Twitter a bore to you? Getting bored with Facebook? Instagram causing you harm? Dissatisfied with TikTok? There is a vast array of other social settings available. Your brand-new house is here for you! We’ve reviewed a lot of social networks and selected a few that defy the centralized paradigm while utilizing exciting new technology.
They aren’t: Peach, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, or anything similar. You are well aware of those online locations, and there are many good reasons to stay away from them. Our selection of lesser-known social media platforms either replicates services you are already familiar with or takes a whole different approach. Several (but not all) of them are community-run, decentralized, cost-free, open-source, privacy-focused, and ad-free.
All of the services on this list are based on the ActivityPub protocol, which enables independent servers for decentralized social networks. Each of them has a distinct community and set of laws. Imagine there were numerous websites running the Twitter code and interacting with one another, as opposed to just one single Twitter. That network is decentralized.
Some ActivityPub services can communicate with one another, creating the fediverse, a wider network of social media sites. Even while one fediverse service may be for microblogging and the other for photo sharing, some of these services can communicate with one another. On the other hand, you cannot follow a Twitter account from Facebook because they are two very different platforms. Even while this form of contact isn’t always successful, it’s one of the fediverse’s most fascinating features.
Twitter, Facebook, and More’s Replacement by Alternative Social Networks WHAT MAKES QUITING FACEBOOK, TWITTER, AND THE REST IMPORTANT? For a while, the major social media sites were entertaining and helped people connect in ways that the earlier internet couldn’t. After all, setting up a Twitter or Facebook account is much simpler than learning how to host your own website. Some individuals got their first chance to have a voice online thanks to these venues.
But Twitter, Facebook, and similar platforms came at a price. By scraping personal information, social media businesses make money off of their users by better targeting them with advertisements. Social media businesses utilize artificial feeds that encourage scrolling but can also make them miserable (Opens in a new window) to maintain high engagement. Additionally, these businesses generally disregard inappropriate conduct, including hate speech, as they seem to view human suffering as a necessary evil. They’ve also been negligent guardians of our private data.
EDITORS’ RECOMMENDATION
Fair warning: quitting Facebook or Twitter might not be a good idea. I keep a Twitter account to promote my work and the things I care about, and Facebook is becoming a more popular way for my family to stay in touch. But I now spend a lot less time on those sites and prefer the low-key atmosphere of Mastodon, Pixelfed, and other sites.
TRY A NEW THING! The lack of usage of unconventional social networks is a common issue. But that’s a prediction that comes true. Facebook and Twitter are currently very popular, after all. These services are effective because of politicians and celebrities, but they only exist because we pay attention to them. We have the option to divert that focus.
BOOKWYRM Although reading doesn’t tend to be the most social activity, BookWyrm (Opens in a new window) brings book lovers together. Find books to add to your wish list, share your reading progress and reviews, and discover what other readers are reading. With OverDrive, you can visit your local library from the convenience of your computer or mobile device thanks to this laid-back experience.
The main benefit over GoodReads The former is a free, open-source project supported by the ActivityPub protocol, whereas the latter is owned by Amazon.
FRIENDICA Friendica (Opens in a new window) is worth a look if you’re searching for a more Facebook-like experience. The profile pages and posts that make up Friendica are designed to enable you show off your online persona to your friends.
Friendica is largely analogous to Facebook, but it also draws inspiration from other places. Similar to the Circles on the now-defunct Google , you can establish private groups. The ability to create numerous profiles on Friendica allows you to present a different image to friends, family, and coworkers. It may also be used to arrange events.
FUNKWHALE Music lockers were the primary method of storing your music in the cloud until Spotify-style streaming subscriptions gained popularity. You put all of your music online and streamed it from wherever you were. These services are now incredibly rare, however they still exist in Funkwhale (Opens in a new window) .
By uploading your music to Funkwhale, you may share tunes both with other users on your server (referred to as a “pod”) and with the wider network. Funkwhale makes it clear that it is focused on sharing and supporting free material when it comes to copyright. Individuals can choose what music they share on the system, though. Instead, look at alternatives like Bandcamp if you want a good way to purchase music and support artists.
A similar to Twitter, free and open-source microblogging social network is called MASTODON Mastodon (Opens in a new window) . You can locate a house with the regulations or concentrate you desire because it consists of servers managed by volunteer admins. It has been operating for around six years and has a strong culture with both crazy weird-Twitter-style drivel and serious, thought-provoking messages.
Mastodon does more than the usual techniques like faves and reposting (referred to as boosting). With the use of the service’s visibility settings, you can manage who can see your postings. Additionally, individual users have the ability to mute, block, and unmute entire servers.
Review of Mastodon by MOBILIZON Facebook Events is one of the social networks’ biggest accomplishments, despite being frequently disregarded. It has played a crucial role in a variety of events, from weddings to protest movements. The same goal of Mobilizon (Opens in a new window) is pursued without the inherent surveillance of Facebook’s operations.
Without using Facebook (though you can still share events there, if you’re like that sort of thing), you can create events, distribute those events as broadly as you like, and keep attendees up to date on developments. Free and open-source, Mobilizon connects to other services through ActivityPub.
The French non-profit Framasoft (Opens in a new window) is the source of the privacy-respecting, open-source Mobilizon software. Particularly noteworthy is its Framadate Doodle variant.
PEERTUBE PeerTube (Opens in a new window) , another Framasoft project, criticizes online video sites like YouTube. PeerTube is a video sharing website where you can upload and view videos. PeerTube is made up of distinct instances of the same program that connect with one another via ActivityPub, unlike other platforms.
PeerTube is committed to offering a lot of material without using a lot of infrastructure. Across the network, videos that have been uploaded to one instance can be viewed. By allowing viewers who are watching the same video to exchange some video data, PeerTube also leverages users to lessen the burden on the entire network.
The best place to learn more about PeerTube is on PeerTube, of course.
PIXELFED Instagram was purchased by Meta, which we used to just refer to as Facebook, for $1 billion in 2012, which sounds very antiquated in light of more recent social media acquisitions. Since then, Instagram has emerged as the preferred platform for sharing photos of pets and breakfast, and it’s also renowned for its startlingly precise targeted advertising. Try make them miserable (Opens in a new window) 0 if you’re over the commercials, the influence, and the automated feeds.
Similar to Instagram, Pixelfed is also. You upload pictures or movies, edit them, and then share them with everyone. Free, ad-free, and expanding quickly is Pixelfed. It is a sharp rival and has already seen significant improvements in its brief existence. You may follow Pixelfed accounts from Mastodon and other platforms because it also uses ActivityPub.
Although there isn’t an official Pixelfed app for iOS or Android right now, mobile users can use the web app just fine.
WRITEFREELY Running a blog has been made incredibly easy by platforms like Blogger, Medium, and WordPress. Similar to this, make them miserable (Opens in a new window) 1 offers a neat, fashionable platform for broadcasting your ideas to the globe. Because ActivityPub powers it, users of other platforms can view your WriteFreely content. It is free and open-source.
To post to a WriteFreely website, you can do so anonymously, or you can register for an account to manage one or more blogs. Markdown is used to format posts, allowing you to rapidly write a message without fumbling with several alternatives.
In contrast to many of the providers mentioned in this article, WriteFreely offers managed hosting through the make them miserable (Opens in a new window) 2 premium subscription plan. Access to other capabilities, such photo hosting, is only available to paid accounts. make them miserable (Opens in a new window) 3 is a blogging platform that also uses ActivityPub and might be worth checking out.
(Image: Sunniwa via Shutterstock) Social media usage restriction is simpler than you would imagine. By making this one tiny adjustment, you can reclaim valuable time each day.
