---
title: "Internet Services Decentralization"
date: 2020-10-21
draft: true
---
The internet as we know it today is full of useful services, that millions of
people use every day, all over the world. Most of these services are controlled
by a few corporations like Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and Apple, among others.
These are silos, walled gardens that want to keep you on their platforms for as
long as they can. There can be no true free flow of information on these sites,
which often have obscure and arcane moderation policies.
Take, for example, the amount of time[^5] it took for Reddit to crack down on
subreddits that violated its' rules. Quoted from the article
> It is part of a broad shift away from the hands-off approach long embraced by online platforms that have claimed to be neutral in the face of whatever users publish.
I'm not saying that Reddit admins or admins of any other community platform
should be curating content. That responsiblity should fall to the users
themselves. However, the admins can and should take action when rules are
violated.
The bigger issue, though, is that there is often nowhere else for their users to
go. They don't know what else exists for them to gather and share.
What to do, then? *Is* there any alternative?
## Enter the Fediverse
A (relatively) new development in this arena is the rise of what people are
calling the Fediverse. It's a network of different hosts and different
communities interacting over the internet. They use the same basic software[^1],
but each instance is privately run. User accounts on one instance can follow
accounts on *any other instance*.
For the rest of this post I'm going to be focusing on one brand of software,
[Mastodon][mastosite]. It's based on Twitter, in that users can write small
posts in a microblog format. I've been on Mastodon since 2018, and I've stuck
with the same instance[^4] the whole time.
The most important aspect of the Fediverse to me is *data portability*. If you
don't like the way your instance is being run, you can take your data with you
to another one[^2] or set up your own[^3]. If tomorrow, for example, the admins
of mastodon.technology decided to start banning accounts randomly, I could get
an archive of my entire account and go to another instance.
This kind of flexibility brings accountability to instance admins, and also
provides an alternative to users who are unhappy with the moderation of their
instance. There are thousands of instances out there, and it's easy to set up a
private instance for yourself and possibly some friends.
The Mastodon project maintains a list of public instances
[here][mastoinstances]. Each instance on this list has to agree to certain
policies, like active moderation against racism and hate speech. You can read
the full Server Covenant [here][mastocovenant]. I *highly* recommend trying Mastodon out.
[^1]: ActivityPub, described more here [ActivityPub](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ActivityPub)
[^2]: As documented [here](https://docs.joinmastodon.org/user/moving/)
[^3]: As documented [here](https://docs.joinmastodon.org/user/run-your-own/)
[^4]: https://mastodon.technology
[^5]: From [NPR](https://www.npr.org/2020/06/29/884819923/reddit-bans-the_donald-forum-of-nearly-800-000-trump-fans-over-abusive-posts)
[mastosite]: https://joinmastodon.org
[mastocovenant]: https://joinmastodon.org/covenant
[mastoinstances]: https://joinmastodon.org/communities
