Note

Zur Instanz

The Fediverse and microblogging with Sharkey

Elon Musk with X (Twitter). Mark Zuckerberg with Facebook, Instagram and Threads. Zhang Yiming with Tiktok. What do they all have in common? All three people are filthy rich and some of them hold very anti-democratic positions. That makes them very dangerous as very influential people. In addition, the platforms come from countries that I am critical of because of their politics and political developments and their understanding of data protection. These platforms are all centralized platforms.

The problem with centralized platforms

These few large platforms have vast amounts of data and represent data monopolies. It is often not known exactly how personal data is used, stored or passed on. They also have control over users’ data and content. (No) rules and guidelines lead to censorship and content controls or the flooding of (right-wing) conspiracy myths and fake news and can become a gateway for disinformation campaigns.

On top of this, all platforms use algorithms to curate and display content. This contributes to ‘filter bubbles’ and can limit the diversity of opinions and information. At worst, people remain trapped in their existing beliefs.

The use of centralized platforms leads to a very strong dependency on one provider. One consequence of this is that people stay on platforms even though they (now) demonize them or switch providers. However, this does not change the problem of dependency if you switch from X to Threads and then to Bluesky.

The Fediverse can provide a counterbalance to centralization.

What is the Fediverse?

The Fediverse is a large number of decentralized social networks that are connected to each other via open protocols. This allows users to create, share and interact with content without having to rely on a central authority. Some well-known offshoots of this are Mastodon, Pixelfed and PeerTube. The ActivityPub has established itself in the Fediverse. If it is successfully integrated, it doesn’t matter which offshoot you use to consume content from other users who use other offshoots. Decentralization means that users control their own data and adapt the platforms to their own needs.

Why Sharkey

Sharkey is a bit of a better Mastodon. It’s also a microblogging platform based in the Fediverse, aimed at users who want to share short messages, thoughts and updates.

It is more powerful than Mastodon and yet more beginner-friendly than Mastodon due to the very nice onboarding process available. Sharkey offers multiple themes and it is easier to track topics through the Antenna feature. Further highlights can be found in the ReadMe of the project.