Why aren't you on the Fediverse?

Question

With Twitter attempting to wipe society's collective memory once more, HN seems rightfully angered. Why leave your data to be feasted on by corporate interests when there's a great alternative?Consider joining the Fediverse, a federated (which means that user-run servers can talk to one another) social media platform. You probably know it from all of the headlines that Mastodon's been getting, but it's a lot broader (and better) than what Mastodon's press coverage has implied it is.If you want to self-host, a libre server with more features than Mastodon can be ran on a Raspberry Pi: https://pleroma.social/If you have some really old hardware, a server running Honk can run on something with 30MB of RAM and an old hard drive, though it's (much) lighter on the feature end, too: https://flak.tedunangst.com/post/honking-for-fun-and-profitWant an Instagram alternative instead of/to complement a Twitter alternative? Try Pixelfed: https://pixelfed.org/Want a YouTube alternative? It's got one of those, too! Check out PeerTube; with over 100,000 videos uploaded so far and a better interface than YouTube's, it's already a really viable contender: https://joinpeertube.org/If you don't want to self-host, there are five thousand instances you can join, with a collective amount of users nearing 5,000,000! Proof of those numbers, and a list of instances: https://fediverse.network/If you like the sound of this, find an instance with a moderation policy you respect (they range from "Do nothing illegal, please!" to "Don't do something we dislike or you'll be banned," so this step is important), and register! It's much comfier using smaller ones, and knowing the person who's running your instance and vice-versa makes your experience a lot better, so try using a smaller instance!A lot of HN users are already on it. A few even volunteered their handles in the last thread:https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16741116

kick · Accepted Answer

Honorable mentions that broke HN's character limit:
Want something that's a little bit of everything, with a fantastic interface for an SNS, and the entire kitchen sink of features? Try Misskey: https://join.misskey.page/en/
(Warning, Misskey is written by native Japanese speakers, and you'll find very few English speakers who know the software if you need one, for whatever reason.)
Want something like SoundCloud for your music library? FunkWhale's really cool, and similarly has a really nice interface: https://funkwhale.audio/

laklasla · Answer

I've been on the Fediverse for a while and I run the blob.cat Pleroma instance. It's a lot of fun and I'd highly recommend it - it's only a few dollars a month to host, too.