Fediverse

A resource on Fediverse, federated networks, mesh networks, distributed web, alternative internet, alternative social media, decentralisation.

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  Fed Up!, chronological diagram of federated social web projects, by Lídia Pereira, Artemis Gryllaki and Bohye Woo, Jan 2020. [1] [2]

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  post.lurk.org, "an instance for discussions around cultural freedom, experimental, new media art, net and computational culture."

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  Scholar Social, "a microblogging platform for researchers, grad students, librarians, archivists, undergrads, academically inclined high schoolers, educators of all levels, journal editors, research assistants, professors, administrators—anyone involved in academia who is willing to engage with others respectfully."

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  c y b r e s p a c e, "social hub of the information superhighway jack in to the mastodon fediverse today and surf the dataflow through our cybrepunk, slightly glitchy web portal."

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  Hackers.town, "a bunch of technomancers in the fediverse. This arcology is for all who wash up upon it's digital shore."

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  Game Making Social, a "well-moderated, cosy, friendly place to talk and share stuff about amateur videogame making, and everything surrounding that."

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  Free Radical, "infosec and privacy and technology and leftward politics and cats and dogs."

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  Merveilles.town. "Revel in the marvels of the universe. We are a collective of forward-thinking individuals who strive to better ourselves and our surroundings through constant creation. We express ourselves through music, art, games, and writing. We also put great value in play."

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  tilde.town, "a community that exists on a linux server"

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  mastodon.social, "server run by the main developers of the project Mastodon. It is not focused on any particular niche interest."

• Listing by Artists and Hackers on Twitter

Resources, art projects

• Alternative Internet, a collection of networks, tools and devices aiming at decentralisation.
• Dat Zine Library, by Zach Manderville.
• Distributed Web of Care, an art project by Taeyoon Choi.
• Founder Interviews, video interviews with developers of decentralization projects, by Irina Bolychevsky, 2013ff.
• Homebrewserver.club, a monthly gathering in Rotterdam for self-hosted services.
• Lurk provides a few community services composed of mailing lists, chat and access to the Fediverse.
• P2P Forever, humble hub of peer to peer web resources, by Laurel Schwulst. (archived)
• The Federation, gathers statistics about nodes in the fediverse.
• Fediverse Network, gathers statistics of oStatus/ActivityPub fediverse.

Events

2014

• The Alternative Internet(s) – State of the Art and the Possible Future, workshop, London School of Economics, London, 15-16 Sep 2014.

2015

• Redecentralize Conference - Taking Back the Net, unconference, London, 17-18 Oct 2015. Organised by Irina Bolychevsky, a.o. Report.
• Radical Networks conference, Integrated Digital Media at Magnet NYU, Brooklyn, NY, 24-25 Oct 2015. Organised by Sarah Grant, Erica Kermani, and Amelia Marzec, in partnership with Eyebeam.

2016

• Decentralized Web Summit, Internet Archive, San Francisco, 7-9 Jun 2016.
• Radical Networks conference, Chem Creative, Brooklyn, NY, 4-6 Nov 2016. Organised by Sarah Grant, Erica Kermani, and Amelia Marzec, in partnership with Eyebeam. Second edition. Exhibition photographs.

2017

• Our Networks, conference, Claude T. Bissell building, Toronto, 14 Jan 2017. First edition.
• Relearn 2017, Poortgebouw, Rotterdam, 29 Aug-2 Sep 2017. Documentation (2019). More.
• Radical Networks conference, Chem Creative, Brooklyn, NY, 19-22 Oct 2017. Organised by Sarah Grant and Erica Kermani. Third edition.
• Peer-to-Peer Web / Los Angeles, series of talks, Los Angeles Contemporary Archive, Los Angeles, and New York (viewing party), 10 Dec 2017.

2018

• Peer-to-Peer Web / Berlin, series of talks, Trust, Berlin, 10 Feb 2018.
• Peer-to-Peer Web / Los Angeles (Edition Two), series of talks, Folder Studio, Chinatown, Los Angeles, 28 Apr 2018.
• Peer-to-Peer Web / Berlin, series of talks, Trust, Berlin, 5 May 2018.
• Peer-to-Peer Web / NY, series of talks, School for Poetic Computation, New York, 26 May 2018. Presented by New Computer Working Group. [3] [4]
• Our Networks: State of Our Networks: Beyond DIY: Do It With Others, Mozilla Community Space, Toronto, 13-18 Jul 2018. Second edition.
• Decentralized Web Summit 2018: Global Visions / Working Code, annual conference, Internet Archive, San Francisco, 31 Jul-2 Aug 2018. Second edition.
• Local Area Network, workshop, InterAccess, Toronto, 24-26 Aug 2018.
• Radical Networks conference, Spektrum, Berlin, 19-21 Oct 2018. Organised by Sarah Grant and Erica Kermani. Fourth edition.
• Redecentralize Party, Newspeak House, London, 29 Oct 2018. Organised by Irina Bolychevsky.

2019

• Networks with an Attitude, worksession, Antwerp, 7-13 Apr 2019. Developed by Constant in collaboration with ooooo, Varia and amongst others Samenschool, City harbour, Wireless Antwerp.
• Relearn 2019, Varia, Rotterdam, 7-9 Jun 2019; Hacktiris, Brussels, 21-22 Jun 2019; La Générale, Paris, 6-8 Sep 2019. More.
• DWeb Camp, Pescadaro, CA, 18-21 Jul 2019. Interview. Report. [5]
• Our Networks: RE: Infrastructures of, Toronto Media Arts Centre, Toronto, 20-22 Sep 2019. Third edition.
• Radical Networks conference, Prime Produce, New York, 18-20 Oct 2019. Fifth edition. Video.

2020

• Deplatformization and the Ethics of Exclusion, symposium session, part of transmediale festival, Volksbühne - Großes Haus, Berlin, 1 Feb 2020. Video.
• Dat Conference 2020, online, 30-31 Jul 2020. Virtual peer to peer event about local-first tech and meetup space for those interested in the decentralized web.
• Our Networks: Growing Our Networks in Uncertain Times<-->Places, online, based out of Toronto, 8-13 Sep 2020. Fourth edition.
• De-platform-ization, Ethics and Alternative Social Media, Display, Prague, & online, 25-26 Sep 2020. Symposium and workshop. Video.

Software projects

• Beaker, experimental browser with a p2p protocol, *2016.
• Conversations, open source XMPP/Jabber client for Android, *2014.
• Dat, p2p protocol, a project for distributed data synchronization, *2013.
• Diaspora, self-hosted social networking service, *2010.
• dokieli, clientside editor for decentralised article publishing, annotations and social interactions, *2015.
• Epicyon, federated social network suitable for low power systems.
• Friendica, distributed social network, *2010.
• GNU social, FLOSS microblogging server, formerly StatusNet, *2010.
• Funkwhale, decentralised audio platform, *2019.
• Hubzilla, communication platform, formerly RedMatrix, *2015. Review.
• IPFS, protocol and p2p network for storing and sharing data in a distributed file system, *2015.
• Mastodon, self-hosted social networking service, *2016.
• Misskey, decentralized microblogging service, *2014.
• PeerTube, federated video platform powered by ActivityPub and WebTorrent, *2018.
• PixelFed, image sharing platform, *2018.
• Pump.io, general purpose activity streams engine that can be used as a federated social networking protocol, *2013.
• Scuttlebutt, decentralised secure gossip platform, *2018.
• Socialhome, federated personal profile with social networking functionality, *2016.
• Solid apps
• WriteFreely, open source platform for building a writing space on the web.
• YaCy, distributed search engine, *2016.

Protocols: ActivityPub, OStatus, Matrix, XMPP, Solid, Diaspora, Pump.io, Zot, Hypercore.

More projects and context: Wikipedia, Fediverse.party.

Publications

• Feminist Server Summit, "A Feminist Server Manifesto 0.01", 2014.
• Robert W. Gehl, "Building a Better Twitter: A Study of the Twitter Alternatives GNU social, Quitter, rstat.us, and Twister Free to read", Fibreculture Journal 26: "Entanglements: Activism and Technology", 2015.
• Robert W. Gehl, "The Case for Alternative Social Media", Social Media + Society 1:2, Sep 2015.
• hbsc & friends, "Have You Considered the Alternative?", HomebrewServer.Club, 9 Mar 2017.
• Danyl Strype, "A Brief History of the GNU Social Fediverse and ‘The Federation’", Disintermedia, 1 Apr 2017, with updates.
• Darius Kazemi, "Run your own social: How to run a small social network site for your friends", 8 Jul 2019.
• Pervasive Labour Union 13: "Fed Up!", ed. Lídia Pereira, Rotterdam, Sep 2019, [30] pp, PDF.
• Networks of Ones Own 1: "Etherbox", eds. Michael Murtaugh, An Mertens, Roel Roscam Abbing, and Femke Snelting, Brussels: Constant, Sep 2019.
• Networks of Ones Own 2: "Three Takes on Taking Care", Rotterdam: Varia, Oct 2019, PDF.
• Telecommunications Reclaimed: A Hands-On Guide to Networking Communities, eds. Mélanie Dulong de Rosnay and Félix Tréguer, Internet Society, Dec 2019, 255 pp, PDF. [6]
• Aymeric Mansoux, Roel Roscam Abbing, "Seven Theses on the Fediverse and the Becoming of FLOSS", in The Eternal Network: The Ends and Becomings of Network Culture, eds. Kristoffer Gansing and Inga Luchs, Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures, and Berlin: transmediale e.V., Feb 2020, pp 124-140, HTML.
  • "Sieben Thesen zum Fediverse und zur Weiterentwicklung von FLOSS", in The Eternal Network. Vom Enden und Werden der Netzkultur, eds. Kristoffer Gansing and Inga Luchs, Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures, and Berlin: transmediale e.V., 2020, pp 136-154. (German)
  • "Sept Thèses sur le Fédiverse et le devenir du logiciel libre", trans. Framalang, Framablog, 26 Jan 2021. (French)
• Mai Ishikawa Sutton, John Conor Ryan, et al., "DWeb Principles" (draft), Mar 2020ff.
• Evgeny Ponomarev, "Decentralized Web Developer Report 2020", Fluence Labs, 8 Jun 2020. [7]
• Eileen Wagner, Karissa McKelvey, Kelsie Nabben, Decentralization Off The Shelf: 7 Maxims, 2020, 32 pp. Research report. [8]

See also

Internet activism