This is something I hear very few folks talking about outside of some footnotes to discussions. It may seem like an obvious question, but I think there is more to it than it may seem, and one worth digging into.
What are the overall goals of the fediverse? I realize this is personal and that the answer will vary from person to person, so there is not going to be one right answer. Let me list out some possibilities, not necessarily my own, but some I can think of:
- To replace closed wall garden platforms (twitter/x, Facebook, Instagram, etc), partially or fully
- To build tools for communication that are resilient to censorship
- To build local and institutional communication platforms that are easily set up and scalable as needed
- To give the average technically inclined online person the ability to secure and take ownership over their online identities through self hosting
Again, no right answer, and it could be all of the above or none of the above. Curious to hear your thoughts.
You must log in or register to comment.
Why does it need a goal?
Like, I’ve lived thru a lot of social media, really all of it since 56k modems
Before you know it everyone, including people not here yet, will talk about how much they miss “the good old days”. Enjoy it for what it is now.
This isn’t a billionaire backed platform they blows up overnight due to marketing, it’s going to be very slow growth.
If it takes off, awesome.
But the best way to make it take off, is just to use it and enjoy it. It’s Kevin Costner growth, if we build a better alternative to corpo media (by using it for it’s intended purpose which generates content) then people who stumble over here will stay.
When it reaches critical mass it starts a feedback loop. Once there’s “enough” content people won’t just also visit the fediverse, they’ll only visit the fediverse.
As much as I’d hate to say it and I know I’d never use it, what the fediverse really needs is a video based TikTok equivalent. I’m honestly shocked there isn’t one of those yet, if it wasn’t for AI taking all the data storage, we’d probably have one by now. I’d hate to think of how much storage that would rack up.
Loops absolutely already exists
So what you are saying is that for now the goal is whatever the users make it?
As for the tiktok app (which I have little to no interest in myself), there is loops, but it is still early in development last I checked. I personally feel that the better route to go would be integrating “stories” style posts on mastodon or the threadiverse. My friends who cling to using Instagram use stories quite a bit, so that is definitely a format that needs work.
For me it’s to have an alternative space away from the corporations where genuine humans have control.
If you’re curious to learn more about where the fediverse comes from and why it was created, probably the best place to start is with activitypub, the protocol that the fediverse is built on. It is maintained by a standards body, the Social Web working group of the World Wide Web Consortium, and they have a homepage where you can read their documentation and search through the full history of their mailing list and stuff. A lot of the early work focused on the concept of “owning your data” and the portability of data between servers in a way that might surprise you.
