What Major Social Media Platforms Would You Like To See Federated Alternatives To That Don't Exist Yet?

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.

Kierunkowy74,
Kierunkowy74 avatar

There is already a Meetup alternative - Mobilizon

z3rOR0ne,
@z3rOR0ne@lemmy.ml avatar

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

Kierunkowy74,
Kierunkowy74 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,
@z3rOR0ne@lemmy.ml avatar

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

nicetriangle,
nicetriangle 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 avatar

lol same

danhakimi,
danhakimi avatar

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?

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?

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.

Resol,
@Resol@lemmy.world avatar

Flickr

Because Instagram sucks, and Pixelfed isn’t really that amazing of a social media service despite having some great photography to gawk at.

I’d also like an alternative to Vimeo since not that many design agencies post their cool stuff on YouTube or even PeerTube (and I’m basically addicted to television branding).

wall_inhabiter,

I can’t get browsing by hashtags to work on pixelfed itself. Only shows like 3 results.

Resol,
@Resol@lemmy.world avatar

I hope it can get better sooner than later

BonesOfTheMoon,

I’d LOVE to see a fediverse and updated version of Livejournal. Private blogging is an insanely good way to make lifelong friends.

Clbull,

Can I choose ‘none’ as an answer?

Aside from being a difficult concept for non-tech people to grasp, the problem with the fediverse is that it’s an absolute nightmare to moderate. Nothing is stopping bad actors from creating their own instance and flooding others with illegal content. Lemmy World and Lemmy.ml have already had incidents where communities have been targeted and flooded with CSAM.

Social media platforms that I do have problems with can’t see a good fediverse alternative for these reasons, plus a few others.

YouTube as one such example: the problem is that video hosting costs a lot of money.

snownyte,
snownyte avatar

I actually don't want to see a federated TikTok anymore than I don't want to see TikTok period.

SSJ2Marx,
@SSJ2Marx@hexbear.net avatar

I’m not sure if you would classify this as a “social media platform”, but imagine a federated MMO. Each server could specify its own rules for things like XP and drops, allow or disallow mods among its playerbase, or even have custom items and quests - but in certain areas (ie “in town”) all of this stuff would be disabled so that players from multiple different servers could all interact. You could choose a server based on whether you like a high pop or a low pop experience, temporarily try other servers out by partying up with someone from it, major guilds could run their own servers with their own events and stuff, and so on. Admins would want to defederate from poorly-moderated servers, servers with cheaters or with mods/rules that they think disrupt the experience they’re after, or whatever other reason.

A_Chilean_Cyborg,
@A_Chilean_Cyborg@feddit.cl avatar

A yt alternative that worked for content creators to be able to live off it.

How? I’m not sure.

interdimensionalmeme,

Fediverse patreon, seems reasonnable, but they’d have to swallow using monero

moon,

PHP styled forums and Boorus would be cool. I know some PHP forums have recently added activitypub support, but it’s still pretty recent and doesn’t have much of a userbase.

Also a video platform like YouTube in a way. There’s still a lot of issues to solve with that though, like storage and monetization. PeerTube just isn’t going to cut it. Realistically if this were to ever happen, it’d have to be YouTube themselves to add activitypub support themselves and let people connect to them.

frippa,
@frippa@lemmy.ml avatar

Some kind of marketplace like eBay.

Having bought and sold there the rules are quite arbitrary, and their cryptic algorhitm is a nuisance to buyers (you clicked by accident on a stove? You’re gonna see a ton of stoves in the recommended for a while!) and periodically harms sellers (if you don’t post daily and basically make it your day job, good luck making money!)

a federated alternative, with different instances for various interests and categories, meta-categories even and so on. Maybe regional instances like we have on here, one for the EU (quite convenient to ship and receive packages from inside of it, no customs wasting time and money) one for North America, one for East Asia, etc. With one being able to purchase from all of them.

Federation would also ensure that rules are properly enforced without abuses or other malpractices like eBay does (did you know eBay shipped a pig head to somebody who publicly criticized them?) since those instances would naturally be avoided and new ones would be made. It would also prevent excessive fees, as the fediverse is generally not a for-profit endeavor, and still, there will always be the option to shop around from other instances.

snownyte,
snownyte avatar

Love it.

EBay just overcomplicates things. You're there as a seller, selling things, make money from buyers who're interested. Simple concept, how'd they fuck it up so bad over the years?

candle_lighter,
@candle_lighter@lemmy.ml avatar

VRChat

ashinadash,
@ashinadash@hexbear.net avatar

None, just bring back forums ffs kitty-cri

4grams,
@4grams@awful.systems avatar

some still exist. with social media dying, I’ve been frequenting my old haunts more and more. do you have stairs in your house by any chance?

UNWILLING_PARTICIPANT, (edited )

I’m on two. You can literally spin one up for probably $30/mo if memory serves (for a fancy Discourse server on Digital Ocean), then just invite people.

E: actually price looks to be between $5 and $12 dollars depending on your needs, and how much work you’re willing to put in

chobeat,

No more “alternatives” please. That formula has failed over and over again. We want software that can do what proprietary platforms do not pursue because it’s not profitable. Online spaces to build meaningful connections, have interesting conversations with like-minded people, discover new things, be free from trolls and toxicity, possibly without the guilt of polluting the hell out of this planet with hardware and excessive electricity consumption.

CanadaPlus, (edited )

Example? I’m skeptical there’s anything that both appeals to a reasonably large audience and isn’t monetisable. I’m very skeptical you can do it with less toxicity and computation somehow.

Edit: I suppose dating sites might count. They’re very much not optimised for actually finding good partners at this point, because gamified swipe dating keeps people hooked. Computation and toxicity are still pretty intractable.

chobeat, (edited )

to a reasonably large audience

That’s a measure of success that makes sense only in a for-profit, growth-oriented environment. Software just has to be sustainable and “bigger” doesn’t necessarily imply "more sustainable.

That said, what is now possible with social media is extremely restricted and our idea of what a social media is is constrained by profit motives. Social media could be much more, connect humans for collaboration and exchange instead of data extraction. We are so used to the little crumbs of positive experiences on social media that we normalized it.

Bonfire, for example, if we want to stick to the fediverse, is trying to challenge this narrative and push the boundaries of what a social media is supposed to do.

Another space would be non-siloed notion-like tools.

Anothe entire can of worms would be to go beyond the “dictatorship of the app” and start building software and UX around flexibility and customizability for the average user, rather than keeping this a privilege for tools targeting power users. Flexibility in UX means harder trackability and less CTR, so most end-user “apps” avoid that.

CanadaPlus, (edited )

Okay, sure, you could make an ultra-niche Fediverse app that has integration with a digital toothbrush or something, I’ll give you that. If three people can productively use it I’m not sure that counts as a form of social media, though. I’d use a descriptor more like “add-on service”. The “social” part means you need a certain number of bodies involved.

What’s the deal with Bonfire? As far as I can tell it’s microblogging with an emphasis on customisability.

Open source endpoints are great. I’m a big fan.

Edit: Oh hey! They have a blog post about that. So basically, it’s another framework on top of ActivityPub. I like the sound of that. From their GitHub they currently integrate microblogging and some weird thing that I can only describe as socially distributed accounting.

chobeat,

they are also doing a whole flavor just for research-oriented social media, geared towards the OpenScience community and the academia in general. It will launch soon.

Then they have a whole set of collaboration tools and groupware, that now kinda incorporates the basic features of Trello and GitHub, but on top of a social media with granular permission systems. There the use cases are many more, but it’s also much more general-purpose than the research flavor. I think the end-game would be to have a platform that acts as a middleware and connect social life, gift-based collaboration, work and consumption in a single open platforms.

I also wrote an article envisioning a federated notion-like tool built on top of Bonfire, that clearly would allow to structure knowledge and implement no-code software on top of Bonfire, but clearly this would require a disproportionate effort for what the project is at the moment: …notion.site/Fractal-Software-for-Fractal-Futures…

CanadaPlus,

That’s actually really neat! I’m going to have to play around with Notion so I can tell what you’re talking about.

saywhatisabigw,

A dating website! Okcupid, POF, hinge, bumble, etc. All no longer even try to match people. Just pay for nothing.

redempt,

that’s a great idea!

CanadaPlus,

This is the answer I was looking for. Dating sites hardly exist at this point; they’ve all been converted to human swipe slot machines.

mindbleach,

Boorus ought to be halfway there. They’re content-centric and high-bandwidth, they tend to have a theme, and they live or die by worthwhile tagging. But they’re not a feed, the way most federated platforms have been. They are not social media in any sense. They’re image hosts, minus any the incentive to create attention-sucking antipatterns.

Maybe with a more unified user experience - and ideally some P2P elements to make hosting cheaper and sturdier - we could fucking finally have a place that just hosts drawings. We’re a quarter of the way into the twenty-first century and it is absurd that every gallery site has some arbitrary limits on what content is too weird.

Tumblr used to be the exception, until Apple destroyed them. Bastards.

ICastFist,
@ICastFist@programming.dev avatar

I thought it was Yahoo that destroyed Tumblr, back when they bought it and banned porn

mindbleach,

Five years apart.

kristina,

federated linkedin would be baller and would take so much pain out of the job application process, and i never even thought of that before. yeah, of course its still ran by filthy capitalists, but it would save a ton of time for job applications

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