Distributed social media - Mastodon & Fediverse Explained
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 22 ส.ค. 2024
- Mastodon is a "federated" social network that works like Twitter. It puts the control of data into the user's hands, not in a single corporation.
Mastodon uses ActivityPub to make sure that each Mastodon instance can reach the others.
ActivityPub is also implemented by other applications such as PeerTube and Plume. This is what makes up the *Fediverse*: a collection of social networks that function as a single one.
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The Future belongs to Open Source.
yeah but most of "decentralized" services don't have the way to make money since they don't atrac content creators,influencers etc. and mostly get left behind
@@phoneemail2907 the cost of decentralization is mitigated by not having the operation costs of a centralized server.
Until Microsoft buys it of course...
@@phoneemail2907 Speed is another major issue. Without edge servers, many videos would be virtually unwatchable. But these are more like problems to be solved, rather than obstacles. The obstacles would be government "regulation". I can see crackdowns on anything opensource coming up. The fascists will simply not allow it.
@@animanoir that's actually not possible with decentralized sites. Try again.
It's crazy to see this video was made 4 years ago, before covid, and is now a great source to explain federated websites after the Reddit/Twitter updates recently. Thanks for the great video (4 years late!) Hoping youtube remains a safe space for content.
youtube a safespace for content? hohhohihihahaha
"Has grown exponentially" : shows linear growth
But federated social should be the default for everyone. Agreed.
Exponential growth has gone out of favor, I wonder why.
because that line represent combined growth not growth it self, which is actually a Gauss bell that does look exponential during the first half.
It’s on logarithmic scale for vertical axis
Expolinearly 🧠
The fact that this channel was talking about this 3 years ago is a great testiment to the quality of the channel. If you want to learn about the cutting edge, definetly consider subscribing.
Very good development. Thanks for this informative content. Adoption requires marketing and users themselves can spread the good word. We need to uproot the evil social media monopolies.
Terrible for freedom of speech. If you dare to disagree with the leftists you'll be called Nazi and banned right away.
@@slimshady8456 Trust me when I say there are plenty of right wing Mastodon instances that may tickle your fancy. If you can't find any you can also make your own instance with all the freedoms you wish to enjoy
@@slimshady8456 which ones ??
@@Moodboard39 Gab and Truth Social (two of the biggest right-wing social networking sites that are still currently up) both happen to be Mastodon instances. Though most Mastodon instances have them blocked as default. Server admins can choose to block certain instances, and even as a user you can block instances if they happen to be too much for you.
It's not so much that the big social media platforms (including TH-cam) have rules, but that they often don't tell you exactly what the rules are or that they apply the rules in an inconsistent way - penalizing some groups and not others for the same supposedly prohibited behaviour.
This is a common authoritarian practice: the vaguer your rules, the more subjectivity you can exercise in enforcing them.
Great great great video. Sharing it with my friends! I don't know what is your channel about, but the privacy and decentralization themes are aewsome! Good luck with your channel!
Thanks a lot! The channel used to be about tech tutorials. Now it's more about explaining things I find interesting ;)
Very informative and well explained. Explained in a simple language that can be understood even by those who are not very knowledgable about blockchain technology. Great content!
I signed on to Fediverse instances. It is great to be able to follow people on other platforms without needing an account on that platform.
The only item that I miss, and dearly miss, is that in the comments on a post or a video, you do not see the comments that were made by people who are registered on another 'instance' than you are. That is something that has to change. The keyword of Social Media is 'social', but what is social when you can follow people on other platforms or instances but you can communicate (comment) only with the people that are on your own instance? Then we return to the situation that one; the largest, platform (instance) will eventually get the most new users which goes against the objective of decentralisation that Fediverse tries to achieve
Your instance might be limited or blocked by other admins for some reason. Ask the FediTips account for help with this.
@@anneahlert2997 Thanks. The problem is largely solved now. I think that it now only applies to a, very limited, number of non-federated instances.
It might be better to include some general terminology in the video title. Since I clicked on this video randomly, since I was bored and found it pretty interesting. But I had no idea what it was about before clicking. I think if it said "Decentralized Social Media - Mastodon & The Fediverse Explained" or something of the sort, I'd have been much more likely to click on it, since I have an idea what the video is about before clicking. As currently, the video may as well have no title from the perspective of someone who doesn't know what Mastodon or the Fediverse is. Maybe the thumbnail could also be utilized to add the general terminology too.
Wow, you are 100% correct! I've changed the title to what you suggested. It's way better! I should put a bit more time in coming up with a good title and thumbnail. Right now I mainly focus on the content, but as you pointed out: that's worth nothing if people don't click on it. Thanks again man! Really appreciate your feedback!
Exactly! The content is great and the title and thumbnail usually need to have the same care and consideration, since it's the first thing people see. You need to capture something relatable and that people can understand to incite interest, but not dumbing it down too much or being misleading. It can be difficult sometimes.
Thanks for this explanation, it is, 3 years later, still a very good start for new users!
Oh amazing video, thanks! Been looking for an out from today's "internet" to the golden age of internet, this looks more like it!
About the last point. I know of two instances off hand where members of the community can set up monthly donations to the site, and in return they get to be voteing members of the governing body that runs the instance. It's a niche possibility yes, and mostly works because these instances are aimed at the kind of person who would like that idea, but it is A way of handling server fees without ads.
This platform should be picking up steam pretty soon since de-platforming has become commonplace on other platforms. Server location and access may be of interest and more people may be more willing to pay and/or donate and learn new ways to communicate with more people.
Prophetic. Elon Musk pushed people off of Twitter, and Mastodon has grown by leaps and bounds. The huge spike began when Elon took over, but lately has reached peak number of almost half a million new accounts opened in the past week alone (July, 2023), and it isn't slowing down.
Very helpful video. I just learned about Mastodon (and the Fediverse) today, so I am starting from ground zero, and your video is excellent as a first orientation. I like the idea because decentralization is powerful - decentralization generally results in resilience and encourages innovation. Centralized structures in general lack flexibility, and the bigger they are, the less flexible they become - and as a result often actively and deliberately stifle innovation. Thanks for the video.
I'm pretty new to Mastodon and I really like it, although I'm still a bit confused. I wish there would be an easy way to see the timelines of other instances (if the admins approve it). And more filter options like sorting for a specific language would be a killer. Nevertheless, great recap. Thanks for the upload!
Nice. I like the presentation. For reasons, I have been participating on a Mastodon instance for a while now, but the whole thing has been a mystery to me. This helps lift at least a bit of the fog.
So this video explains the sudden bump of mastodon users a couple of days ago :)
thanks for the great intro video, i've been moving over to peertube, pixelfed, mastodon, and discovering more. it's beautiful and exciting and will try to get my communities to move over.
APub actually is born as an improvement over OStatus (used by GNU Social), and Mastodon actually used OStatus before adding APub support. Some speculate that the Tweetdeck-like UI might have contributed to Mastodon's success.
Then again, this is way too technical for a TH-cam video.
Thank you!
Great and simple explanation.
I joined mastadon, part of the Great Indian Twitter exodus.
Why have I not heard of this before????
This is amazing! Going to try to set up my own instance soon.
hey Gireesh, been 10 months. Did you set up your instance?
it’s been a year he died
Threads getting into the fediverse gon change entrepreneurs lifes
Good video! Good explanation. Good graphical explainer! Subscribed ❤
I was 5 seconds into the video and I was like "I know this accent ... but from where?" and the channel is Belgian. That explains it.
Nice video btw.
Thanks for the explanation.
I hope to boost this video with this comment as social media decentralization is more relevant than ever nowadays.
Thank you for the donation! The video is certainly getting more traction after Elon bought Twitter.
Always looking for alternatives to Facebook and Twitter. Free exchange of information and ideas is under attack by these platforms which have gotten too big and powerful.
A good ad system for the fediverse is to use brave ads and get BAT as revenue. So users that have ads turned on on brave can donate to each instance like 5 BAT automatically.
This is simply beautiful
That decentralized apps are great! But the problem is that there some of them are still seperated.
Some of them are Mastodon (and other compatible apps), ZeroNet, Steem... There are also many "storage" providers like Storj, OrbitDB, IPFS, 3Box, blockchains... And it is also same for identify services.
All of them have some advantages and disadvantages so it would be great if they would be able to communicate and work with each other.
Thank you for this video! Will definitely sign up and follow you
yes, very likely I will install this on my server - great intro, great product!
Got a link?
I need to create my own ...
The moment when you look up what the Fediverse is, find this video, and realize it was uploaded in 2019.
March 2019. Before COVID and all that.
in the last you have said that you create a video of setup mastodon. I will eagerly wait for that . nice video
Solid video, thank you! What a cool technology.
The worst part of Mastodon is that they call their tweets "toots." That'd be weird when they show up in the news. "Congressman [name] recently tooted that they think natural gas should be taxed."
They probably meant the noise pachyderms make with their trunks, which is technically "bugling". They can definately "toot" out the other end too, but it might be infrasonic.
This is excellent! Found your video when I went looking for a way to explain the Fediverse to my friends without having to make a video myself. 😀 Question, did you animate this yourself? If so I would love to know what tool you used. Smooth and clear presentation. 👍👍
Really appreciate the explanation of the fediverse along with Mastodon.
the idea of the fediverse / activitypub reminds me of SoLiD (social linked data)
This info is pure gold! Thanks
Pleroma is better. The server software is lighter, which means it's easier to run a node for yourself. Another problem with mastodon is the culture of mass-defederating slightly right wing nodes (look up #fediblock). So I'd say pleroma is generally more free.
I leaned so much about it from this video
There are many things I was ignoring
One issue is moderation. While a single company deciding what is allowed and isn't isn't ideal, at least they take it seriously (because user and add retention depends on it, and because of potential legal liability or government intervention), and they pay people to do it. In Mastodon it is up to unpaid volunteers who are already hosting the instance for free to also moderate. And these individuals do not have the financial or legal incentive to do it right either. Many people are talking about the racism/sexism and overall nastiness they experienced when sharing their opinions on Mastodon. I don't think big companies should control social media, and I am a fan of FOSS, but the issue of moderation scares me, especially now that we understand the power of disinformation and social media.
If you disapprove of how your server is being administered, you are supposed to leave and move ("migrate") to another server. You can take your followers and followings along with you.
If you see it coming from another server, you are supposed to flag and block that server. Your admin can then block or mitigate the feed from that entire server. When admins get blocked by other admins, they take notice.
Unlike on troll-fed accounts on Facebook and Twitter, being blocked is NOT a source of pride for the admins. It limits their access to the rest of the Fediverse. So they will remove offending accounts.
The very nature of the Fediverse regulates problems. Right now, with the explosive growth caused by Elon and Reddit migrations, some of the larger servers are experiencing problems keeping up. But that's why you are encouraged to join/migrate to a smaller server, so your admin can keep up with the activity on their Instance.
Social media is nothing without its people
The network effect is the reason why Twitter will always be the best micro blogging site
Three million users now that Gab with about a million users have joined the Fediverse. (Cross-Posted forever on Dissenter)
How many of those users are active? Oh wait, you can't tell because Gab disabled active user counts.
Guess I'll generate a million fake users so I can have the most popular node overnight. 🤔
Well explained, love your content 👌
(And, first)
Great video. I’m looking into Mastodon myself.
Awesome tutorial. Thank you - sharing it with my friends!
This is awesome, still don't get how the interactivity between the instances works too, but i'll search more for it it's really interesting.
it's like websites emailing each other. every action is encoded as an "activity" and sent to your followers. "alice created a note", "bob created a note inReplyTo alice's note", etc.
Many thanks. You explained it superbly.
Great job explaining the topic, I think I'll give it a try.
I'd say this is only partial decentralization here since you still need rely on "servers" and hosting of "instances" (with fixed addresses). The key would be running a service on virtual servers or an anonymous network like a cloud. It seems to me that no matter what source the programming you can't escape the basics: Server networking vs. Peer to Peer sharing (in some form or other) and frankly we need an alternative for both.
You could easily establish a personal server and use that to interact with the broader network
@@Jackissoocool The latest innovation (and maybe a step in the right direction) is something like LBRY - they segment and encrypt the general data into various 'layers' (parts) and place only the shell core into a secured Bitchain ledger. The idea of being both decentralized and relatively anonymous... tho they still they fail in both as this still needs a propretior master 'key' which points to you (id or identity) in the records kept online.
@@almarshall1452 I'm not convinced LBRY is a truly decentralized alternative. I think we just need to get the hell away from technology and provide for ourselves.
I've seen a few instances where LBRY removed content. I think this is the best option we have at this point. If we want to continue using some type of network, there will always be a possibility of one of the instances censoring content.
Time to say fuck technology and work on becoming self sufficient imo.
I'll be hosting a pleroma instance until then, while I work on self sufficiency
@@mynameisearlb I was recently looking into IPFS (Interplanetary File System) as a possible viable alternative - and it’s clear this one falls in the peer-to-peer category with nodes. While being decentralized and difficult to enforce any censorship it seems to have the usual security risks as peers can be tracked and identified on the ‘network’ no matter how large and widespread it is. Unstoppable Domains is also an interesting candidate (in the decentralized category) but this one is not free and can only be accessed with special plug-ins and resembles TOR in many ways (hard to access and needing proprietary software components). The best solution may be peer-to-peer infinite modules (for the content creation side) gathered on the fly impossible to trace or stop and some blockchain cloud server (for storage of data) that would be free to use with no IP tracing. As for these other so-called ‘uncensorable’ ‘unmoderated’ networks that encourage ‘whales’ or ‘good-standing’ they are a scam of sorts since all they do is ‘track’ and ‘trace’ you to be ‘certified’ and ‘promoted’ sigh.
@@Jackissoocool vps?
I think some instances should have the options of having ads for their users alone. While signing up one has to agree to the ads. If you don't like that join another instance. I dunno how much I'd remember to donate to a social media platform.
"Social media networks have grown exponentially"
*shows a graph with a linear gradient*
Great job, lol
so its basicly Upgraded or Remastered Version and Imrpoved RSS feed? i mean that tech seems fascinating for me who grow up in Late DvD/BluRay era and Early Smartphone Era
mastodon just surpassed 8million accounts
Now this video needs to surpass 8 million views ;)
@@simplyexplained hahahahaha
Already have one now we need more of this!
Super helpful thank you
Interesting, I will go for mastodon :) .... and see :)
It maybe an idea that a federated secure micro payment system is set up so those who support the Fediverse through hosting servers can get money through donations or even payment for bandwidth, storage, and so on.
Otherwise it will be dependent on the purely goodwill of server providers.
I notice on TH-cam livestreams for instance for a small payment people get a special thanks etc.
Almost all Fediverse Admins have some kind of GoFundMe or funding system set up. Like PBS television in the USA, people can make donations to support their instance & admins; some even arrange for people to be able to contribute as regular subscribers.
They need to charge a monthly subscription to each platform. Not a crazy amount but one to allow the project to grow. Its worth it not having adds and the freedom!
Gets expensive if you need to instance jump frequently.
I know some users that have accounts on upwards to 20 or so instances.
We need to have options for how we individually choose to sort out funding for our nodes.
Excellent explainer video thank you! And yes have been looking into joining the Fediverse.
Really great video! Think you got me sold on this idea.
Toots now Publish in the latest software release -- latest version of Mastodon - 4.0.0
Threads are going to do it now, what Mastodon has done 5 years back !!
Already there.. Great video.. :-)
Very well
What the heck? This sounds like social media done right
nice hope more people support this
Yea
I don't think that monetization is really a problem.
A small cloud-virtual-server-whatever costs from EUR 2,- up to lets say EUR 10 to 15,- per month, if you have a larger community.
I think this amount of money is easily obtainable direct from within the community.
yes, it is not automated, but that's also the end of that.
To me the major issue is understanding (in contrast to centralized server like FB and Twitter it is not easy to grasp the difference for the general user) and adaption.
Friendica is awesome, you can follow RSS, so you can see instagram and twitter post in your feed among the post on the fediverse.
Very helpful , thank you
Pretty interesting! Good video.
amazing!
I’ll support anything that’s kosher free.
Good video. Thanks!
My problem with Mastodon is that I can't find a simple set of instructions on how to use it. I love the idea of it - but it's terra incognita, so I tend to avoid it. A vid on that would be good - super simple.
i hit like before I watch
Are Mastodon & Fediverse the new Fidonet (90's BBS) ????
*Funkwhale is for music
sell a Fediverserout of the Box Pod made from a standard case and a RaspberyPi . Flash it with a first start routine to setup the instance made for just your families accounts. Add Next cloud and an option for massstorage.
Have it connected to an inbound Dynamic Domain name service or have it beeing able to refresh an A-Record without configurating the router.
LEMMY
Heading for mastadon
I'm trying to show a healthy interest in this, but did everyone miss the "Join us, or be left out" part? That HAS to be bad no? Were they referring to other platforms?
So these instances are run by random people right? what if one instance shuts down? Is all our data on it lost?
correct. Your data is lost. Though Mastodon afaik allows you to export follows, favs, etc.
@@xE92vD In that case it seems really risky, most closed source platforms have proper funding and infrastructure to have multiple backups incase any accident happens. In fediverse it seems like the server owner can just randomly turn off the server and everyone's data is lost.
And I also just googled, and it seems like server owners can read private messages.
Yes, if the instance shuts down your data would be gone, but you can save a backup similar to what Twitter does.
Keep in mind that having your data online implies a cost that is not covered by advertising like Twitter does. You could always setup your own instance to be in control.
This is great info. Do you know if decentralized platforms use the activity pub protocol as well??
Another reason why it is popular in Japan might be because it was coded in ruby, and the creator of ruby is Japanese.
So facebook is doing fediverse stuff now
Well explained
GNU Social is a great federated social network.
to the fediverse!
I joined mastadon but pixelfed isnt' up yet
Gonna join this
3:31 write ass?
Something that I don't understand is what happens when the server you where suddenly dies. All your history and data dies too?
Store in dats storage
what are you talking about , selling ads is completely possible ,
record the ad video then upload it the the video service and get payed to post the video ,
in theory it should work just as good as sponsorships on youtube
What about privacy and tracking?
Its like twitter what you mean by privacy?
It's still pretty shit, especially regarding DMs (admins can read your DMs in plain text). The key difference is your trust moves from a large corporation possibly working with the NSA to owners of individual instances.
@@smuggymcsmugface2142 Thanks for the update. :)
FWIW, EU running their own Mastodon instance
i checked out peer tube and it looks unflattering, whats the prediction here? to get better content creators on the platform, people are posting weird, old videos and random videos they dint create. the only course forward is getting content creators, and developing it so peertube personalities naturally arise