Decentralized Social Media Part I
If you are reading this on Steemit you obviously know about, or at least know of Steemit. But I am not going to assume that you, my dear reader, do in fact have a Steemit account or are aware of the plethora of different decentralized social media options out there. Most people assume when they hear about social media that their options are limited to the big names like Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, and other such services. But that is far from the case. There have been several social media platforms created with privacy and security in mind and many of these are not only open source but built using a decentralized structure, at least as much as is posible with the internet's current server based architecture.
Steemit
I am not going to go into the details of how Steemit works. You can read more in depth articles here and here but here's the short version. Steemit pays you to post and currate content on it's network. Data is stored on a distributed blockchain and users are paid in cryptocurrency. You can then trade that cryptocurrency, Steem, for other more lucrative cryptocurrencies like bitcoin. There are no ads on Steem and little to no censorship. Whether content stays or is promoted on the network is based on it's value to the network and said value is determined democratically by users either upvoting posts or "flagging" them. Essentially "thumbs up" or "thumbs down." Think survivor for your social media posts.
| Features | Does it have it? |
|---|---|
| Blockchain | Yes |
| Cryptocurrency Use | Yes |
| Markdown | Yes |
| Open Source | Yes |
| Can I run it on my own server? | No |
| Uses Hashtags | Yes |
| Heavily dependent on Google | Yes |
| Hosts Images | No |
| Aggregate Posts to other Social Media | No |
| Export Data | No |
| Import Data | No |
| Customizable interface | No |
Diaspora
https://www.diasporafoundation.org/
https://podupti.me/
Originally crowdfunded and founded back in 2010 Diaspora has been around for quite awhile now and has developed and grown significantly in that time. What started as a rough Alpha has matured into a full grown social network with a thriving community. Built upon the principles of decentralization, freedom and privacy Diaspora is designed to be open source with it's software available to anyone for download so that anyone can download it and turn their own server into a Diaspora "pod" and part of the distributed social network. Each pod is independent with it's own users, data and addons. But the network is designed that each users from different pods can communicate with each other, much like members of different neighbourhoods in a city can communicate. This means there is no censorship and very little advertising on Diaspora, because of course if you are censored or swamped with ads you can always pack up and move to another pod or host your own. Of all the social media options this is the most "Facebook" like one to choose from. It's also interesting to note how as Diaspora developed and became more popular Facebook started copying their features....
| Features | Does it have it? |
|---|---|
| Blockchain | No |
| Cryptocurrency Use | No |
| Markdown | Yes |
| Open Source | Yes |
| Can I run it on my own server? | Yes |
| Uses Hashtags | Yes |
| Heavily dependent on Google | No (for the most part) |
| Hosts Images | Yes |
| Aggregate Posts to other Social Media | Yes |
| Export Data | Yes |
| Import Data | No |
| Customizable interface | No |
Libertree
http://libertree.org/
https://maple.libertree.org/
As Diaspora's development continued various podmins (pod admins) became more specialized in how they ran their specific Diaspora pods. One of these was named Pistos, who ran the now retired diasp0ra.ca pod. He pushed the envelope and added many new features like having chat integration and he made a point not to use Google analytics for the searches on his pod. But as his pod became more and more unique it diverged more and more from the mainstream Diaspora development. Eventually this called for a fork, and at last the pod was no longer viable. That's when Pistos decided to abandon Diaspora and create his own decentralized social network: Libertree. Libertree like Diaspora is based on freedom, privacy and decentralization. However Libertree is a little more minimalistic and focuses even more on privacy. There are no Google analytics on Libertree and the only way posts could be searched is if they were posted publically. The default is to be posted privately the entire social network (to the Forest), but not to the entire net. The entire interface is customizable if one knows or is inclined to learn a bit of CSS. The software itself is open source and can be downloaded by anyone to install on their server and there are a couple public "trees", or servers up and running already.
| Features | Does it have it? |
|---|---|
| Blockchain | No |
| Cryptocurrency Use | No |
| Markdown | Yes |
| Open Source | Yes |
| Can I run it on my own server? | Yes |
| Uses Hashtags | Yes |
| Heavily dependent on Google | No |
| Hosts Images | Yes |
| Aggregate Posts to other Social Media | No |
| Export Data | Yes |
| Import Data | No |
| Customizable interface | Yes |
Okay I think I'll cut it here for now and work on another episode later. Be sure to check out all these different networks and remember you aren't limited to the big corporate names. :-)