If you care about privacy then the solution should be both open source and decentralised. Pleroma is the closest to Facebook, followed by Friendica, otherwise you can use something like Matrix.
Signal and Telegram might be open source but are both centralised services and Telegram only open sources the front end.
Mastodon is a neat piece of software, but I prefer Pleroma myself -- it runs so much better. Pleroma interacts with the same fediverse -- ie, Mastodon servers -- perfectly well, but you can run it on the cheapest VPS instances just fine, or even a raspberry pi. It does not have as complex and detailed ~~censorship~~ moderation features, however, which I can see as not being appealing to some people.
Well, you can host it but you should choose the Pi 4 2GB variant at least, without any other services installed on it. It can be resource hungry. I recommend the docker way, for easier migration and moving if needed. My experience for one user with a fresh installation, it used up about 1150 MB of RAM.
Also if you want to use less resource hungry alternative, you can use Pleroma (also in docker). Pleroma uses 1/3 of mastodon cpu and ram needs.
Pleroma is better for self hosting on minimal servers.
I put together a simpler Docker image that doesn't require any external scripting.
This is one place you can start: https://mastodon.online/@FediFollows/106855947486154929 And these are some nice/interesting instances https://pleroma.social/#featured-instances
Usually you build up your follow list little by little. Nice people hang out with nice people and you start to get to know them. I used to camp the Whole Known Network for some interesting post and follow them.
As someone who runs my own social media site, no they don't. Not all communication needs to be facilitated over for-profit channels.
https://pleroma.social (not mine, this is just the software I use)
[https://blog.soykaf.com/post/what-is-pleroma/](here's something of a start), taken from https://pleroma.social/
I mean even the character limit isn't a real limit (fyi there's mastodon instances that have non-500 character limits). I know for sure pleroma supports images, gifs, videos, audio; not sure about documents/embeds. (but if you ask @ they're very helpful, and more than willing to answer questions; even about future thoughts etc, as long as you're nice).
A bit biased, since I'm one of the developers, but take a look at Pleroma, federated social networking server: https://git.pleroma.social/pleroma/pleroma
Vulpes Nord theme for Pleroma. Based on Vulpes One by Feuerfuchs
Something like this is a fast way to set up a twitter type clone that has the ability to interact with similar sites. Kind of like everyone hosts their own subreddit.
https://pleroma.social/
You could also probably host a reddit type site, I'm just less familiar with what that would take and if it's still semi-easy to set up if you know what you're doing.
> He kept pulling unnecessary overhauls and experiments that the users hated, so I'm surprised Mastodon is stable as it is.
Mastodon is just one of - albeit the most popular - several applications that can connect to the "fediverse" via the ActivityPub protocol.
I use Pleroma personally. Very lightweight, runs on a raspberry pi.
Pleroma seems like the best alternative for Twitter right now. It consists of a bunch of federated servers that peer with each other to exchange data, making it a ton more resilient than say Gab or Parler, which have a single point of failure. Gab actually forked it, but then immediately proceeded to neuter a key feature by removing all federation with other servers... I guess they wanted to keep people inside the Gab walled garden.
To everyone complaining about Mastodon being SJW, you don't need their approval to start an instance and federate, just to get listed on joinmastodon.org. Gameliberty.club is a free speech Mastodon instance, for example. But if you're looking for federated software (that can talk with Mastodon) that isn't developed by radlibs, there's Pleroma, whose instances also usually tend to be more pro-free speech.
Anyway, this is a good list of privacy-respecting+transparent fediverse instances, look for the ones that have "yes" in the limited moderation column.
There are libre and open source social networks that you can run yourself, which don't involve the surveillance that a traditional social network entails. A number of protocols have been developed, most notably: secure scuttlebutt and activitypub. I have heard that a lot of solarpunks gravitate towards Secure Scuttlebutt, which takes a more local-first approach, but there are also more conventional options that intend to replicate an experience similar to twitter, like Pleroma and Mastodon.
Uh, nice! Didn't know about that one yet :-)
As far as Mastodon goes, I'm more a fan of Pleroma myself, but I didn't want to muddy the first introduction to the topic with minutiae :-P
I ran mastodon for a while on my RPi, but it was fairly resource intensive (with just one user, no less) and I found it a bit painful to maintain.
I switched to pleroma ~6 months ago and smooth sailing since then. I've got 5 friends and me on the instance averaging 70 posts per day (mostly me!) and only uses a couple hundred MBs of RAM and barely touches the CPU. The initial setup and upgrades are also significantly easier.
There's a couple other fediverse servers on the market which I plan to try, but between mastodon and pleroma I have to say that pleroma is the most "selfhosted" friendly.
The Mastodon server is pretty heavy-weight - it's really designed for larger sites and running it for single user (or even 2-3) is overkill. I dedicated a cheap VPS with 1GB of RAM to Mastodon and it frequently struggled - I had to mount a small scratch swap partition for upgrades, for example.
There's a bunch of lighter weight alternatives that speak the same protocol (ActivityPub). I'm using Pleroma now, and I'm pretty happy with it. Another poster here already mentioned Pixelfed, which has a focus on instagram-like image sharing.
Are you asking about technical solutions to running a social media platform?
I think maybe something like https://pleroma.social/ . It is Twitter-like, lighter weight and simpler than Mastodon so it can be run with minimal costs. Still will require technical knowledge to set up and maintain though.
I wonder if there is too much duplication of work in the development of music player, not because there are "too many" music player, the main thing about music player IMO is the UI/UX and that can be pretty subjective (like in windows managers or DE). but if there was some library or reusable backend (like pleroma backend), it might speed up the development and make it easier to experiment with the construction of new players.
That seems like an alternative to Slack. I meant social networking that is decentralized overall, if we launched a few Pleroma instances, we'd be able to interact with the whole Fediverse whilst also interacting amongst ourselves.
Check it out https://fediverse.party/en/fediverse/
>Fediverse social networks have many differences from mainstream platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, etc). For one, all of the federated networks are developed by the community of people all around the globe, independent from any corporation or official institution. This means that you can take part in the development and growth of the Fediverse. All skills are valuable: spreading the word, inviting friends are most welcome activities. Another difference of these social networks from corporate silos is the principle of federation.
>Mainstream networks concentrate millions of users on their servers. That gives them dangerous powers of controlling information and hoarding users' private data, using it for commercial profit (and who knows what other causes). Fediverse networks are designed to be run by anybody: you are free to choose and register on any server you like, you can choose the person who will be in charge of your data - the administrator of your server. If you have some technical knowledge, you can administrate your own server for your friends and family, at your will connecting with thousands of other independent servers across the web. In a sense, Fediverse is an autonomous universe where power and data are decentralized and scattered across multiple lands, while mainstream corporate websites each made themselves a king (or a tyrant?) of their own huge land, surrounded with high fences, and reserve all the decision-making, data control and censorship to themselves.
https://pleroma.social/ is what I recommend we use. It's like Tumblr/Twitter with far more functionality.
I use a pleroma instance it's compatible with mastodon and all of the like activitypub things.
its basically mastodon but less moving parts, and lower system requirements