There seems to be another wave of people coming through to join the Fediverse, and it’s at this time that it’s traditional in the community to write a blog post filled with tips and hints and metaphors to help all the newbies understand what the hell is going on.

What the hell is going on?

In the days before the corporations took over the internet, there used to be feral groups of humans running free between the servers and the nodes. They would set up their own forums and bulletin boards, and then those would collapse, and more would return in their place.

The advertisers didn’t notice and the political troll bots hadn’t even thought of us.

Until, around 2007, Facebook opened it’s doors to more than just college students, and the corporate ownership of our digital spaces accelerated beyond all measure.

Over the next few years, Facebook and Twitter and Instagram and Snapchat and all the others, they borrowed billions of dollars from Venture Capitalists. They used those dollars to subsidize and advertise and convince people to abandon the micro-networks, and join their mega-network instead!

They didn’t really have a plan.

But when they had to pay back those billions of dollars, they came up with one: They would monitor and manipulate their users on behalf of their customers (the big corporations and advertisers) for profit and gain.

They started to manipulate what users see.

First there’s an advert here and there. Then there’s a ranking system. So that you only see the best posts if you’re in a rush!

Then there’s the adverts in the ranking system, then there’s a feed of drivel placed in front of your face where your friends used to be, then you’re reading screeds from nazi and conspiracy theorists shown to you to make you angry and keep you engaged.

In order to get money from those advertisers, they had to have a thing to sell. So they decided the thing they would sell is you. Your digital soul. Your interactions, and friends, and likes, and pokes, and dark rantings, they are all for sale. They are the product, which is to say that you are the product. You are the thing which they sell to their customers the advertisers.

Fediverse

Well, what if we said “fuck that” and went back to having our own servers?

Your mate could run a server for your church, or your brother can run one for the family. You can run one for yourself, or you can set one up to serve the local nightclub’s social scene or workers union.

Imagine those little micro-servers all talking to each other so you can read things from your church group and your snooker club and your fetish dungeon all in one network that wasn’t filled with adverts and manipulation and shadow banning and corporate whitewashing and spying and monitoring and banning and cancelling!

Wouldn’t that be great?

We could go back to people talking to each other, instead of asking that Meta-Creep Mark Zuckerberg to pass on our messages!

He said they would be just private between us, but it turns out he also copies in the highest advertising bidder, and doesn’t even bother to show your friends most of your messages in the end anyway.

If we did decide to do that, we could allow anyone to set up a server on a network of federated systems!

Those systems could all talk to each other, and even if you were into video or images or microblogging or weird religious cults or anything else you could just subscribe to each other’s feeds anywhere from anywhere.

That system might be called a federation, a whole universe of different compatible software systems and networks. A universe of federations. You might call it “The Fediverse”.

Newbies

The most recent wave of new people are Twitter users, mostly to Mastodon. They are fleeing because they find that when they use a centralized service owned by corporations and billionaires, that ownership can change due to circumstances upon which they have no say and no influence.

And then the moderation policy might change. Who knows? Who controls it?

This is because you were a user: not a community member, not an owner of your own networks. And so your owners can sell you to Elon Musk, it turns out.

You can’t even set up a new server of your own without losing all your contacts! They have you trapped! You are chattel.

Mastodon Tips

You are probably using a server which is running Mastodon.

Maybe you are using mastodon.social, but hopefully somewhere else\* because we don’t want everyone on the same server!

That would mean they would have the control to pipe adverts in our faces and cut us off by shadow-banning our friends again.

[\* - Not my server though. Unless you are a friend. I only host friends and friends of friends.

Picking an instance

Don’t worry about it. You are just picking a training instance, and should assume you will pick a better one later. You’ll be able to transfer your followers and following lists to any new place.

Maybe even start your own!

Join Mastodon Dot Org has some suggestions.

Pick one at random for first time. It doesn’t matter unless there’s a community you already know you want to be in.

Finding people to follow

Look at the federated timeline. It shows you posts from everyone that anyone on your local server follows. There will be all kinds of mad shit in there. If something interests you, look at their personal timeline. Follow them. Maybe look at who they follow and follow them too.

Follow liberally, you can always un-follow later, or promote people into lists that you pay more attention to.

Lists

In “Settings” there is an advanced interface, where you can add as many columns of lists as you like. Add people to groups. Sort them by how much you care what they say. There is no algorithm to do that for you on behalf of advertisers. If you want only the good shit, make a “good shit” list!

Instances

The different servers running the same software are called “instances”. So “mastodon.social” is one instance of Mastodon, but so is “dobbs.town” or “boing.world”

Because the network is federated, and so not owned by Zuckerberg or Musk or Besos or any of those other terrible monopolists, you may see a post in your timeline which has replies which your server has not seen.

Maybe your server blocks them? Maybe it’s just that the people talking on that thread aren’t followed by anyone on your server.

But you can always see the full discussion, by vising the server on which the post was made. Even your own server admins and blocks can’t stop you doing that!

If you middle-click (or long-press / open in new window) the displayed date of a post your browser will open the discussion on the server of the person who started it. You can be pretty sure all replies go to them! Even if they never made it to your server.

Private Messages

There are no private messages on Mastodon or the Fediverse.

Some messages may be more advertised than others, but all messages may be read by your server’s admins at least. Even if it’s posted to only your own server’s local timeline, it can still be viewed by anyone outside that server who looks at your servers local timeline.

If you want to message privately, use a private messaging service not a public federated broadcast system.

This is not a network for sending secret messages. Don’t try to use it like it is one.

Activity Pub

The system of rules which allows one server in the fediverse to talk to another server in the Fediverse is called “activity pub”.

You won’t need to know that really, but that’s what it’s called. It’s the language computers use to talk to each other when letting each other know about thing like “Someone posted a message” or “Someone liked your post.”

You mean nobody owns this place, it’s like an anarchy?

That is indeed what we mean.

That means people will do things you don’t like, and say things you don’t like, and be things you don’t like.

Be nice to them anyway.

You do have a block button.

You can block people, or whole servers full of people.

You may even be able to get your server admin to ban a whole server full of people for all the other people on your server too. That’s pretty extreme though. Why do you care what they read?

I want to stay on corporate owned networks because they protect me

Or maybe you think they have your best interests at heart, or they’re easier, or they have a better network-effect?

They are glad you feel that way, please continue to use the corporate networks and stay in the panopticon for as long as you are happy for them to be staring at you. Constantly. All the time. Not only every post you make but also every click you take, every like you liked, every pause you made, every typo you typed, they’ll be watching you.

Stay there as long as you like.

I don’t care what happens in those networks now.

We’ll be here on the free networks outside the panopticon when you get as fed up as we did.