Social Media

Social Media #

“If freedom of speech is taken away, then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.” ― George Washington

Social media is a mixed bag. It connects the world and allows for the rapid dissemination of news, true and untrue. But in the last few years censorship has become a massive problem across all major social media platforms. Its important that we cultivate presences on social media that are more resilient to censorship and de-platforming. These services should be run as decentralized as possible to avoid coordinated take downs like we saw with the Conservative social media company Parler, where big tech collaborated to largely destroy the company.

Freedom Respecting Social Media #

  • Twitter/X - Twitter is a centralized social media platform. While Twitter has become a free speech focused platform its far from perfect. Twitter is overwhelmingly the single biggest platform for spreading speech. Twitter is bad for privacy and is encouraging a ID based verification program, that will be in the hands of its future owners. Case against Twitter

  • Blue Sky - Blue Sky is an open source project backed by Jack Dorsey in an attempt to create a decentralized social network protocol as an alternative to Twitter. In May 2024 Jack Dorsey resigned from the BlueSky board, and donated 21 Million to the Open Source Protocol NOSTR.

  • Mastodon - Mastodon is an open source, self hosted social networking service that aims to be a twitter competitor. Mastodon lets you connect to specific Mastodon instances as part of a federation protocol. Due to this setup Larger mastodon servers can censor other servers from connecting to their instances. Tends to be a more left wing community.

  • Lemmy - Lemmy is a selfhosted social link aggregation and discussion platform. Similar to Reddit but it is completely free and open, and not controlled by any company. This means that there is no advertising, tracking, or secret algorithms. Content is organized into communities, so it is easy to subscribe to topics that you are interested in, and ignore others. Voting is used to bring the most interesting items to the top.

  • MeWe - MeWe is a centralized company that’s been running a social media platform for over a decade. MeWe is committed to privacy and an ad-free experience. The project is currently in development to be migrated to web3 blockchain based infrastructure.

  • Locals - Locals is a free speech social media platform that is owned by Rumble. Locals is a centralized alternative to other social media. Founded by conservative commentator Dave Rubin.

  • Minds - Minds is an open source distributed social network. Includes E2E messages. As well as built in ERC-20 (Ethereum Network) payments.

  • Gab - A centralized Free Speech Social media platform. Gab has been de-platformed by most of big tech and largely runs its own architecture in order to to keep operations running. Platform users tend to skew right wing.

  • Diaspora - Diaspora is a decentralized open source social media platform. With Diaspora you need to host your own instance by running a server or “pod”, meaning you own your data. Due to the decentralized nature of the platform it can be difficult to connect with other profiles, the platform has less than 1 million users after after 13 years of operation.

  • Truth Social - Founded by Donald Trump in response to Trump getting removed from Twitter. Truth Social is a centralized open source fork of Mastodon. Truth Social is known to censor content, mostly leftwing content.

  • Peepeth - A platform built on the Ethereum blockchain that is public and permanent. Peepeth works to let you own your data on a platform that doesn’t allow advertising.

  • Gettr - GETTR is a social media platform built on the foundation of freedom of opinion and expression. Gettr is a socialized platform that doesn’t seem to offer anything particularly new, other than being a Twitter Alternative. Private messages claim to be E2E. But Gettr is not open sourced.

  • Farcaster - Farcaster is a decentralized protocol for building web3 social media apps. Built on top of the Ethereum network. Detailed breakdown here

Meetup Alternatives #

  • Flockstr - NOSTR based Meetup alternative. Connects directly with your NOSTR Account, and also works with your lightning wallet to receive ZAPS (micro bitcoin transactions.)

  • Agorakit - Agorakit is web-based, open source groupware for collectives. By creating collaborative groups, people can discuss topics, organize events, store files and keep everyone updated as needed. Agorakit is a forum, calendar, file manager, mapping tool and email notifier.

  • JoinMobilizon - Mobilizon is not a giant platform, but a multitude of interconnected Mobilizon websites. This federated architecture helps avoid monopolies and offers a diversity of hosting terms of service.

  • Luma - An international meetup alternative, that provides more value at a much lower price than meetup.

NOSTR #

NOSTR is the future of decentralized social media. NOSTR is not controlled or owned by any private company or person. NOSTR is a protocol similar to Email or TCP/IP. It can be accessed by anyone or any company. NOSTR uses the dumb server smart client model. Meaning anyone can setup a simple server/relay that preserves and encrypts the NOSTR ecosystem. NOSTR directly incorporates bitcoin via the lightning network. You can send “ZAPS” which are low cost lightning transactions to any person on NOSTR, and your posts can likewise receives Zaps from anyone on the network. In addition to major support from the freedom and Bitcoin communities, NOSTR has been financially backed by Jack Dorsey and heavily supported by Edward Snowden. NOSTR offers several different clients that allow you to interact with the NOSTR protocol. Some of those clients:

  • Primal - A client designed to look like a twitter clone.
  • Damus - NOSTR Client for Iphone.
  • Alby - A NOSTR and Bitcoin plugin. Allows you to hold your private keys in order to interact with NOSTR, lighting and other bitcoin apps.
  • Nostr.Watch - Track relays where a connection can currently be established.
  • NostrChat - Encrypted chat built on NOSTR.
  • Zap.Stream - Directly integrated into NOSTR Zap lets you stream for SATS (bitcoin Lightning) and earn in kind easily from any and all viewers.
  • Nostr.directory - Find your twitter follows on NOSTR
  • NOSTR Apps - A database of many differnt NOSTR Apps

Youtube Alternatives #

  • ODYSEE - A decentralized video platform built on the LBRY network. With the recent SEC Judgement against ODYSEE the long term future of the platform is uncertain, however plans are to migrate to the Arweave network. Odysee also has a nice simple feature allowing you to connect your youtube channel and autosync all content for a convenient backup of your channel.
  • Madiator - Privacy focused front end for LBRY, the network that hosts ODYSEE.
  • D.tube - A decentralized youtube alternative. DTube is a community powered video sharing platform where users vote on videos to reward creators, curators, influencers and viewers in cryptocurrency.
  • CiVL - CiVL is a free streaming platform for courageous stories and subversive ideas that challenge power structures. Get access to award-winning films, shows, and debates. No ads. No credit card to join.
  • Bitchute - A decentralized Youtube alternative that tends to have a lot of right-leaning content, due to this they often get censored or blocked.
  • PeerTube A free and open-source, decentralized, ActivityPub federated video platform powered by WebTorrent, that uses peer-to-peer technology to reduce load on individual servers when viewing videos.
  • Rumble - A centralized alternative to youtube that bills itself as protector of free speech.