Fediverse

For federated networks, mesh networks, distributed web, alternative internet, alternative social media and decentralisation

Mastodon instances

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  post.lurk.org, "an instance for discussions around cultural freedom, experimental, new media art, net and computational culture." Run by LURK; close to Varia. Wider announcement.

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  tldr.nettime is "an instance for artists, researchers, and activists interested in exploring the intersections of technology, culture, and politics. It has grown out of nettime-l." Announcement, [1] [2] [3]. Discussion, [4]

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  Hcommons.social is "a microblogging network supporting scholars and practitioners across the humanities and around the world." Affiliated with Humanities Commons. [5]

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  Social.coop, "a Fediverse instance for people interested in cooperative and collective projects."

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  Mastodon.ART, "friendly home on the fediverse for all things creative, all on a platform that is community-owned and ad-free. NO CRYPTOART / NFTs ALLOWED."

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  SDF.ORG "began life as a StatusNet instance in 2010 and was converted to Mastodon in May 2017. A few of our members are artists/DJs and have shows on aNONradio.net"

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  digipres.club, an instance for those "involved in digital preservation - either professionally or on an amateur/volunteer basis."

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  Mamot.fr est "un serveur Mastodon francophone, géré par La Quadrature du Net."

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  chaos.social, "a Fediverse instance for & by the Chaos community", affiliated with Chaos Computer Club.

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  assemblag.es, "a Mastodon instance for people interested in thinking creatively and critically about technology, in the broadest sense."

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  Black Twitter, "Remember when you first heard about Black twitter and thought it was actually a separate website? Was that just me?"

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  Zirk.us, "literature, philosophy, film, music, culture, politics, history, architecture: join the circus of the arts and humanities. For readers, writers, academics or anyone wanting to follow the conversation."

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  Kolektiva, "an anti-colonial anarchist collective that offers federated social media to anarchist collectives and individuals in the fediverse. For the social movements and liberation!"

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  Framapiaf, an instance run by Framasoft, "a not-for-profit popular educational organization."

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

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  Merveilles.town. "Revel in the marvels of the universe."

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  Saturation, "a small group of people who remember when social media was more social, and less media."

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  Sunbeam City, "an anticapitalist, antifascist solarpunk instance that is run collectively."

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

more

• List of Monoskop pages linked to Mastodon accounts
• https://vis.social , https://systerserver.town/ , https://queer.haus/ (invite only), https://glammr.us , https://dair-community.social/ , https://infosec.exchange/ , https://fosstodon.org , https://openbiblio.social/ , https://friend.camp/ , https://weirder.earth/ , https://union.place/ , https://hci.social/ , https://genart.social/
• List of collectively owned instances
• Trunk: follow people based on topic, also available in Dutch, Spanish, French
• Listing by Artists and Hackers on Twitter
• Thematic list of Mastodon instances on Fediverse.party

Software projects

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  Fed Up!, chronological diagram of federated social web projects, by Lídia Pereira, Artemis Gryllaki and Bohye Woo, Jan 2020. [6] [7]

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• Beaker, experimental peer-to-peer Web browser (Hypercore), *2016.
• Bookwyrm, federated platform for reading and reviewing (Activitypub), *2021. Instances.
• Castopod, podcast self-hosting with Fediverse interaction.
• Conversations, open source XMPP/Jabber client for Android, *2014.
• Delta Chat, chat app that sends messages via e-mails, encrypted if possible, with Autocrypt
• Diaspora, self-hosted social networking service (diaspora), *2010.
• Distributed Press, open source publishing tool for the World Wide Web and DWeb; automates publishing and hosting content to the WWW that it seeds to Hypercore and IPFS, *2021.
• dokieli, clientside editor for decentralised article publishing, annotations and social interactions (Solid, Linked Data, ActivityPub), *2015. Paper. #semanticweb #linkeddata
• Epicyon, federated social network suitable for low power systems.
• Friendica, decentralized social network, formerly Mistpark (diaspora, OStatus, pump.io, ActivityPub), *2010.
• Funkwhale, decentralised audio platform (ActivityPub), *2019.
• Hubzilla, communication platform, formerly RedMatrix (Zot, ActivityPub, diaspora, OStatus), *2015. Review.
• Hypercore/Dat apps
• IPFS, protocol and p2p network for storing and sharing data in a distributed file system, *2015.
• Lemmy, forums and link aggregation (ActivityPub). Instances. Lemmy.ml communities. Docs.
• Mastodon, self-hosted social networking service (ActivityPub), *2016. Instances. Fork: Hometown.
• Matrix apps: Element, ...
• Misskey, decentralized microblogging service (ActivityPub), *2014.
• PeerTube, federated video platform powered by ActivityPub and WebTorrent, *2018. Instances.
• PixelFed, image sharing platform (ActivityPub), *2018. Servers.
• Pleroma, social networking software (ActivityPub), *2019.
• Scuttlebutt, decentralised secure gossip platform (gossip protocol), *2018.
• Socialhome, federated personal profile with social networking functionality (ActivityPub, diaspora), *2016.
• Solid apps
• WriteFreely, open source platform for building a writing space on the web (ActivityPub).
• YaCy, distributed search engine, *2016.

Protocols: ActivityPub (W3C recommendation, *2018), Solid (*2016), Hypercore (formerly Dat Protocol), Zot (evolved from DFRN, *2015), Matrix (*2014), Pump.io (evolved from OStatus, *2011), Diaspora (*2010), OStatus (formerly OpenMicroBlogging, *2008), XMPP (formerly Jabber, *1999).

More projects and context: Fediverse.party, Wikipedia.

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, 2018ff. [8]
• Founder Interviews, video interviews with developers of decentralization projects, by Irina Bolychevsky, 2013ff.
• Homebrewserver.club, a monthly gathering in Rotterdam for self-hosted services.
• 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 ActivityPub/oStatus fediverse.

Events

Portland, OR

• Federated Social Web Summit 2010, Leftbank Projects, Portland, OR, 18 Jul 2010. Organised by W3C Federated Social Web Community Group.

• IndieWebCamp, Portland, OR, 25-26 Jun 2011.

• IndieWebCamp, Geoloqi, Portland, OR, 30 Jun-1 Jul 2012.

• IndieWebCamp, Elemental Technologies, Portland, OR, 22-23 Jun 2013.

Berlin

• Federated Social Web Europe, Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung, Berlin, 3-5 Jun 2011. Open event on Social Web interoperability, standards and privacy. Supported and co-organised by World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and by the EU FP7 PrimeLife project. The local organization was done under the label “d-cent” and by the independent institute PerGlobal.

• GETDecentralized (GETD), Agora Collective, Berlin-Neukölln, 17-19 Sep 2014. Reports: Joachim Lohkamp, Alex Corbi.

• Peer-to-Peer Web / Berlin, series of talks, Trust, Berlin, 10 Feb 2018.

• Peer-to-Peer Web / Berlin, series of talks, Trust, Berlin, 5 May 2018.

• Radical Networks conference, Spektrum, Berlin, 19-21 Oct 2018. Organised by Sarah Grant and Erica Kermani. Fourth edition.

• Deplatformization and the Ethics of Exclusion, symposium session, part of transmediale festival, Volksbühne - Großes Haus, Berlin, 1 Feb 2020. VIDEO

Brighton

• IndieWebCampUK, The Skiff, Brighton, UK, 9 Sep 2012.

• Federated Social Web Summit 2012, Say Media, San Francisco, 26 Oct 2012. Organised by W3C Federated Social Web Community Group.

London

• The Alternative Internet(s) – State of the Art and the Possible Future, workshop, London School of Economics, London, 15-16 Sep 2014. Organising committee: Mélanie Dulong de Rosnay (CNRS), Francesca Musiani (Mines ParisTech), Alison Powell (LSE), Panayotis Antoniadis (ETH Zürich). The workshop was followed by a series at the LSE Media Policy blog and a special issue at the Journal of Peer Production.

• Redecentralize Conference - Taking Back the Net, unconference, London, 17-18 Oct 2015. Organised by Irina Bolychevsky, a.o. Report.

• Redecentralize Party, Newspeak House, London, 29 Oct 2018. Organised by Irina Bolychevsky.

Bay Area, CA

• GETDecentralized! (GET-D), The Red Victorian, 1665 Haight St, San Francisco, 31 Mar-2 Apr 2015. "An evening of conversation, celebration and community-building around new ideas in decentralization." Organised by Joachim Lohkamp. Attended by about fifty participants, incl. Brewster Kahle from the Internet Archive. VIDEO [9] [10]

• Decentralized Web Summit, Internet Archive, San Francisco, 7-9 Jun 2016. Attended by about 350 participants, incl. 80 participants in the Builders Day. Juan Benet demonstrates a fully decentralized web site; Karissa McKelvey presents a browser-based implementation of the DAT protocol.

• Decentralized Web Summit 2018: Global Visions / Working Code, annual conference, Internet Archive, San Francisco, 31 Jul-2 Aug 2018. Second edition. Attended by over 1,000 participants. Incl. the Creative Track, co-organized by Mindy Seu and Sam Hart.

• DWeb Camp, Pescadaro, CA, 18-21 Jul 2019. Follow-up to Decentralized Web Summits 2016 & 2018. Attended by 450 participants. Interview. Report. [11]

• DWeb Camp, Camp Navarro, California, 24-28 Aug 2022. Fourth edition.

New York

• 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.

• 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.

• Radical Networks conference, Chem Creative, Brooklyn, NY, 19-22 Oct 2017. Organised by Sarah Grant and Erica Kermani. Third edition.

• Peer-to-Peer Web / NY, series of talks, School for Poetic Computation, New York, 26 May 2018. Presented by New Computer Working Group. [12] [13]

• Radical Networks conference, Prime Produce, New York, 18-20 Oct 2019. Fifth edition. VIDEO

Toronto

• State of Our Networks 2017, conference, Claude T. Bissell building, Toronto, 14 Jan 2017. First edition. Organised by Toronto Mesh.

• Our Networks: State of Our Networks: Beyond DIY: Do It With Others, Mozilla Community Space, Toronto, 13-18 Jul 2018. Second edition.

• Local Area Network, workshop, InterAccess, Toronto, 24-26 Aug 2018.

• Our Networks: RE: Infrastructures of, Toronto Media Arts Centre, Toronto, 20-22 Sep 2019. Third edition.

• Our Networks: Growing Our Networks in Uncertain Times<-->Places, online, based out of Toronto, 8-13 Sep 2020. Fourth edition.

Rotterdam

• Relearn 2017, Poortgebouw, Rotterdam, 29 Aug-2 Sep 2017. Documentation (2019). More.

• Welcome to the Federation, Varia, Rotterdam, Jun-Dec 2018.

• Relearn 2019, Varia, Rotterdam, 7-9 Jun 2019; Hacktiris, Brussels, 21-22 Jun 2019; La Générale, Paris, 6-8 Sep 2019. More.

Los Angeles

• Peer-to-Peer Web / Los Angeles, series of talks, Los Angeles Contemporary Archive, Los Angeles, and New York (viewing party), 10 Dec 2017.

• Peer-to-Peer Web / Los Angeles (Edition Two), series of talks, Folder Studio, Chinatown, Los Angeles, 28 Apr 2018.

Brussels

• Reclaim the Web, Kop! (Smart/CoopCity), Brussels, 1 Dec 2018. Organised by iMAL.

Antwerp

• 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.

online

• #SummerSchool 2020, 26 Jul-8 Aug 2020. Online, interdisciplinary conference for the Fediverse, informally hosted by the instance @scholar.social. First edition.

• 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.

• #SummerSchool 2021, 26 Jul-6 Aug 2021. Online, interdisciplinary conference for the Fediverse, informally hosted by the instance @scholar.social. Second edition.

• #SummerSchool 2022, 25 Jul-6 Aug 2022. Online, interdisciplinary conference for the Fediverse, informally hosted by the instance @scholar.social. Third edition.

• Our Networks 2047: Redistributing the Future, online, 14-17 Nov 2022. Fifth edition.

Prague

• De-platform-ization, Ethics and Alternative Social Media, Display, Prague, & online, 25-26 Sep 2020. Symposium and workshop. VIDEO

Basque

• THX, Ozaraine, Basque country, 10-20 Jul 2022.

Publications

Feminist Server Manifesto 0.01, 2014

Theses on Fediverse and FLOSS, 2020

Fedizine, Anarchist Introduction to Federated Social Media, 2022

• Feminist Server Summit, "A Feminist Server Manifesto 0.01", 29 May 2014.

• Relearn, "A Feminist Net/work How-to", in Portable Relearn Archive, Jul 2014. Material from the 2014 edition of Relearn, held at Variable, a collectively run F/LOSS Arts Lab in Brussels.

• Sean Tilley, "We Distribute", Medium, Sep 2014-Sep 2018. Reporting series about decentralization and the free web. Part 0, Part 1. [14]

• Mélanie Dulong de Rosnay, et al., "Alternative Internet(s)", series of blog posts, Media@LSE, London: London School of Economics, Nov 2014-Jan 2015 ff. Sparked by the 2014 workshop.

• Brewster Kahle, "Lock the Web Open", 11 Feb 2015. Talk at the Ford Foundation "NetGain" event.

• Brewster Kahle, "Locking the Web Open", Internet Archive, 1 Apr 2015, 28 min. Video; talk given at the GETDecentralized unconference, San Francisco.

• Robert W. Gehl, "The Case for Alternative Social Media", Social Media + Society 1:2, Sep 2015.

• 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", Open Humanities Press, Dec 2015.

• hbsc & friends, "Have You Considered the Alternative?", HomebrewServer.Club, 9 Mar 2017. Discusses XMPP federation.

• Eugen Rochko, "Welcome to Mastodon", Medium, 31 Mar 2017. [15]

• Danyl Strype, "A Brief History of the GNU Social Fediverse and ‘The Federation’", Disintermedia, 1 Apr 2017, with updates.

• Networks of Ones Own 1: "Etherbox", eds. Michael Murtaugh, An Mertens, Roel Roscam Abbing, and Femke Snelting, Brussels: Constant, Sep 2018. Collaboration between Constant, Relearn, Varia and XPUB.

• Darius Kazemi, "Run your own social: How to run a small social network site for your friends", 8 Jul 2019, with updates.

• Pervasive Labour Union 13: "Fed Up!", ed. Lídia Pereira, Rotterdam, Sep 2019, [30] pp, PDF.

• Greta Byrum, "Building the People’s Internet", Urban Omnibus, New York: Architectural League of New York, Oct 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. [16]

• 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", Mar 2020ff. [17]

• Evgeny Ponomarev, "Decentralized Web Developer Report 2020", Fluence Labs, 8 Jun 2020. [18]

• Eileen Wagner, Karissa McKelvey, Kelsie Nabben, Decentralization Off The Shelf: 7 Maxims, 2020, 32 pp. Research report. [19]

• Compost, eds. Mai Sutton et al., since Mar 2021. Magazine about the digital commons.

• Fedizine: An Anarchist Introduction to Federated Social Media, Aug 2022, 16 pp, PDF. Released for the Montréal Anarchist Bookfair. [20]

See also VIDEO recordings and documentation of events.

See also

Internet activism, Free software