Previously: Part Zero, Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part V, Part VI.

 

Part VII: Social Media

 

At the outset, I should warn the reader that I am not a user of modern social media. Outside of any privacy concerns, I just don’t enjoy that mode of communication and interaction. If I had my druthers, forums/BBS, blogs and newsletters would be the only forms of social media, but there’s no un-skinning that cat now. The upshot is that I will be recommending alternative services I do not use to replace mainstream services that I also do not use, so it would be a good idea to consider this nothing more than a jumping off point for your own research and decide if any of these alternatives might work for you.

The conundrum in trying to create alternative social media platforms is how to overcome network effects. The entire premise of social media requires a large base of users with which to socialize. Even if a fantastic, technologically superior alternative to a mainstream platform or service reaches the market, odds are good that few people will be using it initially, paradoxically making it difficult to attract new users (and advertisers, and capital, if the alternative is a commercial venture). So be aware when adopting an alternative social media platform that you will probably be the voice of one calling in the wilderness. If your goal in using social media is to maintain connections with a small circle of friends, your odds of success using a smaller, alternative platform are greater than if your goal is to reach millions of people with your message or your ads.

As with YouTube in Part V, the major social media sites are so entrenched that it may be difficult to avoid them entirely. Twitter, in particular, is nearly inescapable for news junkies, since even outside-the-mainstream commentators and news sites frequently link to tweets and publish commentary centered around the Twitter-verse. Just as there are alternative, more-privacy-respecting front-ends for YouTube, there also exist similar alternative front-ends for some social media sites. Nitter provides just such an alternative front-end to Twitter. The official instance can be accessed at nitter.net, or you can choose another instance. Nitter allows you to access Twitter without ads or Javascript, prevents Twitter from tracking your IP address or JS fingerprint and allows you to bypass the “sensitive content” warnings that the official Twitter web front-end displays on flagged tweets when one is not logged in. However, Nitter only works for consuming Twitter content. If you want to log in and post, you will have to use the official Twitter web front-end or app. Teddit is to Reddit as Nitter is to Twitter. The official instance can be accessed at teddit.net, or you can choose another instance. Teddit allows you to access Reddit without ads or Javascript, prevents Reddit from tracking your IP address or JS fingerprint and allows you to access content that may be restricted on the official web front-end, but does not allow you to post or log in to your Reddit account. Additionally, Teddit restores the old Reddit layout, which a lot of old-school users preferred. ProxiTok is an alternative front-end for TikTok that allows you to view user feeds, tags and the “Trending” and “Discovery” tabs, or view videos by ID, with all requests handled server-side to protect your privacy. You can find a list of instances here. Extensions are available for Firefox and chromium/Chrome to automatically redirect to these alternative front-ends. The LibRedirect extension works on these and several other websites, with configurable instances. If you would rather set up your own redirect rules manually, the Redirector extension might be a better fit. You can also use the stand-alone Twitter to Nitter Redirect and Teddit Redirect Firefox extensions, or the Nitter Redirect and Teddit Please chromium/Chrome extensions.

Of course, the ideal is not just to find better ways of accessing the Big Tech social media platforms, but to actually escape the centralized, ad-laden, privacy-disrespecting platforms altogether. To that end, there are several potential decentralized and/or more-privacy-respecting alternatives for your consideration, and we will examine a few that are designed to more or less replicate the features of the Big Tech platforms. Many of these platforms use federation to allow decentralized instances of a service to communicate with one another, and with other services using the same protocol. The so-called “Fediverse” describes different programs and services that use interoperable, open standards to communicate with each other using federation. An old, familiar example of a federated service is email. Using the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP), any two email servers can deliver messages to and from each other despite being operated independently. For example, GMail users can send emails to Yahoo Mail users. Fediverse services work the same way. By contrast, you cannot post messages to Facebook from a Twitter account. One major advantage of the fediverse is that your account on any given fediverse service will allow you to access every other service in the fediverse that uses the same protocol, so you do not need to create multiple accounts on multiple platforms (although you certainly can if you would prefer to maintain different identities on different services). If you get booted from an instance of a particular service, or your home instance shuts down, or you wish to change accounts for any other reason, you can simply create a new one and migrate all of your old friends/contacts/followers.

Mastodon is the most popular federated free and open source microblogging answer to Twitter. As discussed previously, you can join any independent Mastodon instance, or host your own, and access other Mastodon instances through federation. This allows for a diversity of rules and standards, such that even if you are banned or censored on any one server, you can continue using the service on another, or your own. But it also allows for a diversity of privacy and security practices. With any federated service, it is up to you to choose a server/instance (or host your own) with good privacy and security practices. It should be noted that Mastodon was not created with an anything goes free speech ethos in mind. Quite the opposite, it was intended to allow for the creation of online communities with more speech policing and censorship than Twitter, and most of its servers/instances are left wing echo chambers. But because it is decentralized and self-hostable, there is no central authority to prevent anyone from hosting their own communities with whatever rules they like. This was highlighted rather amusingly when Gab, in a bid to avoid being deplatformed yet again, relaunched as a Mastodon fork. While most Mastodon instances blacklisted Gab’s instance, Mastodon’s founder nicely summarized the situation when called upon to do more: “You have to understand it’s not actually possible to do anything platform-wide because it’s decentralized. I don’t have the control.” You can find a searchable list of Mastodon instances here. Pleroma and Misskey are two more fediverse microblogging platforms that overlap with Mastodon in functionality, and are able to federate with Mastodon as well as each other. Something tells me this Pleroma instance might appeal to some portion of this audience, but a list of more featured instances can be found here. A list of Misskey instances can be found here.

As Mastodon is to Twitter, so diaspora* is to Facebook. Diaspora* is one of the oldest alternative social media platforms, dating back to 2010. You can use it without sharing any personally identifiable information, and you get fairly granular control over what content you share, and with whom. Like other federated services, you can choose from any number of instances – called pods – or host your own. You can find a list of pods here, or visit the diaspora* wiki to be automatically directed to an active pod. Diaspora* uses its own federation protocol that is less widely supported by other fediverse software, but does federate with a smaller number of other services, including another Facebook alternative: Friendica. Like the rest of the fediverse, Friendica can be self-hosted, or you can join any instance. Friendica supports multiple federation protocols, including the aforementioned diaspora* as well as the more widely used ActivityPub, so if you’re already using another fediverse service, it is easy to get started. Outside of the fediverse, Minds provides another Facebook alternative. Minds is a blockchain-based service, similar to LBRY or Dtube, discussed in Part V. Like Facebook, and unlike its fediverse counterparts, Minds is a commercial service. It has a larger user base, and has raised venture capital as well as equity crowdfunding. Participating on the site can earn you MINDS tokens – a shitcoin which can be used on the site to purchase ads, boost content, tip other users or upgrade your account to unlock more features. Registration requires no personally identifiable information besides an email address. Minds takes a light touch on content moderation, and features a novel jury system for appealing warnings and bans, but it is not an anything goes platform. Since Minds is not federated or self-hostable, it is not entirely censorship-resistant. For now it is quite free speech-accommodating, but venture capital has a tendency to lead to more heavy handed moderation. For more information, refer to their introductory guide or whitepaper.

If Reddit is your poison, Aether is a P2P platform that allows users to create their own communities, similar to a subreddit. While Reddit is notorious for power tripping moderators and shadow banning, Aether allows communities to elect and impeach their own mods, and all moderation actions are public and visible to the users. Aether is ephemeral – posts disappear after 6 months, so you’re less likely to be cyber stalked, harassed or doxed, which are not uncommon occurrences on Reddit.

Of course, there are also proprietary, centralized alternatives to the Big Tech social media platforms, such as MeWe and Parler, but since they are proprietary and centralized, they would not make my cut. They may be less censorious than their mainstream competitors, and in that regard may be useful to some users, but if you’re already venturing outside the mainstream services, why not choose something meaningfully different?

TL;DR: Using alternative front-ends like Nitter, Teddit and ProxiTok can allow you to access major social media sites more privately. You can use web browser extensions like LibRedirect or Redirector to redirect Twitter, Reddit and TikTok URLs to those alternatives automatically. On the path to breaking away from major social media sites entirely, consider joining the Fediverse and using decentralized alternative services, such as Mastodon, Pleroma or Misskey in place of Twitter; and diaspora* or Friendica in place of Facebook. Outside the fediverse, consider alternatives like Minds in place of Facebook, or Aether in place of Reddit.

Thus concludes this series. Stay noided.

Addendum: When I wrote this over 2 months ago, Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter had yet to be consummated, and was looking shaky at best. In the intervening period of time, the deal went through and Musk’s modest corporate reforms have sent the whinging class into fits of apoplexy. “Moving to Mastodon” has become the new “moving to Canada,” and the fediverse has received more mainstream coverage in the span of a few weeks than it had cumulatively in its entire history prior. Those of you who follow the news are likely more savvy about the fediverse than I. Thus brings a rather anticlimactic conclusion to this series, but such is the unpredictable nature of things. As such, there will be some privacy schizo bonus material in the comments.