to take away your entire livelihood.
5. Pixel Fed
There is another service out there for things like photo sharing.
So if you’re an Instagram junkie, you know the privacy issues that these services have something like Pixel Fed. It uses the actual Fediverse as well. Free ethical photo-sharing program.
So if you want to share your photos of your food or, if you’re an actual photographer and want to take photos of forests or whatever and want to share those with the world. Pixel Feed is a cool place to do so.
6. Element
A lot of people knew it as a matrix. This would be a replacement for things like telegram out there. It also has video conferencing capabilities, through rocket chat, I think built into it.
It’s a fantastic amazing service. You can have encrypted messages again you’re in control, but you can talk across the various servers that are out there. So you can join a public one or you can make your own, but everybody can communicate because there’s a standard protocol there being used, so it’s growing out there amongst the privacy enthusiasts and something that I highly recommend you check out and again.
Conclusion:
I am sharing with you that there are a bunch of decentralized services that you can utilize from across the world, whether you want a twitter replacement, facebook replacement, Instagram replacement. There are services, youtube replacements for those things here.
If you want to take back control of the privacy of your security, what you post online, and do not want one person or one giant company deciding your future. Use these decentralized networks.
Social networking has been such an amazing thing, but then the big companies came in and they’re kind of ruining it.
So this is a way for us to finally take this stuff back and that’s why this is so important for you to go check out these services and support them because they’re only as good it’s like opening a club, it’s only as good as the number Of people that you have there if the dance floor is empty, nobody’s gonna go dance.
I hope you’ve enjoyed reading this article. If you want to know more about the Fediverse and decentralized applications check out the upcoming article here.
Let me know in the comments below if you liked my article.
Please follow me on Feeding Trends for more such articles.