4-Replacing proprietary social networks with Fediverse

Written by Nidal — May 12, 2023

In this blog, which is still under construction, I describe the approach I followed to regain control over my personal data by replacing commercial tools with others, often open-source, or which do not practice tracking. For the moment I'm just listing the solutions I've adopted. The argumentation will come gradually with the maturity of the content

Start the blog from the beginning 1-Motivation et approach


The place where personal data is most exploited for commercial purposes is social networks, where the business model is the exchange of service for the user’s personal and behavioral data, but I am not satisfied with this model anymore.

The recent buzz around the takeover of Twitter by Elon Musk and the massive conversion to Mastodon led me to wonder https://fediverse.blog/~/Regain_Control_Over_My_Personal_Data/4-Replacing%20proprietary%20social%20networks%20with%20Fediverseabout the philosophy behind it.



In order not to repeat what has been said, I advise you to read :



1-the Mastodon online help



2-The Wikipedia page about the Fediverse



First of all, you have to understand the philosophy in order not to reproduce the same drifts as on commercial networks and especially :



1-when you repost a message (boost a message), it is boosted without additional comments. This keeps the initial message unchanged.



2-no like on Mastodon, (because it is the main engine behind the addiction), but “favorites” which are used to find poets (tweets)



3-on Mastodon you are part of a community first.



So you have to find an instance that looks like you, and it can take some time. Personally I created several accounts on several platforms of the Fediverse, just to test them. Afterwards, I will keep an account on a very frequented platform, to make discoveries, and post only generic topics, and have an account for each community that interests me. For example, I have created an account on a Belgian server to have the local chickens on the community wall.


Be careful though, the 3 points I mentioned apply to Mastodon, while other Fediverse tools try to replicate all the behavior of commercial social networks.




For the moment, I have chosen to move towards the federated internet, the Fediverse, and I have created accounts in some tools like:






  • Mobilizon (Event publishing and registration, alternative to Facebook events)



  • Plume (alternative to blogger, that’s where this blog is hosted)



  • Lemmy (equivalent discussion forum service)


And so, from my Mastodon account, I follow my account on Plume and on PixelFed, and I can republish my blog or my pictures.




5-Cleaning up my tracks on commercial social networks


This article is under the CC-0 license.

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