What Major Social Media Platforms Would You Like To See Federated Alternatives To That Don't Exist Yet? ( lemmy.ml )

Pretty much in the title. Maybe you wouldn't even use it, but would like to simply see it exist for the sake of having a federated alternative.

For me, it'd be the following:

  • LinkedIn
  • Meetup
  • Tiktok

I am on the first two, but would prefer a federated alternative. I'm not on Tiktok, but would like to see a federated alternative.

I'll admit these might not be a good idea. But as a thought experiment, I'd be curious about the community weigh in on what you all think this might look like.

LazaroFilm ,
@LazaroFilm@lemmy.world avatar

A video platform would be great. Like TikTok, or stories from Facebook, Insta or YT.

PureTryOut ,
@PureTryOut@lemmy.kde.social avatar

YouTube already has that, it's called PeerTube.

LazaroFilm ,
@LazaroFilm@lemmy.world avatar

PeerTube has standard videos, but not the Stories part if I’m lot mistaken.

aniki ,

Good thing shorts and stories are dumb

PureTryOut ,
@PureTryOut@lemmy.kde.social avatar

That's why I said YouTube, not the other stuff.

Then again, nothing is preventing you from uploading shirt videos to PeerTube as well.

Dirk ,
@Dirk@lemmy.ml avatar

Tiktok

The problem with video content (even short videos) is, that it generates an absurd amount of traffic and needs lots and lots of local data storage. This is also why there are so few PeerTube instances.

PeerTube would be a way to publish your short clips, too. Not as specialized as TikTok, but still ...

Plopp ,

Yeah the data is an issue for sure. I wonder if torrents of some kind would help making it more doable, where viewers (on computers, not phones) build up a cache from which they also seed. Like Spotify did when they started out.

taladar ,

I think you are looking for something like ipfs.

ShellMonkey ,
@ShellMonkey@lemmy.socdojo.com avatar

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZeroNet

Something similar to this might help disburse the load required for peertube. What sites you read you host in return, very much like with bit torrent with a presentation layer tacked on top.

SubArcticTundra ,
@SubArcticTundra@lemmy.ml avatar

I think the cache would also have to partially be on phones. If users are to 'pay' for using the network by caching/redistributing part of it, since most people access the web from phones

nilloc ,

Yeah viewing devices would all have to share hosting duties. I’m sure it could work, and popular/viral videos would serve well as the demand would be spread across the most devices as well.

There would still have to be dedicated seed servers for long tail content though I imagine.

jeremias ,
@jeremias@social.jears.at avatar

Also tiktok really only makes sense with a big algorithm knowing what users want to see. Even if you were to follow many people, with the average video being only about 30 seconds long you won't have much content to enjoy.
The whole short form video thing is kinda built on knowing what your user likes and doesn't. I don't know how you could design such a platform without some privacy concerns.

sxan , (edited )
@sxan@midwest.social avatar

I don't know how you could design such a platform without some privacy concerns.

Yes, yes you could.

Companies like Google have successfully brainwashed us into believing that algorithms like this can only work on their server farms. The only reason those werver farms are necessary is becauwe they're processing data for millions of people.

We forget that in each of our hands we hold a device that is 5,000 x more powerful than a 1985 CRAY-2, at the time the world's fastest supercomputer. And let's not forget our home desktops and laptops, which are several times more powerful that that.

We each have devices with persistent internet connections that could be at work scanning, categorizing, and filtering personalized content for each of us, without giving any privacy away. It's only because we've been conditioned to be dependent on having our data centrally processed that we believe that's the only way.

Note, it is more efficient to process content centrally, where the data is stored. However, generalized categorization and content tagging with robust metadata and standardized APIs would address the efficiency. Given companies are unlikely to do this and scupper their own surveillance revenue, the next best thing is local, privacy-respecting, smart content filtering assistants.

1984 ,
@1984@lemmy.today avatar

Are you Richard from Silicon Valley TV show? :)

Zak ,
@Zak@lemmy.world avatar

Those sound like good ideas in theory, but your phone's battery would last about 2 hours if you did this.

The heavy lifting, like tagging the content of millions of videos probably needs to be done somewhere other than the end-user's mobile device. Some sorting and filtering of text-based metadata on the user's device to pick what videos to see next is viable though.

sxan ,
@sxan@midwest.social avatar

True, although it would probably not be so bad for the textual content. CPU load for indexing would be relatively low, and the average phone is dumping tons of data over the network to Google, Apple, and whomever else for these same end-result "benefits" already.

But, regardless, ideally, -ou don't do it on your phone. You pay $10/m for a VPS that does it, and delivers it to your phone via push notification + fetch -- same way it's done now, but without the middle man.

It's not a solution available to the average Joanne, although it'd be easy enough to achieve. The problem is that there's no incentive for anyone to make these appliances: most people don't understand what they're sacrificing, or don't care. And while it's a relatively small amount of work, it's a large effort for a few OSS devs to take on, and it'd require at least some support infrastructure, apps, and so on to be truly turn-key for The Public. And so, instead, we have TikTok.

UNWILLING_PARTICIPANT ,

I'm fine with requiring users to tag their own content if they want it to be discoverable. Like if you want to tell people "hey I'm talking about pixel art over here!" just add to your thing.

If you don't want to shout it loud for all to hear that's fine too. Not everything needs to be indexed, cached, and highly available to all who might potentially, possibly want to see it.

UNWILLING_PARTICIPANT ,

Algorithm doesn't have to be a secret engagement sauce. It can just be based on an editable list of the user's preferred tags and keywords with associated weights.

No need to get more complicated than that because you're not trying to juice their "engagement" since their are no ads to show them.

Although I'm not even sure if infinite shorts make sense without a company pulling the strings for their own motive. But maybe it's just not my thing

eek2121 ,

There are hosting providers that offer unmetered bandwidth.

Sure, setup complexity is higher, but it is definitely doable.

I have thought about such a project as I also have access to relatively inexpensive 20gbps fiber, but lack the funding currently to do it.

Maybe one day…

DrQuint ,

This is why I expect the video side of things to be more on the level of stream channels that self-host content with subscriptions for access to VoDs, rather than singular big platforms. Streaming in of itself is a lot of traffic too, but you have much bigger RoI per bandwidth spent with live viewers, and you cut down the storage requirements with limited VoD access too.

The only problem then becomes discovering these channels from the rest of the federated space, but honestly, either that will be a problem that will be solved by the space in a more general manner (oooh, imagine the return of web rings! Lol) or... It will end up being an issue that doesn't matter. Like right now, still coming from video games, MinnMax and Second Wind are two creator-owned platforms that appear to be relatively unpopular, with short amount of thousands of views, except they run off of donations on Patreons and the viewers they do have keep them afloat with a good decent margin.

Witchfire ,
@Witchfire@lemmy.world avatar

Same with Instagram. I'm a performer and rely on it for outreach and promotion but absolutely HATE the platform to no end. And this is a common sentiment among all performers. It is a garbage platform that comforts Nazis and pedophiles but bans the hashtag and puts your account in jail for using it.

Unfortunately, PixelFed has almost no one on it and reaching a local audience is impossible, so there's no point in switching. We have to go where the people are :(

RAM ,

Letterboxed - an app like bookwyrm, but for movies. I've seen other people talk about it and I think some people are working on it, but AFAIK nothing is up atm

Dasnap ,
@Dasnap@lemmy.world avatar

Trakt would be good also and it covers film and TV.

nasi_goreng ,
@nasi_goreng@lemmy.zip avatar

LibRate is WIP fediverse alternative for that.

It plans to supports film, books, games, and more. Basically one stop for every tracker.

smileyhead , (edited )

Disqus. Would be great to add federated comments to any news, blog or static site.

Zak ,
@Zak@lemmy.world avatar

There's already a way to do this using Mastodon and a bit of Javascript. I use that on my flashlight review website and also link the comments to !flashlight.

It's not as slick a UX as Disqus of course, and it would be cool if somebody made that.

smileyhead ,

It's hacky and not something a professional site would use. Cannot moderate comments for example.

Zak ,
@Zak@lemmy.world avatar

I certainly can moderate comments; I am the admin of the Mastodon server in question.

What wouldn't work so well is to host comments on someone else's Mastodon server, so it's not a good fit for a low-tech/low-overhead site. There's definitely a space for something with a lower barrier to entry, but I don't think it fits well with the nonprofit, community-oriented approach to servers running most of the fediverse. Those users would be best served by a commercial subscription service.

Omega_Haxors ,

I remember last time I seen something like this it ended up just being full of nazis jerking each other off. Granted it was a pretty neoliberal app so that might have had a lot to do with it, but still, giving every website a news comment section isn't really that great of an idea in retrospect.

match ,
@match@pawb.social avatar

I don't feel like Twitch / livestreaming is well-supported yet (OwnCast is sort of a different approach to it)

edit: TikTok also is a livestreaming platform

N0x0n ,

I saw something similar to twitch working in the blockchain architecture. It seems like a cool project where bandwidth is shared among users. But the crypto-scheme leaves a kinda strange feeling about it.

half_fry_doctor ,

Tiktok
Youtube (there is peertube but it's not as popular as YouTube)

rufus , (edited )

Well, I'd for one like to see something new. Not just another clone of an existing platform, since I don't really love any of the social media platforms. I'd like something that simultaneously connects me with friends and people all around the world. With communities like here, just more focused on positive and constructive engagement regarding different topics. Less picking on the news and less just replying if there's something wrong with what somebody said. I'd like to explore some means of democratic engagement. For example electing moderators. Maybe vote on rules instead of transferring power just by choosing instances wisely. And I'd like to do away with the current way of upvoting. It sometimes encourages herd mentality instead of good answers. I'd also like to incorporate blogging longer and well reasoned texts, microblogging and sharing pictures. Both silly memes but also vacation pictures with my friends. I think the concept of friend circles is good, You could choose who gets to see what aspect from your life. And I want different pseudonyms so not everyone knows all the stuff I'm into.
And something that's entirely missing is selling used stuff in the neighborhood. Something like NextDoor/Craigslist/Facebook marketplace... You could also combine that with local news and connecting the neighborhood, not just discuss world politics all the time.

I think there is much potential for an enticing platform if we think big and use the concept of federation to our advantage, apply it to use-cases and concepts that haven't yet been explored by the big commercial platforms. We have to do away with the urge of re-creating something to make it possible. And it'd be hard to come up with good concepts to foster good behaviour and solve the technical aspects. But at the same time it'd allow us break free from the constraints of what's already there and just be a smaller alternative to XY. The way it currently often is: We let the major players come up with the new ideas. They have different motivations, mainly growing and making money. We re-create what they came up with and add a bit to it, but the concept stays the same. I think we can do more. But it is difficult. There have been crazy ideas, really new distributed platforms being implemented, lots of it with some crypto tech and in the end it didn't take off or wasn't aligned with what the users want and need or are comfortable with. Or people tried combining every feature into one platform (like I just proposed,) and it fails due to complexity.

Mango ,

I've had this idea where instead of a moderator having dominion over a community, their removals only work for people subscribed to that moderator specifically. We can make moderator actions work the way block lists do in ublock origin!

Of course admin action would still be necessary for curbing high volume spammers and illegal stuff.

I'd just like to see how things are when the conversation isn't one way ruled by moderators who want their own ideals to seem like the norm. I'm not interested in tone policing and the like.

rufus , (edited )

We seem to share similar ideas. I think we don't necessarily have to be constrained by how stuff works in the real world. There, it is impossible to listen to everyone, you need to transfer power to a small amount of representatives. And one or few people at the top or it gets messy and nothing gets done. Also you need to come up with a single solution that applies to everyone.

I don't think it has to be that way in the realm of online services. Technically, we can ask an arbitrary number of people for their opinion. Vote with less effort since networks are fast, databases quite capable and everything interconnected anyways. Have people just represent themselves or just 5 family members or transfer their democratic power to whomever they deem appropriate. It doesn't even have to be a vote by majority. There are better weighted voting systems out there that are just impossible to implement in real-world countries. It doesn't have to be one solution for everything, it could individually apply to communities of the platform or work differently for different topics. And big platforms already provide different content and algorithms for their individual users. We could also just everyone be provided with a unique perspective on the same data. Someone can be faced with something while another person has it buried at the bottom or not displayed at all. And we'd just choose things for ourselves, not vote on how other people are treated at all. (I mean that somehow emerges on it's own... Once everyone chooses to not listen to trolls and annoying people, they'd just lose their audience and become meaningless.)

I see many technical challenges and negative consequences. We'd need to keep the crypto and blockchain people away from it. Everything I've seen that uses blockchain technology to achieve this has failed in the meantime. And was mainly intended to make money by some means. But things like ActivityPub are also not made for this. I'd really like to do away with the current voting mechanisms. I'd rather say I trust what this person says and my interests align with those people and this would replace global up- and downvoting. It's certainly possible from a technical viewpoint. But would it really encourage good behaviour and foster a nice place? People sometimes like to engage especially with the things they oppose and comment on them. It would also be a massive filter-bubble. Algorithms confine people into small and similar-minded bubbles, not a diverse and realistic and stimulating world. I think it's really difficult to find a delicate balance here, design choices that automatically push towards good behaviour and interesting engagement per default.

I completely agree on the admin stuff. Someone has to provide the computing power and take responsibility for what's stored on their servers. And sometimes mistakes happen, things turn out bad or break. There are malicious people out there. Someone needs to have the power to fix things. I think that's perfectly possible. Lots of platforms have succeded at that, there are people available, perfectly able to handle that responsibility. And ultimately, the whole internet is quite resilient and was designed with the idea of being a level playing-field and connect things and people.

Mango ,

I've actually put a lot of thought into how this would be implemented, and you're right about the technical challenges this would impose. There's gonna be like a dozen different ways the data can be sorted and that would be up to user preference. It would have to be single host rather than federated unfortunately, but that doesn't necessarily mean evil. PM me if you wanna hear about it.

Hjalamanger ,
@Hjalamanger@feddit.nu avatar

commune is a semi unique fedderated social media

z3rOR0ne OP ,
@z3rOR0ne@lemmy.ml avatar

Love the illustration on their home page. Looks like a very new project.

rufus ,

Nice. Looks a bit like Revolt, Rocketchat, other standard Matrix clients, maybe even inspired by Discord or whatever people use. I'm curious to find out how they applied the Matrix protocol to power this.

N0x0n ,

Looks very neat! Thanks for the link, Something to keep an eye on !

Kierunkowy74 ,
@Kierunkowy74@kbin.social avatar

Friendica provides blogging, microblogging, pictures, friend circles (but they work only for Friendica users), and multiple identities managed by single login.

And there is a fediverse marketplace software - Flohmarkt - instances

rufus ,

AWESOME! Thanks for linking the Flohmarkt project. I've been looking for something like this for quite some time and all I found was abandoned projects, and things that didn't make it. I'm going to have a closer look at it and install an instance if it proves to be what I was looking for.

KeenFlame ,

Like, one of those sites where you rate the hotness

taladar ,

I would like to see something that is less focussed on social media and more on building something together like Wikipedia. One thing that comes to mind would be mapping out all political statements along with arguments and evidence to support or falsify them and the relationships between them (e.g. "if you believe x is a big problem in society and you believe y is the perfect form of government then you must believe y solves x").

A lot of our political discussions seem quite repetitive and go in circles because each argument is presented in a very shallow way. Something to counteract that would be welcome and I think it could work quite well in a federated way since people with different political views would probably want to contribute the supporting and that falsifying sides for each statement.

Harold_Penisman ,
@Harold_Penisman@lemmy.world avatar

I like this idea

SubArcticTundra ,
@SubArcticTundra@lemmy.ml avatar

You might like a website called Kialo. It's a tool for structured public debates

Wappen ,

Thank you, that's a great platform I did not think existed.

deweydecibel , (edited )

That would go to shit immediately. The sheer level of moderation that would be required to prevent that from being abused and corrupted would be insane, and then that kind of moderation would in turn invalidate the whole project because the moderation itself would have its own biases.

But it especially wouldn't work in a federated space. Are you suggesting that people can just open their own instance of that? If there are multiple different instances for this kind of thing, that's even more abusable.

Part of the reason Wikipedia works is it is centralized, relatively neutral, and you need sources on facts. It's run by people that adhere to a strict standard, and everyone that contributes is required to adhere to that exact same standard.

What would be the scholarly criteria for the sort of thing that you're talking about? What is the standard? And how do you enforce that standard in a federated space?

Because if it's anything like how federation works around Lemmy, there can be no standard. Instances are going to do whatever they like based on the biases of each admin, which undermines the entire concept.

SubArcticTundra ,
@SubArcticTundra@lemmy.ml avatar

You might like a website called Kialo. It's a tool for structured public debates

shutz ,

You're trying to apply objectivity to a very subjective area. I'm not saying it's impossible, and you should by all means try it, but maybe it would be a good idea to try something that has a better chance, first, such as this:

How about an open platform for scientific review and tracking? Like, whenever a new discovery or advance is announced, that site would cut through the hype, report on peer review, feasibility, flaws in methodology, the ways in which it's practical and impractical, how close we are to actual usage (state of clinical trials, demonstrated practical applications, etc.)

And it would keep being updated, somewhat like Wikipedia, as more research occurs. It needs a more robust system of review to avoid the problems that Wikipedia has, and I don't have the solution for that, but I believe there's got to be a way to do it that's resistant to manipulation.

howrar ,

Basically a living survey paper. Examine.com does a very good job of this for a very small set of the scientific literature. The problem is that it takes a lot of work to do, few people are qualified to do it, and out of those few, even fewer will have the time to make such contributions.

jherazob ,

This is by no means a vital service, but Imgur. Not the image hosting part itself, although the multiple self-hosted alternatives available are mostly aimed at photographs and surprisingly very few if any to memes and reactions for chats, forums and social media. On the other hand, the particular use case of sharing memes and meme dumps is not being fulfilled by anything else at the moment. Go to Imgur even on it's current sorry decayed state and at any time you'll find multiple people sharing image galleries, usually of up to 50 memes at a time, sometimes more. Lemmy, Mastodon and Discord servers try to fill that gap but right now they can't.

Timwi ,
@Timwi@kbin.social avatar

Ranker.

nitefox ,
@nitefox@sh.itjust.works avatar

Wattpad, tho it’s not a social media

maegul ,
@maegul@lemmy.ml avatar

“Tiny knowledge projects”: https://observablehq.com/@jsomers/we-need-more-tiny-knowledge-projects-heres-one

Something like a decentralised dynamic web page like the one linked would be cool. But generally, stuff that’s more like “web gardens” where people can build “places” rather than feeds. Wikis being the best known successful example but still somewhat simple (in a good way).

Kierunkowy74 ,
@Kierunkowy74@kbin.social avatar

There is already a Meetup alternative - Mobilizon

z3rOR0ne OP ,
@z3rOR0ne@lemmy.ml avatar

Thank you so much. Have you used it? Care to expand on uour experience with it?

Kierunkowy74 ,
@Kierunkowy74@kbin.social avatar

You probably want to use a regional instance to have more relevant users, groups and events, but there is a global search engine for Mobilizon

For example, I am using a Polish instance, with an unsuprising domain https://mobilizon.pl

With an account, you are able to publish events, with header image, title, category, tags, date, place, description (with formatting available), and metadata. The event can be accesible publicly, or only via link.
The event (if public) can federate (and be boosted to e.g. Mastodon) and be commented, but you are able to turn off the comments.

Individual account can only be followed from Friendica, but not from Mastodon.

For more features you want to create a group. A group can be followed from Friendica and Mastodon, but only Mobilizon accounts can become its members. Group members are able to participate in discussions (not visible from outside), manage a "common resource folder" - links, make group events and group announcements

You can experiment with Mobilizon features with a demo instance

z3rOR0ne OP ,
@z3rOR0ne@lemmy.ml avatar

Thank you for your insights. I'll be investigating this further!

nicetriangle ,
@nicetriangle@kbin.social avatar

Lol my regional instance has some interesting upcoming events...

https://i.imgur.com/71tZ7fL.png

Omega_Haxors ,

That is the most wholesome cringe I have ever seen and I hope the person who posted it finds their dommy mommy.

nicetriangle ,
@nicetriangle@kbin.social avatar

lol same

danhakimi ,

oh man, that's not pretty enough to start using as an alternative to, like, partiful (oh, yeah, I totally want to give my phone number to some random fucking website to go to a party) or wedding registry sites... but those don't really need to be federated, huh?

Omega_Haxors , (edited )

Fuck yeah, thank you. I went to check up meetup and it was like 90% liberal "how to be your own boss" "how to pay taxes on cypto" shit. I clicked on one that looked kinda neutral and the first thing I saw was the speaker bragging about being on, I kid you not, capitalism .com. Can't even make this shit up. Also as a nice little bonus they had a tab just for conservatism but nothing even related to socialism. Fuck that place.

EDIT: I checked it out and it seems primarily focused on French language and severely underpopulated by English stuff. I'll have to check it out again in about a year and see if it's going to be another mastodon situation because there just isn't enough on offer at the moment.

EDIT2: And I tried to make an account but it said my email was already in use. I emailed the instance admins to let them know.

makeasnek ,
@makeasnek@lemmy.ml avatar

Thanks for the link! Checking this out now

makeasnek ,
@makeasnek@lemmy.ml avatar

I looked in their FAQ but couldn't find an answer. It looks like they support ticketing for events. I assume users can claim tickets. Is there a payment method built in as well, if so, what is it?

VinesNFluff ,
@VinesNFluff@pawb.social avatar

Tumblr

DeviantArt

Furaffinity

Archive Of Our Own

Keep the fediverse weird and invite more theater kids. They pair surprisingly well with the tech dorks that make up the majority of the current fedi population.

Caesium ,

what do you think a defederated ao3 would look like? not trying to sound condescending here or anything just actually curious

VinesNFluff ,
@VinesNFluff@pawb.social avatar

No different from the regular thing except:

  • Different fandoms would congregate in different home instances -- Which is ultimately just an aesthetic difference but still.
  • It'd be a lot more resilient due to decentralisation. I'm old enough to remember when the entire concept of fanfiction was something considered litigious and anyone who wrote it felt they were skirting on the edge of the law. People forget how easy it is for those times to come back. All it'd take is 1(one) corporately-backed author making a stink about it. Decentralization would make it harder to curb.
Caesium ,

oooh point 2 makes a lot of sense. I do tend to forget how fragile the current internet ecosystem is thanks to corporations

Devdogg ,

I'm an older theater kid!! And I do pair well with this site!!!

VinesNFluff ,
@VinesNFluff@pawb.social avatar

Same, actually.

Omega_Haxors , (edited )

Doubled on FA. Great repository for artwork but their moderation is just terrible. If you're in the 3rd world you can get banned permanently with no warning for a single mistake, yet there's known groomers on there who the admins routinely protect no matter how many times they fuck up. And the alternatives aren't any better, with most of them dying on the hill of allowing loli shit and AI art so that's all that ever gets posted.

EDIT: and after they moved their forums to discord the entire website became radioactive causing tons of people, including myself, to leave.

VinesNFluff ,
@VinesNFluff@pawb.social avatar

I didn't know about the third world thing. Gee.

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