Own Your Social Media!

Wouldn’t it be cool if we could control our social media, maybe even own it, and break away from Big Tech billionaires? No ads or algorithms? Well, we can. There are multiple free options! 

Of course, nothing is free. In the software world “free” generally refers to “free, as in speech” rather than “free, as in beer.” There is a variety of well-developed social media software available at no cost. The costs come from deploying, maintaining, and operating the software, which Chattanooga.Digital does for members. We’ll talk about requirements for that and associated costs in a future post.

In this post we describe some of the options for open source social media. Each has a different approach and architecture. We describe each in their own words, provide a bit of commentary, and summarize the options with recommendations at the end. All of the platforms described in this article can be self-hosted. Generally, they operate independently of each other as does each instance of an app (a “service”). Several of platforms are decentralized but interconnect to share content via the ActivityPub protocol —they can be federated and be part of the “fediverse” (more on that in a future post).

It bears noting that there are also numerous open source collaboration and chat/forum applications. Some of the apps in this article overlap with that space, which we’ll explore in a future post. And there are undoubtedly other apps with social functionality we haven’t identified. This article illustrates the range of apps that are readily available for free to provide a starting point for taking ownership of our social media.

There are many good options; we just have to use them!

Open Source Options for Social Media

ActivityPub - https://activitypub.rocks/

ActivityPub is a decentralized social networking protocol based on the ActivityStreams 2.0 data format. ... It provides a client to server API for creating, updating and deleting content, as well as a federated server to server API for delivering notifications and subscribing to content.

ActivityPub is a protocol for sharing content rather than a platform. User accounts on ActivityPub-based platforms are “actors” that have an “inbox” and “outbox” that send and receive content via servers, which can share content with each other and have universal search — they are federated. These platforms and servers as a whole are called the Fediverse.

Bluesky - https://bsky.social/about

Bluesky is social media as it should be. Find your community among millions of users, unleash your creativity, and have some fun again.

Social media is too important to be controlled by a few corporations. We’re building an open foundation for the social internet so that we can all shape its future.

Bluesky is a decentralized microblogging platform with feeds and messaging, similar to Xitter, based on the Authenticated Transfer Protocol (ATP). It also supports lists that, oddly, have to be constructed with a separate application. Bluesky has a primary server, https://bsky.app/, but anyone with some technical abilities can set up their own Personal Data Server (PDS) for individuals, group, or public use. (You can find a list of PDSs at https://bsky-debug.app/.)

The ATP, Bluesky app, and aggregate data stream from all servers are all open. There are numerous other ATP-based apps that integrate or interoperate with Bluesky (see https://atstore.fyi/ and https://blueskydirectory.com/). Together with as single, universal, user-owned account, all of these assets are referred to as the “Atmosphere.”

Civic.Social – https://www.civic.social/

Civic.Social is shared digital public infrastructure for democratic participation.

America has no shortage of civic energy—but it lacks the digital public infrastructure needed to align citizens, organizations, and communities around meaningful democratic processes. Civic.Social forms an open coordination network built for participation and accountability—not outrage, advertising, or attention maximization.

It does not replace existing civic tools or organizations. It connects them—so civic energy compounds instead of fragments.

Civic.Social is focused on local information sharing, particularly between public officials and citizens. (See the demo site at https://floyd.civic.social/.) It is expressly NOT a social network platform. Rather it is a way for people to be engaged in and informed about civic activities. The app is structured around conversations, projects, proposals, and votes. Completed conversations and votes are treated as outcomes. All of these items are aggregated into personalized feed.

Communities.Social – https://communities.social/

Communities is a place built for people, not profit.

It is a cooperative social network where members guide the direction, support the growth, and help shape how it evolves.

No ads. No data mining. No algorithm in control.

Here, you decide what matters. It's about connection and community.

Communities is a simple social networking platform structured around friends and groups, each of which has a feed. It also features “Place” feeds although there doesn’t seem to be anywhere to define places.

Diaspora - https://diasporafoundation.org/

The online social world where you are in control … diaspora* is based on three key philosophies:

• Decentralization
• Freedom
• Privacy

Diaspora is an ActivityPub-based decentralized federated social media platform that seems to be defunct.

Friendica – https://friendi.ca/

A Decentralized Social Network

Friendica, an ActivityPub-based decentralized federated social media platform, has many features and options: profiles, posts, photos, events, and more. It also has numerous plug-ins and a few different themes. It has a rather generic user interface, a steep learning curve, and requires substantial effort to configure.

Hubzilla - https://hubzilla.org/page/info/home

The powerful open source privacy-respecting all-in-one home base for collaboration and social interactions. 

Hubzilla is a powerful platform for creating interconnected websites featuring a decentralized identity, communications, and permissions framework built using common web server technology.

Hubzilla is also an ActivityPub-based decentralized federated platform but more intended for collaboration than social networking. It has blog, cloud storage, groups & forums, images, web pages, and wiki. It connects with other social media, provides nomadic identity and single sign-on to other apps. But, like Friendica, it has a generic interface, steep learning curve, and technical requirements.

Chattanooga.Digital has a Hubzilla instance, https://hub.chattanooga.digital/.

Hylo – https://www.hylo.com/

Where people get organized, stay connected, and grow together.

On Hylo, groups unlock deeper trust, better coordination, and the capacity to tackle complex challenges — together.

Whether you're running a neighborhood mutual aid network or a global movement, Hylo grows with you. Start where you are.

Hylo is groupware: chat and conversations, events and gatherings, funding and budgeting, projects, proposals and decisions, maps, requests and offers, and tracking for intentional groups with spaces for focused interaction.

Lemmy - https://join-lemmy.org/

A decentralized discussion platform for communities.

Lemmy is a discussion platform that is truly free. You choose which communities to be a part of and which posts to see. You can use extensive blocking and filtering tools to sort and curate your feed. You are in control and not a corporation, so there is no tracking, advertising nor secret algorithms. And you can follow the development in the open, or get your own ideas included.

Lemmy is a “news aggregator” much like Reddit but decentralized and federated via ActivityPub. It has posts organized in communities, which are general topics, with reposting, threaded comments, and up and down votes. It does not support hashtags.

Loomio – https://www.loomio.com/

Loomio is a collaborative decision-making platform — a dedicated space, separate from email and chat, where your organization discusses proposals, votes with reasoning, and builds a searchable record of why each decision was made.

Loomio provides discussions, files, and polls for groups to support decision-making. It is open source but provides paid plans.

Loops – https://joinloops.org/

Short videos. Your community. Your rules.

All the fun of short-form video, none of the corporate control.

Loops is federated, open-source, and designed to give power back to creators and communities across the social web. Build your community on a platform that can't lock you in.

As their website says, Loops is an ActivityPub-based decentralized federated video platform, similar to TikTok. It has comment, follow, like, save, and share functions along with direct messaging.

Mastodon - https://joinmastodon.org/

Social networking that's not for sale.

Your home feed should be filled with what matters to you most, not what a corporation thinks you should see. Radically different social media, back in the hands of the people.

Mastodon is an ActivityPub-based decentralized federated microblogging platform, like Xitter but cleaner and less cluttered. Functionality is limited to following profiles, hashtags, and short posts.

Chattanooga.Digital’s community Mastodon instance is https://toot.chattanooga.digital/home.

Mosaic, https://mosaic.social/

A Human-Centered Social Media Ecosystem

Social media was meant to connect us. Instead, today's dominant platforms are built on incentives that undermine trust, weaken communities, and extract value from users and creators.

Mosaic is an effort to design an open, interoperable social media ecosystem that puts people, communities, and the public good first.

Mosaic looks interesting. It is one of the few that clearly includes a “business” component for generating revenue. But it does not seem to be a platform or have software available.

Nostr – https://nostr.org/

An open social protocol with a chance of working … Nostr is an inclusive communication commons. A simple standard that defines a scalable architecture of clients and servers that can be used to spread information freely. Not controlled by any corporation or government, anyone can build on Nostr and anyone can use it.

Like ActivityPub and ATP, Nostr is a protocol. The name stands for “Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays,” which tells you a lot about the protocol. It uses lightweight servers called relays to share content, all of which is encrypted using a private key. Notes are basic text posts but the “stuff” in Nostr can be most anything including cyptocurrency and events. Most of the processing is handled by client apps; there is no central authority. There are over 40 apps that use Nostr. Users profile, notes, contacts, etc., are tied to the private key and fully portable between apps and relays.

Open Social – https://www.getopensocial.com/

Discover the world’s only sovereign Community Collaboration Platform

Designed to support cross-organisation collaboration

Crafted in Europe as digital sovereign solution

Loved for its enterprise-grade flexibility

Open Social is one of the oldest open source social media platforms, originally built on Drupal. An AI assistant, analytics, document suite, and integration are now included. It seems to be targeted toward enterprises, institutions, non-governmental organizations, and public agencies.

Open Source Social Network – https://www.opensource-socialnetwork.org/

Open Source Social Network (OSSN) is a powerful, fully featured Facebook alternative that lets you build your own social network website. Out of the box, your installation includes user profiles, chronological timelines, niche groups, photo albums, real-time likes, and comments. You own the codebase, you control the data.

• 100% Self-Hosted & Data Sovereign
• Zero Fees & No Vendor Lock-In
• Production-Ready REST APIs
• Redis & Cache Optimized
• GDPR & Privacy Compliant
• Mobile-Responsive Core Engine

Open Source Social Network is it’s name: an open source social network platform. There are a number of options for accessing and using it, including self-hosting, and it has a plugin marketplace with free and paid extensions.

PeerTube - https://joinpeertube.org/

PeerTube allows you to create your own video platform, in complete independence.

With PeerTube, no more opaque algorithms or obscure moderation policies! PeerTube platforms you visit are built, managed and moderated by their owners.

PeerTube allows platforms to be connected to each other, creating a big network of platforms that are both autonomous and interconnected.

Moreover, PeerTube does not depend on any advertising and does not track you!

PeerTube is an ActivityPub-based, decentralized, federated video sharing platform, based around channels very much like YouTube.

Pixelfed - https://pixelfed.org/

Explore + Share beautiful photos and videos.

A fresh take on photo sharing. Get inspired with beautiful photos captured by people around the world.

• Ad-free and privacy friendly
• Open source and decentralized
• Chronological feeds

Pixelfed is an ActivityPub-based, decentralized, federated picture sharing platform organized around collections, featuring bookmarks, comments, likes, and resharing.

Pleroma – https://pleroma.social/

Free and open communication for everyone. Pleroma is social networking software compatible with other Fediverse software

Pleroma is an ActivityPub-based, decentralized, federated microblogging platform that lighter, more easily customizable than Mastodon.

Summary and Conclusions

The most functional and well-developed of the options are Bluesky, Hylo, and OSSN. Civic.Social and Open Social are also have a range of functionality and seem well-developed but are more civic or digital democracy apps than social media. Hylo also leans heavily into those types of features but has solid media functionality. All of these support events, groups, and hashtag in some way.

Communities, Lemmy, Loops, Mastodon, PeerTube, and Pixelfed are well-developed but have limited functionality, as does Loomio. Communities is very basic social networking. Pleroma seems to have more flexibility but is relatively new. Loops and Pixelfed focus on short videos and images, respectively, direct messaging as well as comments and supports hashtags. They may be the most actively used and mature of these apps, along with Mastodon. Loomio is for decision-making rather than general socializing.

Friendica and Hubzilla are flexible and powerful but also relatively difficult to use and labor-intensive to administer. They are not as actively maintained as the other nor as mature, robust, and slick as the others. Diaspora seems to be defunct and Mosaic seems to be just a concept. Nostr may be the up and coming technology in this space but lack of a clear, well-defined platform makes it more challenging for non-technologists to adopt. Generally, ActivityPub seems to be more mature and ATP more widely utilized.

Clearly, there are excellent options for open source social media regardless of your purpose. There are even more well-developed options in for related general purpose apps like discussion forums and online meetings and more specialized apps for things campaigning and mutual aid. For example, Nextcloud is a general purpose cloud platform and collaboration suite but has social functions, including federated content sharing via ActivityPub.

There are administrative and technical considerations that go beyond the scope of this article. Generally, the simpler the apps functionality is, the easier it is to deploy, maintain, and operate. It is also important for an app to have a reasonably large, active set of contributors. Control over and portability of one’s content and profile are also key considerations. Lastly, there is the issue of how to cover costs, which we will address is detail in a future post. At this point, only Mosaic and OSSN have a clear monetization functions, and Mosaic is just a concept.

Based on these general criteria, Bluesky is probably best for general purpose, although lack of support for events and groups and kludginess of lists are drawbacks. Hylo is ideal for purpose-oriented communities, where multiple stake holders need to collaborate and coordinate rather than just socialize. Loops and Pixelfed are great for image/video content. OSSN is a great replacement for Facebook and other multi-function social networking apps.

The big question, given that these are all readily available and relatively cheap and easy to deploy, is how to build a base of users; how to put the apps to work. What do you think?