Before Twitter collapsed, a lot of my online identity was connected to my account on the service. A lot of my content was also trapped inside of silos that were controlled by corporations. I attempted in 2018 to reduce my dependency on things like Twitter and Instagram by using IFTTT to mirror content to things like Mastodon, Flickr, and Tumblr. After the collapse, I made Mastodon, Pixelfed, and this blog more central to my online identity. These services all use ActivityPub and services that federate with each other are the future of the social web.
That said, I still cross-post content from the fediverse to Flickr, Tumblr, and Linkedin. Both Flickr and Tumblr are reportedly considering adding federation. Until then, I figure that it helps those who are trapped in those ecosystems. I have also experimented with cross-posting from the blog to Bluesky but the API isn’t simple enough to make it feasible. It looks like Threads is adding federation in the next year or two. I hope that eventually, federation becomes a basic expectation.
If you find yourself seeking services that prioritize user control and data ownership but are unsure how to begin, feel free to share your thoughts or questions in the comments.