What if you could just call up Zuckerberg? A quick introduction to the Fediverse

Reviewers: I'd like to withdraw this in favour of a similar proposal submitted by someone else from Durare, which I wasn't aware of at the time of submitting: https://fossunited.org/c/indiafoss/2025/cfp/floam4e5l3

The "Fediverse", which is a group of social media apps that are compatible with each other via the ActivityPub protocol*, is gaining popularity in some parts of the world, though it is yet to pick up in India.

This talk is a very beginner-level introduction to the Fediverse for those who haven't heard of it before, based on my experience participating in it for the past 6 years, as well as selfhosting some Fediverse software and now getting involved in the project to host Fediverse services on Durare.

This talk will first very briefly introduce a few Fediverse platforms:

• Pixelfed, centred around image sharing, similar to Instagram)

• Mastodon, microblogging similar to X (formerly known as Twitter) and one of the most popular Fediverse platforms out there

• Akkoma (microblogging again, but with modern features like emoji reactions)

• Peertube (for video sharing, but with p2p streaming to reduce load on servers)

I will then explain how having an account on any of these platforms allows you to comment and share posts on any other of those platforms, thanks to them sharing the same ActivityPub protocol.

The second concept in this talk is about servers: anyone can install Pixelfed (or other Fediverse software) on their own VPS to have a social network where they have admin power—the same way Mark Zuckerberg and his team are the admins of all of Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram! This allows for smaller community-managed servers which have control over their own moderation. A smaller scale means more personal connection; perhaps you can even phone up a moderator who's also your friend to sort out an issue. Imagine doing the same to the "moderators" of Instagram or Facebook!

Next, I will mention how the ability to create your own instances makes things easier for new social media platforms: rather than having to build a user base from scratch, you can make it ActivityPub-compliant and automatically leverage the millions of users already on the Fediverse.

Finally, I will mention the problem of not knowing which instance to join, which could lead to differing experiences because of discovery and moderation policy. Specifically, I will mention the Durare project I am involved in, which runs already operates an Indian-run XMPP chat server, and is planning to set up general-purpose Fediverse instances as well.

*Note: some people use "Fediverse" to describe platforms that are compatible with each other through protocols other than ActivityPub, such as XMPP. However, for the purposes of this talk, I am using the more popular definition which is "anything that implements ActivityPub"

• The Fediverse is a grouping of social networks which are compatible with each other thanks to the ActivityPub protocol (and maybe other similar protocols, depending on your definition)

• The Fediverse brings control of moderation back into the hands of communities and people, rather than being centralised in a (usually overworked) company-run team.

• If you make your new social media platform compatible with ActivityPub, you can avoid having to build up a new userbase from scratch

• Finding the correct instance to join is somewhat important. Hopefully, Durare can be the go-to option once operations get going.