Regular social media has been a source of concern for many years, with specific concerns around data gathering, profiling and hidden algorithms used to sell more ads.
In 2016 the Fediverse was created as a new way to implement social media.
Recently, of course, we’ve seen Twitter/X being taken over by Elon Musk and content checking removed from Facebook.
Is it time to move from regular social media to the Fediverse ?
In today’s talk, we briefly cover social media history and some of the perceived issues associated with them. We then look at what the Fediverse is, how it’s constructed, and present a demo. Finally, we touch on other areas such as instant messaging and search engines.
We ask, should the U3A join the Fediverse ?
Why not have a look at the u3a.social Fediverse proposal and submit your thoughts on the survey.
Plenty of time is reserved for discussions.
18th February 2025 at 3pm UK
The slides were :
The recording was :
The references were :
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usenet
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulletin_board_system
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AOL
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CompuServe
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Email
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classmates.com
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SixDegrees.com
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friendster
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myspace
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friends_Reunited
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LinkedIn
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instagram
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TikTok
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snapchat
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reddit
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinterest
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threads_(social_network)
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fediverse
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ActivityPub
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluesky
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk_(software)
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRC
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MSN_Chat
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skype
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Talk
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMS
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WhatsApp
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_(software)
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telegram_(software)
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMessage
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gopher_(protocol)
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W3Catalog
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ALIWEB
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahoo
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lycos
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AltaVista
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Search
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Bing
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DuckDuckGo
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Searx
- https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/the-history-of-social-networking/
- https://fed.brid.gy/
- https://fedi.tips/
- https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/01/mad-meta-dont-let-them-collect-and-monetize-your-personal