Alright, shit, well I guess it's my turn to try and do a fediverse speech.

If you haven't read the zines I linked in the Welcome article, then this article is a super rudimentary explanation of the fediverse!

If you don't already use, or don't want to use any of the stuff mentioned here, that's fine; the calendars and website will always just be online to read and see what's coming up.

But I'll primarily be running socials for this site through the fediverse, namely mastodon.

The best 'star trek' style analogue for how the fediverse works is email.

Like email, the ActivityPub framework the fediverse is built on is interoperable. Which basically just means that my proton mail account can email your fastmail account, vice-versa and etcetera. This is UNLIKE social media platforms where you can only message an account on the same platform, or same environment now (meta).

The point of those platforms is to keep you WALLED IN, hence the walled-garden bit.
Insta now seems like mostly a messaging, snapchat and tiktok substitute/hybrid. With more ads, bots and AI slop than genuine interactions. Yuck.

Conception of the fediverse by The Counterforce

The fediverse has a couple major differences to corporate social media.

First off, instead of one site with all users signing up to the same centralised servers, the fediverse is hosted on thousands of individual servers; each with their own community and rules.

These servers, or instances, federate with one another to communicate across the entire network. This fragmented and federated framework makes the fediverse mostly impervious to corporate capture, as well as influencer style culture, as there's no real way to advertise in the same sense as on corporate owned social media. There's no algorithm to push 'content' or way to monetise it.

Second, there is no specific app you need to use. There's a few different platforms, and a few different apps and interfaces to use them. But with only a couple caveats, these different platforms can still easily interact with each other, thanks to our old friend interoperability!

Each fediverse address has two parts, @username@hostinstance. These are the fediverse accounts for askapunk.au; each calendar also has an activitypub relay that will post newly added events.

News, Articles and Live Reports
@oi@masto.askapunk.au
Magandjin/Brisbane
@relay@brisbane.askapunk.au
Eora/Sydney
@relay@sydney.askapunk.au
Naarm/Melbourne
@shows@melbourne.askapunk.net
Canberra/ACT
@relay@canberra.askapunk.au
North Coast NSW
@relay@northcoast.askapunk.au
Central Coast NSW
@relay@centralcoast.askapunk.au
South Coast NSW
@relay@southcoast.askapunk.au
Borloo/Perth
@relay@perth.askapunk.au
Karuna/Adelaide
@relay@adelaide.askapunk.au
North Qld
@relay@northqld.askapunk.au
Lutriwita/Tasmania
@relay@tasmania.askapunk.au

Following @oi@masto.askapunk.au gets you updates on news, articles, and live reports on the website.

Any time a new event is added to one of the calendars, its relay will generate a post with the info and artwork. (With working links!)

The fediverse, and even just mastodon, can be a bit of weird learning curve. Without an algorithm to cram posts and accounts down your gullet, you definitely need to actively find your own spaces and people to follow.

I initially signed up to mastodon through the flagship instance, mastodon.social, and there is A LOT of wading through gen-X computer scientists/programmers there. But as I've interacted with more accounts, found ones I'd like to follow and interacted with those more, my feed has become much more my own. There are plenty of well represented anarchist and queer communities, solarpunks and degrowth pundits, artists, designers makers, photographers and even a burgeoning hardcore and metal community.

While mastodon doesn't have the billion dollar budgets of meta, it also doesn't surveil you, sell all your personal information and force feed you ads. No algorithm means no pushing right wing bullshit in your feed, and no de-prioritising posts they deem to "controversial".

It's time to leave the bar that's letting nazis in.

Fediverse Platforms
  • mastodon (twitter/tumblr/facebook)

    mastodon is the largest of the platforms, with a little over 12M accounts created across thousands of servers.
    The easiest way to sign up to mastodon is through the native app; but this will only create an account on the flagship mastodon server mastodon.social. You can move your account to a new instance if you find a better home base.

    Your initial sign-up instance can shape your interactions with the wider fediverse, dependent on their rules and who they may choose not to federate with the accounts on that server and the accounts they interact with will be what you'll see most in your feed.

  • pixelfed (old timey insta)

    pixelfed is an image sharing platform kinda like first gen insta. With a few hundred servers across the globe dedicated to various regions and topics. It has one main app, but this can be used to sign in to any pixelfed instance.

  • peertube (youtube)

    peertube also has a designated app, but you can choose instances like channels on youtube. That instance will have all the videos available uploaded to it. The more people that are viewing a video at the same time actually helps it to deal with the load as it works similarly to P2P sharing networks.

  • ...and the rest

    The above are the platforms that are the most first-time user friendly, have the most users and have public servers available for you to sign up to. Some of the list below might require your own instance or are a little more uh, niche. Even for an already small niche.

    • Gotosocial - (blogging)

    • Pleroma - (facebook/twitter)

    • Friendica - (facebook/tumblr)

    • Lemmy - (reddit)

Android apps

  • Mastodon

  • Moshidon

  • Fedilab

ios apps

  • Mastodon

  • Mona

  • Ivory

Mastodon instances for individuals or bands (promo friendly)

  • aus.social

  • mastodon.au

  • mastodon.art

Calendars

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