Social media's next evolution: decentralized, open-source, and scalable
93 comments
·August 25, 2025joshmarinacci
Incidentally the size of sockets and screws (including the Allen wrench) is very much a technology. William Sellers pushed standards in the mid 1800s specifically to benefit American industry through interoperability. Standards we still use today.
anitil
It's amazing how much things that seem so ho-hum today are yesterday's incredible invention
JimDabell
I know more about this than most, but I’m still confused about how I’m supposed to deal with federated social media. I have a Threads account. I have a Mastodon account. Then Threads added federation. What am I supposed to do with each account? They have different posting histories, they can’t be merged, but if I post the same thing to both of them, I’ll be repeating myself. Am I supposed to discontinue using one of them? If I do that, then the people who don’t see the federated content (e.g. Threads users with federation disabled) will stop seeing what I post. It’s a mess.
al_borland
This is why centralized social media took off. It is easy to understand and use.
Even within Mastodon it’s a mess with all the various servers. It’s too confusing.
I know people like to compare it with email, but with email I’m sending from server A to server B, I’m not sending from server A to hundreds of other servers and seeing that it doesn’t always make it everywhere. And if I edit or delete a post, maybe those changes will propagate out, but maybe not. Conceptually it’s hard, but even as a user who doesn’t care as long as the magic works… the magic doesn’t work all that well. So where does that leave decentralized social media?
Bring back blogs + rss as the norm. It makes sense, it works, the user is in control, and it never feels like it is trying to substitute for human connection.
JimDabell
> I know people like to compare it with email
There is another, closer comparison to be made: Google Plus. With Google Plus, I suddenly had multiple social media accounts on Google Plus – I had the Google Plus profile associated with my personal Google account, the Google Plus profile associated with the place I worked, and the Google Plus profile associated with my freelance business. And to make it worse, it didn’t roll out all at once, so I added people I hung out with and worked with on my personal account, then had to re-do it again when my work account happened. And people were randomly adding me on whichever one they found first.
I don’t think Google Plus got this right at all, and it feels like federation is making a lot of the similar mistakes to Google Plus.
MithrilTuxedo
Think of them like different social groups.
righthand
Really though is this a real world issue? Tombstone one and use the other. No reason to quit just because you don’t have perfect agency. Post both if you want, people post on Facebook and Twitter and don’t quit because someone has a similar schtick/account name/or just one account.
JimDabell
> Tombstone one and use the other.
Like I said:
> If I do that, then the people who don’t see the federated content (e.g. Threads users with federation disabled) will stop seeing what I post.
> people post on Facebook and Twitter and don’t quit because someone has a similar schtick/account name/or just one account.
When people post the same thing to Facebook and Twitter, those posts don’t end up in the same feed. They do with federation and Threads / Mastodon.
righthand
Right so your quibble is that part of your audience is not portable, not that federation makes posting harder. You either maintain a centralized service account or you don’t. That hasn’t changed with Meta services. It is Threads that doesn’t allow for portability.
Further a tombstone would point users to the new account if they choose to continue following you. This can be done in a post and your bio.
How bad is it that your two accounts end up in the same feed? By your own admission Threads is a different audience.
em-bee
well, the problem here obviously is that threads is not fully federated. and therefore if that is a concern you need to treat your thread account as not federated too. federation only works if everyone that you want to reach is in it.
aorloff
One of these gives you ultimate control (mastodon / AT) if you want it (you can host and own the domain) or the ability to ride along with your choice of admin.
The others do not give you any choice you buy the service from them and accept their terms (and presumably, virality, which you came for)
Those are the trade offs
JimDabell
None of that addressed any of the issues I have.
spiritplumber
Social media's next evolution: state-owned, built by politically connected firms, and working poorly but there's no alternative....
Havoc
Haven't invested time into bluesky yet but I'm always shocked at how fast the pages load. The contrast to twitter is stunning.
Lemmy is a bit more hit/miss on loads but the content posted seems so much more wholesome than other socials
the_gipsy
I'm shocked that it's as slow as Twitter.
There was a time when tweets were just good ol' regular HTML pages. Today it's unbearable if you remember that you're just trying to read one small paragraph.
mkoubaa
Anyone remember how fast geocities pages loaded?
cesarb
> Anyone remember how fast geocities pages loaded?
Yeah, they were slow. Mostly due to the low speed of dial-up modems.
al_borland
And the heavy gif usage.
dingnuts
Unlike Bluesky, which is a website and community, "Lemmy" is software. There are many Lemmy instances; the content varies wildly, just like it does between Mastodon instances, or web sites.
What instance is more wholesome? As written, your comment is like saying IRC is more wholesome. It is? On what server?
Havoc
I'm thinking of programming.dev in particular but suspect my wholesome comment is pretty universally true. The type of crowd that sets up their own servers like these are in my experience slightly biased towards wholesome side. Setting up software, build initial user base etc...there is a level of intent there that you don't get with the free for all that is reddit or whatever.
Maybe that's just my impression but suspect there is a kernel of truth there
rzazueta
Perhaps not so much "wholesome" - because I can definitely provide a handful of historical and current examples that definitely aren't - but certainly more "community minded".
In that regard, your experiences match mine. I've been in the online community space since the Compuserv, GEnie and Prodigy days. Those platforms were more or less self-limiting - you needed to have access to a computer with a modem in the early to mid 1980s - but it was still a bit of a mess for trying to make any real, lasting online connections.
When I discovered my local BBS community, it was a massive game changer in terms of the quality of connections and conversations I had. It even inspired me to run my own BBS for a while.
I don;t like Bluesky's approach to decentralization because their system requires a TON of resources to run an independent instance. ActivityPub - upon which Mastodon and others is based - is mature, flexible, and allows for true decentralization. I can self host my own instance, or I can host an instance for one or more of my communities. I actually host my own Mastodon instance just for myself, and it;s remarkably easy. I imagine adding accounts would not increase my effort at all.
The right approach to decentralization is for those who can host instances to do so for themselves and for those in the communities that matter to them. That way, those who can't self host should still be able to find an instance they can trust. Then, those instances should be allowed to communicate with one another - only blocking instances if they go rogue and affect performance, but letting individuals have fine grained control over the messages they receive and the individuals with whom they interact.
This creates a world of alternatives for anyone seeking connection. Mastodon already works this way - you have art-focused instances, infosec focused instances, erotic content focused instances, etc. I can follow folks from any of those instances on my own account and engage directly with them. I'm seeing more folks start up PeerTube instances - which also use ActivityPub - as alternatives to YouTube. I can follow everything from my self-hosted Mastodon account. It's awesome.
I eventually plan to launch my own ActivityPub implementation so I can host others in my communities and provide a workable alternative to the centralized social media companies - e.g. I'd like my kid's school PTA to stop using Facebook Groups.
Kye
AP instances tend to reflect the same clusters that emerge in social media where most people are on the same app.
https://bsky.app/profile/pfrazee.com/post/3ltda4vl5322z
It's just a different way of organizing communities.
sunaookami
Huh? Bluesky loads very slow, a lot of loading circles and placeholder skeletons.
bit1993
Allot of people have a social media account rather than a website and allot of people use gmail rather than host their own mail. Decentralized means do it yourself, but most people just want something with batteries included that works well and don't really care about centralization.
blooalien
> "Decentralized means do it yourself" ...
Not necessarily. Just one famous example; BitTorrent is decentralized but for most people it's just "run this app, download files". "Decentralized" just means "doesn't rely on a centralized service to accomplish a goal". As long as the application isn't too complex to install and use, most folks won't care one way or the other whether it's decentralized or not, as long as it accomplishes the goal they're looking to accomplish.
cramsession
There has to be a payoff though. BitTorrent is actually pretty hard to get working correctly, track down the torrent files... people do it because it's the only way to get some content and a way to get content you'd otherwise have to pay for. With social media, there's not much reward and most people's friends already post for free on other networks. Not saying it's not worthwhile, but it's hard to extract this lesson from BitTorrent.
l72
But it can also be specialized forums like https://startrek.website/ which is hosted using Lemmy but you can use your federated login. It can help bring back indie forums and websites that aren’t controlled by Reddit or meta.
blooalien
Yeah, for sure. Anything trying to be a social network in a properly peer-to-peer fashion would have to be as simple to use (or simpler) than existing social networks, and / or offer some genuinely unique and desirable feature(s) in order to attract any serious critical mass of users.
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bawolff
Perhaps, but i feel like under this definition, bluesky and friends, dsspite all their talk, really does fit in the centralized camp.
blooalien
> ... "under this definition, bluesky and friends, dsspite all their talk, really does fit in the centralized camp."
In my mind, I put them somewhere in-between, leaning a tad more toward "centralized" because they still rely on an individual to host the service no matter how "federated" they are. Until they're truly peer-to-peer, there's still that aspect of centralization involved. We need something kinda like BitTorrent but for messaging / social connections.
rzazueta
Naw, decentralized means not having everyone on one platform. ActivityPub-enabled sites (Mastodon, PeerTube, Lemmy, etc.) can be run by just about anyone, and can serve multiple users.
So, if you have the technical skills and the willingness to host an ActivityPub-enabled instance, you can serve it for others who either don't have the skills or ability to manage it themselves. If you keep it limited just to the folks in your own communities - people you know, friends of friends, etc. - then you limit a lot of the issues that arise from running huge instances - moderation, privacy issues, etc.
We took something natively decentralized - TCP/IP internet - and handed it off to handful of companies to run, thus centralizing it. That was a mistake, especially as they use the power they acquired to push back against folks, for example, trying to build independent community ISPs.
We need to decentralize as much as feasible - it's not all self-hosting, but "just let the money perverts run things" has not worked out so well for us. The solution lay somewhere in the middle, where cooperative groups serve the needs of the communities that matter to them in exchange for fair compensation.
didibus
I really like their listed user experience goals:
1. Cross-platform engagement
Create content via one platform and engage with users on other platforms.
2. Moderation choice
Voluntarily opt into moderation policies that reflect the experience you want.
3. Data portability
Data portability and credible exit are built in (you can take your data and followers with you).
4. Advertising disincentive
Portability prevents lock-in or captive audiences, which disincentivizes advertising.
5. Algorithmic choice
Users can choose the feeds and algorithms that work for them.
It's not do it yourself, it's more having more control if you want too.
bit1993
The issue is only developers know the benefits of those features. Most people just want to view content or post and get their likes. That is why they use social media rather than post on their own website.
I don't think this is a technology problem, its more of a socioeconomic problem. People tend to choose the centralized option and projects that start out decentralized tend to end up centralized WWW-Social media, Email-Gmail, Git-Github, Bitcoin-Coinbase etc
l72
This is where tech family and friends need to play a role. Host these services for them!
My family just thinks Jellyfin and Navidrome is another Netflix or Spotify they have access to. And most of them prefer Jellyfin as content doesn’t disappear and is much more curated.
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alexisread
Decentralised here means keeping companies honest by avoiding lock-in. It's fine to have the centralisation if it's easy to switch. BlackSky users don't need to care about the details, but if they don't like the community they can move their data elsewhere. Try doing that with Instagram.
dingnuts
They can also liberate their identity, which is the real innovation of the AT protocol
jazzyjackson
Didn’t they just adopt DNS? I mean I guess you have a DID people can follow ( tho afaik there’s no other identity server for resolving DIDs besides bsky app), but the way to tell that someone is who you think they are is their handle being connected to their domain
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bawolff
I mean, facebook is pretty easy to switch from, just stop going to their website.
Personally i'm a little doubtful that bluesky is decentralized in a way that matters.
l72
Until you kids school uses it for organizing information for parents or that’s the only place a niche group you like is.
Getting banned from Facebook means loosing access to all of that. Kinda like getting banned from YouTube could mean loss of access to email, groups, drive and a bunch of other services. Hell I’ve heard of company contractors getting banned from Google Play’s Developer and everyone in the company then getting banned from all Google services!
If I get banned from a Lemmy community that doesn’t ban me from other communities or other servers and I can always run my own if I need to.
bee_rider
I think Facebook is pretty useless and just not using the site is a great way to transfer away from it. But I feel like to engage with the idea of switching away constructively, I’d have to find some value in the content I had on the site.
binary132
DNS is decentralized
Kye
The distinction blurs with AT protocol. My data lives on Bluesky's PDS for now, but I can log in to that PDS from anything that supports AT. Like leaflet.pub
Here's a post on one of my Leaflet publications under my own domain: https://foxes.kyefox.com/3lx46ftzhhc27
This post is stored in Leaflet's own lexicon in its own collection right next to all my Bluesky data. I could move this to a different PDS if I wanted. I could come up with a script to turn the collection into static pages or convert them to another platform's import format.
Nobody cares about decentralization until they do[0] and AT seems to have the best answer for that eventuality.
[0] https://kyefox.com/nobody-cares-about-decentralization-until...
pinoy420
[dead]
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t1E9mE7JTRjf
"our users’ accounts and data are on our server"
I appreciated their very thorough moderation description. Power to them if that's the product they're selling, but why pretend to be decentralised? Moderation is a highly centralising act.
MithrilTuxedo
The unit of decentralization is the group, not the individual. The client-server relationship is still centralized.
Joining a community is a highly centralizing act. ;-p
mhh__
I might just be projecting from a certain phase of my life but if I had to bet on what social media will look like:
TikTok for an infinite content/drug experience
Twitter+offline meetups for everything else.
Look at Reddit today for example. Any utility has basically arbitraged away outside of very niche subreddits. Almost no one I know has any energy for online community anymore.
al_borland
Why Twitter? Every time I go on there it seems like people who are seeking an argument as a way to connect. Those aren’t happy people.
mhh__
Everyone I've met in person from twitter has been very well adjusted, smart, and surprisingly good looking.
echelon_musk
Maybe someone can decentralize social media so much that it finally goes offline.
al_borland
Like MyFace by TacoCorp[0].
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null
A lot of decentralized projects focus on the philosophy, but most people just want something that works smoothly. Platforms like Blacksky probably grew not because of cutting-edge tech, but because they made it feel easy to use without overthinking.