What Major Social Media Platforms Would You Like To See Federated Alternatives To That Don't Exist Yet?

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 ...

Yeah the data is an issue for sure. I wonder if torrents of some kind would help making it more doable, where viewers (on computers, not phones) build up a cache from which they also seed. Like Spotify did when they started out.
- https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZeroNet
  Something similar to this might help disburse the load required for peertube. What sites you read you host in return, very much like with bit torrent with a presentation layer tacked on top.
- I think you are looking for something like ipfs.
- I think the cache would also have to partially be on phones. If users are to 'pay' for using the network by caching/redistributing part of it, since most people access the web from phones
Also tiktok really only makes sense with a big algorithm knowing what users want to see. Even if you were to follow many people, with the average video being only about 30 seconds long you won't have much content to enjoy. The whole short form video thing is kinda built on knowing what your user likes and doesn't. I don't know how you could design such a platform without some privacy concerns.
- I don't know how you could design such a platform without some privacy concerns.
  Yes, yes you could.
  Companies like Google have successfully brainwashed us into believing that algorithms like this can only work on their server farms. The only reason those werver farms are necessary is becauwe they're processing data for millions of people.
  We forget that in each of our hands we hold a device that is 5,000 x more powerful than a 1985 CRAY-2, at the time the world's fastest supercomputer. And let's not forget our home desktops and laptops, which are several times more powerful that that.
  We each have devices with persistent internet connections that could be at work scanning, categorizing, and filtering personalized content for each of us, without giving any privacy away. It's only because we've been conditioned to be dependent on having our data centrally processed that we believe that's the only way.
  Note, it is more efficient to process content centrally, where the data is stored. However, generalized categorization and content tagging with robust metadata and standardized APIs would address the efficiency. Given companies are unlikely to do this and scupper their own surveillance revenue, the next best thing is local, privacy-respecting, smart content filtering assistants.
- Algorithm doesn't have to be a secret engagement sauce. It can just be based on an editable list of the user's preferred tags and keywords with associated weights.
  No need to get more complicated than that because you're not trying to juice their "engagement" since their are no ads to show them.
  Although I'm not even sure if infinite shorts make sense without a company pulling the strings for their own motive. But maybe it's just not my thing
There are hosting providers that offer unmetered bandwidth.
Sure, setup complexity is higher, but it is definitely doable.
I have thought about such a project as I also have access to relatively inexpensive 20gbps fiber, but lack the funding currently to do it.
Maybe one day…
This is why I expect the video side of things to be more on the level of stream channels that self-host content with subscriptions for access to VoDs, rather than singular big platforms. Streaming in of itself is a lot of traffic too, but you have much bigger RoI per bandwidth spent with live viewers, and you cut down the storage requirements with limited VoD access too.
The only problem then becomes discovering these channels from the rest of the federated space, but honestly, either that will be a problem that will be solved by the space in a more general manner (oooh, imagine the return of web rings! Lol) or... It will end up being an issue that doesn't matter. Like right now, still coming from video games, MinnMax and Second Wind are two creator-owned platforms that appear to be relatively unpopular, with short amount of thousands of views, except they run off of donations on Patreons and the viewers they do have keep them afloat with a good decent margin.
Same with Instagram. I'm a performer and rely on it for outreach and promotion but absolutely HATE the platform to no end. And this is a common sentiment among all performers. It is a garbage platform that comforts Nazis and pedophiles but bans the hashtag #horror and puts your account in jail for using it.
Unfortunately, PixelFed has almost no one on it and reaching a local audience is impossible, so there's no point in switching. We have to go where the people are :(

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.

That would go to shit immediately. The sheer level of moderation that would be required to prevent that from being abused and corrupted would be insane, and then that kind of moderation would in turn invalidate the whole project because the moderation itself would have its own biases.
But it especially wouldn't work in a federated space. Are you suggesting that people can just open their own instance of that? If there are multiple different instances for this kind of thing, that's even more abusable.
Part of the reason Wikipedia works is it is centralized, relatively neutral, and you need sources on facts. It's run by people that adhere to a strict standard, and everyone that contributes is required to adhere to that exact same standard.
What would be the scholarly criteria for the sort of thing that you're talking about? What is the standard? And how do you enforce that standard in a federated space?
Because if it's anything like how federation works around Lemmy, there can be no standard. Instances are going to do whatever they like based on the biases of each admin, which undermines the entire concept.
You're trying to apply objectivity to a very subjective area. I'm not saying it's impossible, and you should by all means try it, but maybe it would be a good idea to try something that has a better chance, first, such as this:
How about an open platform for scientific review and tracking? Like, whenever a new discovery or advance is announced, that site would cut through the hype, report on peer review, feasibility, flaws in methodology, the ways in which it's practical and impractical, how close we are to actual usage (state of clinical trials, demonstrated practical applications, etc.)
And it would keep being updated, somewhat like Wikipedia, as more research occurs. It needs a more robust system of review to avoid the problems that Wikipedia has, and I don't have the solution for that, but I believe there's got to be a way to do it that's resistant to manipulation.
- Basically a living survey paper. Examine.com does a very good job of this for a very small set of the scientific literature. The problem is that it takes a lot of work to do, few people are qualified to do it, and out of those few, even fewer will have the time to make such contributions.
I like this idea
- You might like a website called Kialo. It's a tool for structured public debates
You might like a website called Kialo. It's a tool for structured public debates

Tumblr

DeviantArt

Furaffinity

Archive Of Our Own

Keep the fediverse weird and invite more theater kids. They pair surprisingly well with the tech dorks that make up the majority of the current fedi population.

I'm an older theater kid!! And I do pair well with this site!!!
- Same, actually.
what do you think a defederated ao3 would look like? not trying to sound condescending here or anything just actually curious
- No different from the regular thing except:
  Different fandoms would congregate in different home instances -- Which is ultimately just an aesthetic difference but still.
  It'd be a lot more resilient due to decentralisation. I'm old enough to remember when the entire concept of fanfiction was something considered litigious and anyone who wrote it felt they were skirting on the edge of the law. People forget how easy it is for those times to come back. All it'd take is 1(one) corporately-backed author making a stink about it. Decentralization would make it harder to curb.
Doubled on FA. Great repository for artwork but their moderation is just terrible. If you're in the 3rd world you can get banned permanently with no warning for a single mistake, yet there's known groomers on there who the admins routinely protect no matter how many times they fuck up. And the alternatives aren't any better, with most of them dying on the hill of allowing loli shit and AI art so that's all that ever gets posted.
EDIT: and after they moved their forums to discord the entire website became radioactive causing tons of people, including myself, to leave.
- I didn't know about the third world thing. Gee.

Letterboxed - an app like bookwyrm, but for movies. I've seen other people talk about it and I think some people are working on it, but AFAIK nothing is up atm

Trakt would be good also and it covers film and TV.
LibRate is WIP fediverse alternative for that.
It plans to supports film, books, games, and more. Basically one stop for every tracker.

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.

Gitlab is actively working on this.
- That's really great to hear! It's an incredible vision for an open source future not dependent on MegaCorps, and I am SO here for that!
Youre in luck. Forgeo is a well maintained, self hosted gitea fork that is federated by design.
- Fantastic, I will check this out!
  Now we just need to get projects to start using it and federating their source code :)
  I suspect the other comment about Gitlab may have more adoption because lots of projects including some very large ones are already using that platform.

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 requires having an identity that is separate from an instance. This is what nostr does and why I prefer it over mastodon. It also means if your mastodon or lemmy instance closes up shop, you don't lose your post history, DMs, followers, etc.
- couldn't your instance just serve your identity to other instances?
That's not technically possible.
You could have one instance offer more than one platform, though, and you can already use multiple frontends with whatever instance you're on. Kbin, which you're on, actually tries to do the Swiss army knife thing IIRC.
- It's entirely technically possible. Apps already use third party identity providers all the time, you just need federated apps to support OAuth both for signing in on the client and as a backend identity provider, and standardize how federated apps return user info that would be common to any federated app (usernames, saved / liked posts, subscribed feeds, stuff common to the ActivityPub spec).
- You can log into a pixelfed app on android with a mastodon account. Why can't you log into a pixelfed web frontend with a mastodon account? What law of physics makes that impossible?

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)

Federated f-list already exists, it's called IRC. Honestly I'd love to see an f-chat to IRC bridging tool, so I can add it to my znc bouncer.
- I put on my robes and wizard hat...
How do you pronounce "Alovoa"?
TikTok is a sticky wicket, because video is so heavy and sensitive to network performance. You can maybe federate video, but there's definitely not going to be small instances.
- Ah-lo-voh-ah

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.

Example? I'm skeptical there's anything that both appeals to a reasonably large audience and isn't monetisable. I'm very skeptical you can do it with less toxicity and computation somehow.
Edit: I suppose dating sites might count. They're very much not optimised for actually finding good partners at this point, because gamified swipe dating keeps people hooked. Computation and toxicity are still pretty intractable.
- to a reasonably large audience
  That's a measure of success that makes sense only in a for-profit, growth-oriented environment. Software just has to be sustainable and "bigger" doesn't necessarily imply "more sustainable.
  That said, what is now possible with social media is extremely restricted and our idea of what a social media is is constrained by profit motives. Social media could be much more, connect humans for collaboration and exchange instead of data extraction. We are so used to the little crumbs of positive experiences on social media that we normalized it.
  Bonfire, for example, if we want to stick to the fediverse, is trying to challenge this narrative and push the boundaries of what a social media is supposed to do.
  Another space would be non-siloed notion-like tools.
  Anothe entire can of worms would be to go beyond the "dictatorship of the app" and start building software and UX around flexibility and customizability for the average user, rather than keeping this a privilege for tools targeting power users. Flexibility in UX means harder trackability and less CTR, so most end-user "apps" avoid that.

Something like StackOverflow/StackExchange would be nice. Would also like to see a federated platform for designers/artists (some Dribbble or Adobe Behance alternative).

YES PLEASE
Federated SO where each participating site has its own list of topics makes a lot of sense tbh
- You could probably make this as a custom lemmy frontend. The main functionality is almost identical.

I don't want the fediverse to always be dictated by the private sector's ideas. I want someone to build the next "TikTok" on the fediverse to begin with, and for once have a generation whose "new thing" isn't controlled by a single corporation.

How about a federated archive.org? (Kids these days are crazy about scanned public domain books and stuff.)

Disqus. Would be great to add federated comments to any news, blog or static site.

There's already a way to do this using Mastodon and a bit of Javascript. I use that on my flashlight review website and also link the comments to !flashlight@lemmy.world.
It's not as slick a UX as Disqus of course, and it would be cool if somebody made that.
- It's hacky and not something a professional site would use. Cannot moderate comments for example.
I remember last time I seen something like this it ended up just being full of nazis jerking each other off. Granted it was a pretty neoliberal app so that might have had a lot to do with it, but still, giving every website a news comment section isn't really that great of an idea in retrospect.

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.

I've had this idea where instead of a moderator having dominion over a community, their removals only work for people subscribed to that moderator specifically. We can make moderator actions work the way block lists do in ublock origin!
Of course admin action would still be necessary for curbing high volume spammers and illegal stuff.
I'd just like to see how things are when the conversation isn't one way ruled by moderators who want their own ideals to seem like the norm. I'm not interested in tone policing and the like.
- We seem to share similar ideas. I think we don't necessarily have to be constrained by how stuff works in the real world. There, it is impossible to listen to everyone, you need to transfer power to a small amount of representatives. And one or few people at the top or it gets messy and nothing gets done. Also you need to come up with a single solution that applies to everyone.
  I don't think it has to be that way in the realm of online services. Technically, we can ask an arbitrary number of people for their opinion. Vote with less effort since networks are fast, databases quite capable and everything interconnected anyways. Have people just represent themselves or just 5 family members or transfer their democratic power to whomever they deem appropriate. It doesn't even have to be a vote by majority. There are better weighted voting systems out there that are just impossible to implement in real-world countries. It doesn't have to be one solution for everything, it could individually apply to communities of the platform or work differently for different topics. And big platforms already provide different content and algorithms for their individual users. We could also just everyone be provided with a unique perspective on the same data. Someone can be faced with something while another person has it buried at the bottom or not displayed at all. And we'd just choose things for ourselves, not vote on how other people are treated at all. (I mean that somehow emerges on it's own... Once everyone chooses to not listen to trolls and annoying people, they'd just lose their audience and become meaningless.)
  I see many technical challenges and negative consequences. We'd need to keep the crypto and blockchain people away from it. Everything I've seen that uses blockchain technology to achieve this has failed in the meantime. And was mainly intended to make money by some means. But things like ActivityPub are also not made for this. I'd really like to do away with the current voting mechanisms. I'd rather say I trust what this person says and my interests align with those people and this would replace global up- and downvoting. It's certainly possible from a technical viewpoint. But would it really encourage good behaviour and foster a nice place? People sometimes like to engage especially with the things they oppose and comment on them. It would also be a massive filter-bubble. Algorithms confine people into small and similar-minded bubbles, not a diverse and realistic and stimulating world. I think it's really difficult to find a delicate balance here, design choices that automatically push towards good behaviour and interesting engagement per default.
  I completely agree on the admin stuff. Someone has to provide the computing power and take responsibility for what's stored on their servers. And sometimes mistakes happen, things turn out bad or break. There are malicious people out there. Someone needs to have the power to fix things. I think that's perfectly possible. Lots of platforms have succeded at that, there are people available, perfectly able to handle that responsibility. And ultimately, the whole internet is quite resilient and was designed with the idea of being a level playing-field and connect things and people.
commune is a semi unique fedderated social media
- Looks very neat! Thanks for the link, Something to keep an eye on !
- Love the illustration on their home page. Looks like a very new project.
- Nice. Looks a bit like Revolt, Rocketchat, other standard Matrix clients, maybe even inspired by Discord or whatever people use. I'm curious to find out how they applied the Matrix protocol to power this.
Friendica provides blogging, microblogging, pictures, friend circles (but they work only for Friendica users), and multiple identities managed by single login.
And there is a fediverse marketplace software - Flohmarkt - instances
- AWESOME! Thanks for linking the Flohmarkt project. I've been looking for something like this for quite some time and all I found was abandoned projects, and things that didn't make it. I'm going to have a closer look at it and install an instance if it proves to be what I was looking for.

BeReal

I'd love to see a federated — or first of all just in any kind open source — 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...

I would love this so much!
- yay thanks now I know I'm not the only kind of tech, linux, open source, privacy and federation loving person which still uses stuff like BeReal

since there is lemmy im happy

“Tiny knowledge projects”: 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 that’s more like “web gardens” where people can build “places” rather than feeds. Wikis being the best known successful example but still somewhat simple (in a good way).

None, just bring back forums ffs

I'm on two. You can literally spin one up for probably $30/mo if memory serves (for a fancy Discourse server on Digital Ocean), then just invite people.
E: actually price looks to be between $5 and $12 dollars depending on your needs, and how much work you're willing to put in

I don't feel like Twitch / livestreaming is well-supported yet (OwnCast is sort of a different approach to it)

edit: TikTok also is a livestreaming platform

I saw something similar to twitch working in the blockchain architecture. It seems like a cool project where bandwidth is shared among users. But the crypto-scheme leaves a kinda strange feeling about it.

I would like discord but in fediverse. This one i am actually using and even there are foss alternative like nextcloud talk i would like something that is at least as reliable as discord for calls

@Fabrik872
Is that not what Matrix is? I haven’t been to really understand Matrix so maybe I’m wrong.
https://matrix.org/
- Yes, Matrix is the closest I've seen to Discord that is federated. However, it doesn't use ActivityPub I believe
- He meamtwd calling, calling is lacking

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

Thank you so much. Have you used it? Care to expand on uour experience with it?
- You probably want to use a regional instance to have more relevant users, groups and events, but there is a global search engine for Mobilizon
  For example, I am using a Polish instance, with an unsuprising domain https://mobilizon.pl
  With an account, you are able to publish events, with header image, title, category, tags, date, place, description (with formatting available), and metadata. The event can be accesible publicly, or only via link.
  The event (if public) can federate (and be boosted to e.g. Mastodon) and be commented, but you are able to turn off the comments.
  Individual account can only be followed from Friendica, but not from Mastodon.
  For more features you want to create a group. A group can be followed from Friendica and Mastodon, but only Mobilizon accounts can become its members. Group members are able to participate in discussions (not visible from outside), manage a "common resource folder" - links, make group events and group announcements
  You can experiment with Mobilizon features with a demo instance
Fuck yeah, thank you. I went to check up meetup and it was like 90% liberal "how to be your own boss" "how to pay taxes on cypto" shit. I clicked on one that looked kinda neutral and the first thing I saw was the speaker bragging about being on, I kid you not, capitalism .com. Can't even make this shit up. Also as a nice little bonus they had a tab just for conservatism but nothing even related to socialism. Fuck that place.
EDIT: I checked it out and it seems primarily focused on French language and severely underpopulated by English stuff. I'll have to check it out again in about a year and see if it's going to be another mastodon situation because there just isn't enough on offer at the moment.
EDIT2: And I tried to make an account but it said my email was already in use. I emailed the instance admins to let them know.
I looked in their FAQ but couldn't find an answer. It looks like they support ticketing for events. I assume users can claim tickets. Is there a payment method built in as well, if so, what is it?
Thanks for the link! Checking this out now
oh man, that's not pretty enough to start using as an alternative to, like, partiful (oh, yeah, I totally want to give my phone number to some random fucking website to go to a party) or wedding registry sites... but those don't really need to be federated, huh?

Couchsurfing.org

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.

Isn't the point of blockchain that it's immutable? What about people who want to delete their own stuff? Or even mods or admins that have to delete stuff for legal reasons?
- Immutability is not bad, there are some situations you want immutability. For example, to secure voting systems, you may want to be able to write on the chain that "precinct 156 reported votes x/y/z in this quantity" so that if anybody comes along and tampers with those numbers later on, you can point to the chain and say "no see, actually, these are the real original numbers that the precinct published". The precinct could lie about their numbers of course and publish bad numbers to the chain, blockchain doesn't protect against that (unless the votes themselves are recorded on the chain by the individual voter), but the blockchain protects against those numbers changing in the future or another party incorrectly claiming they are a/b/c when they are actually x/y/z. That's a situation where immutability helps. Same with financial transactions. If you sent somebody money, you want a record of that (a receipt) if they later claim you never sent it to them. Examples of records which have a high degree of immutability that people use in everyday life are: court records, census data, house deeds, etc.
  Blockchains usually have some degree of immutability but from a technical perspective they don't necessarily have to. If we're talking about data storage, you don't have to store the data itself on the chain, the chain data can just "point to" off-chain data which you can take down or modify at will.
  An example of a scenario where this could work is: you have a blockchain for coordinating the sharing of medical information between different parties. You, as a user, have an account on this blockchain. The only data stored on chain is a list of parties and who you have authorized to receive your medical data along with a pointer to a file storage system like Amazon AWS which contains your medical data in encrypted format. You can add or revoke authorization at any time by changing how that data is encrypted. Whoever you gave authorization to prior may have made a copy of the data at that point in time, but you can block them from accessing new data you put out. When Amazon AWS gets a request to transfer a copy of your data to a new party, they can check the blockchain to see if that party is authorized to receive it.
  The benefit of such a system would be that:
  Your medical records are yours and stored in your own data storage system over which you have complete control.
  You can choose to share it with parties like insurance providers or researchers who need large medical data sets to comb through.
  You could set this control at a very granular level or grant access to all your data.
  Your data becomes portable between insurance providers and your insurance provider can't make your life difficult by refusing to export data to your new one.
- Deleting anything from the internet is theorically impossible, it shouldn't a mandatory requirement for anything.
  Instead you publish a deletion request that politely asks everyone to pretend it doesn't exist

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 dating website! Okcupid, POF, hinge, bumble, etc. All no longer even try to match people. Just pay for nothing.

This is the answer I was looking for. Dating sites hardly exist at this point; they've all been converted to human swipe slot machines.
that's a great idea!

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
Weibo

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

I see we're going with this, but it wouldn't work. As there are already alternatives within the larger social media framework, like subreddits and sublemmings? How the hell you want to say it. With the point still stands, that regional social media will never work as there will always be better alternatives within a bigger social media platform
- Local social media is different from bigger social media platform.
  Those big social media generally are American/Western-centric. Sure, you can find local community on them, but their moderation system are often still Western-centric.
  You'll surprised on how often other language being moderated (deleted/removed) because it mistaken as hate speech. For example, word that in certain language has neutral meaning, but mistaken as offensive in English.
  Also, local social media often designed to local culture. Xiaohongshu and Plurk are the primary example. Entirely unique UI and user experience.
  Even fediverse also this cultural-focused software. Take a look on Misskey (a Japanese-made fediverse software), it primarily designed for Japanese internet culture, which entirely different from Mastodon or Pleroma.

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)

A video platform would be great. Like TikTok, or stories from Facebook, Insta or YT.

YouTube already has that, it's called PeerTube.
- PeerTube has standard videos, but not the Stories part if I’m lot mistaken.

Bandcamp

There is at least one https://simonrepp.com/faircamp/
- Is it federated? Or is it just a solo version for anybody who wants their own solo bandcamp?
I love bandcamp as it is, but this is an amazing idea.

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.

I thought it was Yahoo that destroyed Tumblr, back when they bought it and banned porn
- Five years apart.

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

Tiktok Youtube (there is peertube but it's not as popular as YouTube)

Wattpad, tho it’s not a social media

Tinder, Bumble etc.

Hi noodle
- Noodle? Is it you?! 🤩

Google search. I want a way of finding stuff based on everyone's tag suggestions, like a booru, but distributed.

Wikipedia.

Im working on this under the name of Ibis. Hopefully I can announce the first release within a few weeks.
Does everything need to be federated? I don't quite see the appeal of a 'federated' Wikipedia. It's not really social-oriented and you can already export all the pages and rehost it yourself.
- I don't know the details on how to rehost wikipedia by myself, and also how to search and access unofficial wikipedia servers either. If this is all common knowlege for internet users, I am seriously lagging behind here. But maybe you are right and there really is no universal appeal for this, and overall people just prefer to see wikipedia as a single entity. But I think there would be benefits in federating wikipedia. Basically it becomes harder to take down information, and allows us to bypass wikipedia's own strictness and bias. I know there are wikipedia alternatives but I would like to be able to access different view points seamlessly in the same platform, just like it happens here.
There is a nostr app working on this. It's not very far along but it's an interesting idea https://wikistr.com/
Does wikiless count?

LinedUp

I don't understand this.
How would one federate a shopping cart or an e-commerce store?
I mean, I'm not asking for technical details because we're brain storming, but even in concept I'm struggling with this :)
I feel like this is what crypto was selling itself as before revealing itself being nothing more than scams, fraud and funding fascist death squads.

VRChat

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.

A yt alternative that worked for content creators to be able to live off it.

How? I'm not sure.

Fediverse patreon, seems reasonnable, but they'd have to swallow using monero

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).

I can't get browsing by hashtags to work on pixelfed itself. Only shows like 3 results.
- I hope it can get better sooner than later

I'd LOVE to see a fediverse and updated version of Livejournal. Private blogging is an insanely good way to make lifelong friends.

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.

Ranker.

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.

YouTube I know some peer to peer stuff exists but I haven't checked it out. Not sure how federation would come into play

Like, one of those sites where you rate the hotness