What Major Social Media Platforms Would You Like To See Federated Alternatives To That Don't Exist Yet?
What Major Social Media Platforms Would You Like To See Federated Alternatives To That Don't Exist Yet?
Pretty much in the title. Maybe you wouldn't even use it, but would like to simply see it exist for the sake of having a federated alternative.
For me, it'd be the following:
- Meetup
- Tiktok
I am on the first two, but would prefer a federated alternative. I'm not on Tiktok, but would like to see a federated alternative.
I'll admit these might not be a good idea. But as a thought experiment, I'd be curious about the community weigh in on what you all think this might look like.
Tiktok
The problem with video content (even short videos) is, that it generates an absurd amount of traffic and needs lots and lots of local data storage. This is also why there are so few PeerTube instances.
PeerTube would be a way to publish your short clips, too. Not as specialized as TikTok, but still ...
I would like to see something that is less focussed on social media and more on building something together like Wikipedia. One thing that comes to mind would be mapping out all political statements along with arguments and evidence to support or falsify them and the relationships between them (e.g. "if you believe x is a big problem in society and you believe y is the perfect form of government then you must believe y solves x").
A lot of our political discussions seem quite repetitive and go in circles because each argument is presented in a very shallow way. Something to counteract that would be welcome and I think it could work quite well in a federated way since people with different political views would probably want to contribute the supporting and that falsifying sides for each statement.
Github
All the benefits of the network effect without the crippling reliance on a single MegaCorp to keep the lights on and not turn hostile like the owners of SourceForge, Reddit, and Freenode IRC.
Would also solve a problem I'm not hearing anyone at all talk about - what happens when the Gitlab / Gittea / whatever instances projects are hosting run out of money and go dark? Those sources are lost forever.
There actually is a fediverse TikTok equivalent being developed! I'm not sure what the current status of it is, but it does already have rudimentary functionality. I bet the developer(s) might appreciate some help working on it, if anyone has the time/coding skills/money/etc to contribute. Somebody else mentioned Tumblr, and that exists too! So many cool projects being worked on, I regularly check this list to see what's new, and it's really heartwarming to see all the work people are putting into making the fediverse such a awesome place. There's even a Tinder-esque dating app!
Personally, equivalents I would love to see include:
- Archive of Our Own
- RPC/F-List/roleplay platform
- (I'm actually trying to work on one of these myself, but I'm an amateur so don't get your hopes up lol)
- Etsy
- Ravelry
- A search engine
- (And not just a metasearch using the same index as Google/Bing/etc)
I don't think the fediverse needs more platform alternatives.
What I really think we need is a way for people to use one fediverse account to log into different interfaces, so people can try out a new app / interface without starting a new account. Many apps can do this, but web apps generally cannot, they're generally tied to an instance.
This is by no means a vital service, but Imgur. Not the image hosting part itself, although the multiple self-hosted alternatives available are mostly aimed at photographs and surprisingly very few if any to memes and reactions for chats, forums and social media. On the other hand, the particular use case of sharing memes and meme dumps is not being fulfilled by anything else at the moment. Go to Imgur even on it's current sorry decayed state and at any time you'll find multiple people sharing image galleries, usually of up to 50 memes at a time, sometimes more. Lemmy, Mastodon and Discord servers try to fill that gap but right now they can't.
No more "alternatives" please. That formula has failed over and over again. We want software that can do what proprietary platforms do not pursue because it's not profitable. Online spaces to build meaningful connections, have interesting conversations with like-minded people, discover new things, be free from trolls and toxicity, possibly without the guilt of polluting the hell out of this planet with hardware and excessive electricity consumption.
BeReal
I'd love to see a federated โ or first of all just in any kind open source โ version of this. I really love their approach of making social media less addictive, but they're starting to introduce some features which I think are counterproductive to their initial concept.
Since it is just a mobile-oriented product (for obvious reasons like needing two cameras, taking selfies, carrying it around the whole time) it might be hard to build something like that but I guess it would be nice.
I also have no idea how you would make something like that federated, but the approach might be like that the different instances are working as the BeReal timezones, so the BeReal time might be the same for all members of an instance.
Maybe someone is working on that, but I guess this will take some more years, because BeReal is not that popular for a long enough time...
Well, I'd for one like to see something new. Not just another clone of an existing platform, since I don't really love any of the social media platforms. I'd like something that simultaneously connects me with friends and people all around the world. With communities like here, just more focused on positive and constructive engagement regarding different topics. Less picking on the news and less just replying if there's something wrong with what somebody said. I'd like to explore some means of democratic engagement. For example electing moderators. Maybe vote on rules instead of transferring power just by choosing instances wisely. And I'd like to do away with the current way of upvoting. It sometimes encourages herd mentality instead of good answers. I'd also like to incorporate blogging longer and well reasoned texts, microblogging and sharing pictures. Both silly memes but also vacation pictures with my friends. I think the concept of friend circles is good, You could choose who gets to see what aspect from your life. And I want different pseudonyms so not everyone knows all the stuff I'm into. And something that's entirely missing is selling used stuff in the neighborhood. Something like NextDoor/Craigslist/Facebook marketplace... You could also combine that with local news and connecting the neighborhood, not just discuss world politics all the time.
I think there is much potential for an enticing platform if we think big and use the concept of federation to our advantage, apply it to use-cases and concepts that haven't yet been explored by the big commercial platforms. We have to do away with the urge of re-creating something to make it possible. And it'd be hard to come up with good concepts to foster good behaviour and solve the technical aspects. But at the same time it'd allow us break free from the constraints of what's already there and just be a smaller alternative to XY. The way it currently often is: We let the major players come up with the new ideas. They have different motivations, mainly growing and making money. We re-create what they came up with and add a bit to it, but the concept stays the same. I think we can do more. But it is difficult. There have been crazy ideas, really new distributed platforms being implemented, lots of it with some crypto tech and in the end it didn't take off or wasn't aligned with what the users want and need or are comfortable with. Or people tried combining every feature into one platform (like I just proposed,) and it fails due to complexity.
since there is lemmy im happy
โTiny knowledge projectsโ: https://observablehq.com/@jsomers/we-need-more-tiny-knowledge-projects-heres-one
Something like a decentralised dynamic web page like the one linked would be cool. But generally, stuff thatโs more like โweb gardensโ where people can build โplacesโ rather than feeds. Wikis being the best known successful example but still somewhat simple (in a good way).
Some kind of marketplace like eBay.
Having bought and sold there the rules are quite arbitrary, and their cryptic algorhitm is a nuisance to buyers (you clicked by accident on a stove? You're gonna see a ton of stoves in the recommended for a while!) and periodically harms sellers (if you don't post daily and basically make it your day job, good luck making money!)
a federated alternative, with different instances for various interests and categories, meta-categories even and so on. Maybe regional instances like we have on here, one for the EU (quite convenient to ship and receive packages from inside of it, no customs wasting time and money) one for North America, one for East Asia, etc. With one being able to purchase from all of them.
Federation would also ensure that rules are properly enforced without abuses or other malpractices like eBay does (did you know eBay shipped a pig head to somebody who publicly criticized them?) since those instances would naturally be avoided and new ones would be made. It would also prevent excessive fees, as the fediverse is generally not a for-profit endeavor, and still, there will always be the option to shop around from other instances.
There is already a Meetup alternative - Mobilizon
Meetup. And I'd like to see nostr make a reddit clone. I love lemmy, I don't love my identity being tied to an instance. A platform based on nostr's protocol would solve that.
A lot of the ideas presented on this thread are less applications for federation and more applications for blockchain of some kind. For example, wikipedia or uber eats replacement. Before you blindly downvote me for this suggestion, let me explain why.
In federation, you have servers which talk to each other. Users own their own accounts and there are multiple repositories of information. Lemmy is a repository of links and comments, each lemmy instance has its own repository. Mastodon is a repository of tweets, replies, and DMs. This works great. Everybody makes their own repository of information, and users can subscribe to any repository they like. They can also, via federation, access other repositories and "pull" or "push" data to them. That last sentence is the magic of federation you don't get on platforms like Facebook. ActivityPub and federated platforms solve this problem of provider lock-in, at least partially.
This fediverse is not great when you need to establish a single repository of information that everybody in the network uses and is in sync for all users. Because it has no mechanism to arrive at consensus as to what should go into that authoritative repository. Even if all participants can be relied to act honorably (something the internet rarely provides), there will be disagreements about what should go into that repository. Edits may come in at different times, how do we resolve which edit goes "first"? Because it may make the second edit irrelevant, etc. Federation can't solve this problem. ActivityPub can't solve it and Nostr can't solve it. But..
This is the exact problem blockchains solve: how can you establish a centralized repository of information (ledger) and administer it in a decentralized, P2P way where you can't trust all participants to honestly participate? You cannot develop P2P systems which maintain a centralized repository of information without blockchain because no other P2P system has been able to solve this problem. There is no other mechanism of arriving at consensus and prevent sybil attacks.
Wikipedia? Centralized repository of information. Uber eats? Centralized repository of foods available, drivers, customers, and orders. eBay? same. And by the very nature of blockchains, they can also have an economic layer built into them which provides a means of exchange among participants. Useful for an eBay replacement, maybe less useful for a wikipedia replacement. Those means of exchange ("tokens") can be used not just for transfer of funds, but also for things like building/scoring user reputation and incentivizing specific behaviors, especially if you want to incentivize behavior that is contrary to a user's normal economic interest, such as providing a subsidy for restaurants on Uber who use more expensive, but more sustainable food packaging.
The non-P2P solution is to trust the administration of this centralized repository to a trusted authority. We trust wikipedia to administer articles and decide what ultimately goes in them. That system works fine for wikipedia, I'm not convinced we need a decentralized version.
There are many blockchains with various technical attributes which may work better or worse for solving these problems. They may use proof-of-work, proof-of-stake, etc. Some are more decentralized than others and have features like censorship resistance, privacy, smart contract, etc. But they solve this exact problem.
Instead of yet another globally massive social media, I want to see regional social media that's not massive globally, but popular in their country of origin. Or niche social media.
List so far:
- Post.news
- Koo (India)
- Cohost
- Hive
- Plurk (still relatively popular in Taiwan)
- Lofter (Chinese Tumblr)
- Xiaohongshu (Chinese version of Instagram and Pinterest on one app, probably Pixelfed can clone their unique UI)
- Lemon8
Art general:
- Cara
- Artstation
- Xfolio
- Pixiv
- Deviantart
Design:
- Dribbbble
- Behance
Hobby specific:
- Anilist
- Kitsu
- Annict (Japanese anime-tracker and social)
- ComicSpace (Japanese manga tracker)
- MyAnimeList
- MyFigureCollection
- MyDramaList
A shared whiteboard. Something like Google's Jamboard
Boorus ought to be halfway there. They're content-centric and high-bandwidth, they tend to have a theme, and they live or die by worthwhile tagging. But they're not a feed, the way most federated platforms have been. They are not social media in any sense. They're image hosts, minus any the incentive to create attention-sucking antipatterns.
Maybe with a more unified user experience - and ideally some P2P elements to make hosting cheaper and sturdier - we could fucking finally have a place that just hosts drawings. We're a quarter of the way into the twenty-first century and it is absurd that every gallery site has some arbitrary limits on what content is too weird.
Tumblr used to be the exception, until Apple destroyed them. Bastards.
Not social media but I'd probably like the idea of social games like these little timekillers from Facebook, chess, worms, poker, whatever that's not that dependent on speed\ping and lightweight. Basically an app platform that can be easily included into other apps. Some different Lemmy communities can even challenge each other or hold events.
Uber, Uber Eats (similar to Wolt)
Wattpad, tho itโs not a social media
Tiktok Youtube (there is peertube but it's not as popular as YouTube)
Google search. I want a way of finding stuff based on everyone's tag suggestions, like a booru, but distributed.
federated linkedin would be baller and would take so much pain out of the job application process, and i never even thought of that before. yeah, of course its still ran by filthy capitalists, but it would save a ton of time for job applications
VRChat
LinedUp
spoiler
The LinkedIn for coke dealers
I'm not sure if you would classify this as a "social media platform", but imagine a federated MMO. Each server could specify its own rules for things like XP and drops, allow or disallow mods among its playerbase, or even have custom items and quests - but in certain areas (ie "in town") all of this stuff would be disabled so that players from multiple different servers could all interact. You could choose a server based on whether you like a high pop or a low pop experience, temporarily try other servers out by partying up with someone from it, major guilds could run their own servers with their own events and stuff, and so on. Admins would want to defederate from poorly-moderated servers, servers with cheaters or with mods/rules that they think disrupt the experience they're after, or whatever other reason.
Ranker.
Flickr
Because Instagram sucks, and Pixelfed isn't really that amazing of a social media service despite having some great photography to gawk at.
I'd also like an alternative to Vimeo since not that many design agencies post their cool stuff on YouTube or even PeerTube (and I'm basically addicted to television branding).
PHP styled forums and Boorus would be cool. I know some PHP forums have recently added activitypub support, but it's still pretty recent and doesn't have much of a userbase.
Also a video platform like YouTube in a way. There's still a lot of issues to solve with that though, like storage and monetization. PeerTube just isn't going to cut it. Realistically if this were to ever happen, it'd have to be YouTube themselves to add activitypub support themselves and let people connect to them.
I'd LOVE to see a fediverse and updated version of Livejournal. Private blogging is an insanely good way to make lifelong friends.
YouTube I know some peer to peer stuff exists but I haven't checked it out. Not sure how federation would come into play
Can I choose 'none' as an answer?
Aside from being a difficult concept for non-tech people to grasp, the problem with the fediverse is that it's an absolute nightmare to moderate. Nothing is stopping bad actors from creating their own instance and flooding others with illegal content. Lemmy World and Lemmy.ml have already had incidents where communities have been targeted and flooded with CSAM.
Social media platforms that I do have problems with can't see a good fediverse alternative for these reasons, plus a few others.
YouTube as one such example: the problem is that video hosting costs a lot of money.
Like, one of those sites where you rate the hotness
