The Fediverse is booming! The chaotic takeover of Twitter and Elon Musk's erratic behavior have led to waves of exodus.
Relevant, important and non-commercially verified accounts are leaving the platform one by one and, like hundreds of thousands of other Twitter users, are looking for a new social media home. Many believe they found Mastodon on the microblogging service. So far so good. But they are only scratching the surface, because they have entered the Fediverse. But what is it and how do you move there safely?
Fediverse: the invisible social media universe
What is behind Mastodon? If you look closer, you will see a social media iceberg. Mastodon is currently experiencing a lot of public visibility. But the Twitter alternative named after a prehistoric animal offers the solution
g into a much larger concept than an alternative to a single service. Namely a large network of open source services, all of which see themselves as a better alternative to the large, well-known social media players. And try to avoid the mistakes and well-known points of criticism of the tech giants: the Fediverse.
The Fediverse can be described in three words:
- Together,
- decentralized and
- democratically.
With the aim of enabling socially relevant discourse in an appreciative environment.
The name has nothing to do with the English word federal, but rather comes from Federation. The ending -verse, on the other hand, refers to the universe. The Fediverse sees itself as a federation, an association of independent social networks, microblogging services and websites for online publishing and hosting services. In 2008 the free software for social communication GNU Social was launched. With the launch of Mastodon, the Fediverse experienced a significant boost since 2016, which was further strengthened in 2018 with the communication protocol ActivityPub. ( HERE ) Thanks to the current developments surrounding Twitter, Fediverse is likely to become even more visible to broad user groups.
Advantages of Fediverse
What characterizes this new social media universe, which offers an alternative for all major tech players?
The Fediverse belongs to everyone and no one. There are no large corporations and individuals who decide the welfare or woe of a platform, as is the case with all large platforms.
Elon Musk at Twitter, Mark Zuckerberg at Meta or Jeff Bezos at Amazon, everyone knows the powerful tech tycoons.
In Fediverse, anyone can participate as a user and document preferences through their type of participation, but can also help shape the network itself by providing their own server. In this way, all Fediverse participants contribute to and help shape a social discourse about the way we communicate together. There are decentralized open source offerings for all classic social media platforms that have the following features:
The graphic shows a section of the platforms that communicate with each other via the ActivityPub communication protocol. In addition, there are many more.

Here is a small, very incomplete overview, sorted by commercial model.
Not everything that glitters is gold
The Fediverse sounds tempting, but there are also downsides that users should be aware of. Because they already have an influence on the decision as to how exactly your personal entry into Fediverse will be designed.
Even if every user can operate a server themselves, this requires time and knowledge, but also money. However, since each server operator represents an independent instance and user accounts are also set up via these instances, beginners in Fediverse should think very carefully about who they trust with their user account. Almost the entire technical infrastructure is financed with private money or donations and is also dependent on the interest and commitment of the server operator.
Theoretically, this person can decide from now on to shut down the server and take the instance offline. As a result, this means that preference will probably be given to large servers operated by a stable organization in order to minimize the risk of closure. If the large authorities become ever larger, this contradicts the basic principle of distributing the Fediverse across many shoulders in order not to give individuals the power to shape the Fediverse again, for example when it comes to permissible content or social discourse. The idea of Fediverse is swarm intelligence. The more powerful individual instances become and the more insignificant the many others become, the closer we get to the centralized classic platforms with all their problems.
Self-cleaning powers
The federal principle and the associated lack of regulation also bring about negative aspects. In 2019, a Mastodon instance called “Gab” appeared on the scene. Mostly right-wing to right-wing extremist accounts gathered here, which initially enjoyed the free compatibility of the various services with a single user account. However, the large Fediverse community has reacted and many instances have banned Gab accounts. Gab is still the largest instance on Mastodon, i.e. with the largest number of members.
data protection
Data protection is unclear. Anyone who sends sensitive information via private message must assume that the operators of the sender and recipient instances involved will ultimately have the opportunity to read the message ( HERE) . But please, who treats sensitive data so carelessly?!
Apps
Many of the platforms offer apps for mobile devices for various operating systems. However, these are often significantly less visually appealing and practical to use, as is the case with the larger platforms.
Nothing works without volunteers
Since the basic character of Fediverse is not commercial, it is often highly motivated volunteers who use the instances in their free time, depending on donations from the community. Of course, this can lead to differences in professional appearance. There are no service providers here, but rather people on a mission for a world with better social media.
chicken or egg
The large platforms have united millions of users over the years, thereby enabling certain usage habits and, above all, reach. Entire professions such as influencers or content creators live from the reach they have achieved in classic social media. The decision to leave one of the commercial platforms also means being thrown back into a much smaller biotope of familiar faces and a massively reduced reach.
The vast majority of users, on the other hand, are lazy and since the Twitters and Facebooks of the world do a lot to make it extremely convenient to be there, the vast majority of users still close one or both eyes when it comes to questions such as data protection, Hate speech or something similar is possible. Especially since their personal environment or the people they want to reach don't change (yet). The classic chicken or egg problem. Who takes the first step?
The convenience factor
The decision to leave Twitter or Facebook or even delete your user account is one thing. However, Fediverse doesn't necessarily make it very easy for newbies to get into an instance. Once you have decided on a platform, you also have to think carefully (see above) about which instance or community you want to dock with. This decision should be made carefully before you can create an account relatively easily. So if you only want to switch half-heartedly and are perhaps not particularly tech-savvy, this decision could already prove to be a barrier that prevents you from swimming from the shark tank of commercial providers into the goldfish pond of Fediverse. But no worry! There is a solution. See below.
Mastodon: a fish in the big pond of the Fediverse
The remarkable developments on Twitter have thrust Mastodon into the public spotlight. The more chaotic Elon Musk acted after the Twitter takeover and the greater the fears that the platform would be flooded with hate speech, the more accounts were deleted every day and the more users switched to Mastodon, which has been a functionally similar alternative for several years.
Mastodon is a decentralized microblogging service that was only founded in Germany in 2016. Founder Eugen Rochko, a 29-year-old German software developer, runs the Berlin-based company Mastodon gGmbH, which was founded in Jena. According to Wikipedia, Rochko finances his living through the donation platform Patreon ( HERE ). There are currently approximately 6 million users on Mastodon. The trend is currently clearly increasing.
While tweets are being sent on Twitter, the mastodon user is trumpeting, based on the prehistoric proboscis that gives it its name. The individual tweets can be up to 500 characters long and, just like on Twitter, all possible other formats such as images and videos can be attached. While the atmosphere on Twitter has become increasingly aggressive, Mastodon communities place great value on pleasant, appreciative and constructive interactions with one another. Since Mastodon is based on the ActivityPub communication standard, many other Fediverse platforms can be accessed and used with a Mastodon account.
Which instance can it be?
The search for the right instance can be made much easier. On the one hand, when registering on Mastodon, tools are offered that allow you to search for a suitable instance based on size, location or interest. There are also tools outside of the registration process that can help, such as instances.social . And very important: The decision for an instance is not final: you can move to another server or change the instance.
How are the Twitter contacts found on Mastodon?
One shortcoming of Mastodon is the lack of a contact suggestion feature, which makes it so easy to connect with your phone book contacts on Twitter. However, resourceful developers have created tools like Fedifinder or Debirdify that search your Twitter contacts for those who mention a Mastodon account in their bio. Contact lists can be imported into Mastodon via CSV lists, as can the list of blocked contacts. Conversely, this means that if you want to be found by your Twitter contacts in the new universe, you should definitely mention your Mastodon account in your bio.
The Debirdify tool also helps you choose an instance where your own contacts are located.
This might make the decision for your new home a little easier. The decision to change is not a question of either - or, but of both - and. There are also tools that can be used to create cross-postings. Posts are then tweeted and trumpeted at the same time. At the moment, due to the large run, it is somewhat difficult to ensure completely trouble-free operation, as large instances in particular are so overrun by new users that server capacities cannot always be scaled at the same pace.
The only thing that helps is to keep calm and watch how Twitter is currently dismantling itself while Mastodon is growing rapidly. So that you can then make a decision for yourself in good time.
We at Mimikama can be found here on MASTODON
Sources:
DigitalCourage
BfDI
Kuketz blog
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