Pretty much in the title. Maybe you wouldn't even use it, but would like to simply see it exist for the sake of having a federated alternative.
For me, it'd be the following:
- Meetup
- Tiktok
I am on the first two, but would prefer a federated alternative. I'm not on Tiktok, but would like to see a federated alternative.
I'll admit these might not be a good idea. But as a thought experiment, I'd be curious about the community weigh in on what you all think this might look like.
Letterboxed - an app like bookwyrm, but for movies. I've seen other people talk about it and I think some people are working on it, but AFAIK nothing is up atm
LibRate is WIP fediverse alternative for that.
It plans to supports film, books, games, and more. Basically one stop for every tracker.
Github
All the benefits of the network effect without the crippling reliance on a single MegaCorp to keep the lights on and not turn hostile like the owners of SourceForge, Reddit, and Freenode IRC.
Would also solve a problem I'm not hearing anyone at all talk about - what happens when the Gitlab / Gittea / whatever instances projects are hosting run out of money and go dark? Those sources are lost forever.
There actually is a fediverse TikTok equivalent being developed! I'm not sure what the current status of it is, but it does already have rudimentary functionality. I bet the developer(s) might appreciate some help working on it, if anyone has the time/coding skills/money/etc to contribute. Somebody else mentioned Tumblr, and that exists too! So many cool projects being worked on, I regularly check this list to see what's new, and it's really heartwarming to see all the work people are putting into making the fediverse such a awesome place. There's even a Tinder-esque dating app!
Personally, equivalents I would love to see include:
- Archive of Our Own
- RPC/F-List/roleplay platform
- (I'm actually trying to work on one of these myself, but I'm an amateur so don't get your hopes up lol)
- Etsy
- Ravelry
- A search engine
- (And not just a metasearch using the same index as Google/Bing/etc)
How do you pronounce "Alovoa"?
TikTok is a sticky wicket, because video is so heavy and sensitive to network performance. You can maybe federate video, but there's definitely not going to be small instances.
BeReal
I'd love to see a federated — or first of all just in any kind open source — version of this. I really love their approach of making social media less addictive, but they're starting to introduce some features which I think are counterproductive to their initial concept.
Since it is just a mobile-oriented product (for obvious reasons like needing two cameras, taking selfies, carrying it around the whole time) it might be hard to build something like that but I guess it would be nice.
I also have no idea how you would make something like that federated, but the approach might be like that the different instances are working as the BeReal timezones, so the BeReal time might be the same for all members of an instance.
Maybe someone is working on that, but I guess this will take some more years, because BeReal is not that popular for a long enough time...
No more "alternatives" please. That formula has failed over and over again. We want software that can do what proprietary platforms do not pursue because it's not profitable. Online spaces to build meaningful connections, have interesting conversations with like-minded people, discover new things, be free from trolls and toxicity, possibly without the guilt of polluting the hell out of this planet with hardware and excessive electricity consumption.
Example? I'm skeptical there's anything that both appeals to a reasonably large audience and isn't monetisable. I'm very skeptical you can do it with less toxicity and computation somehow.
Edit: I suppose dating sites might count. They're very much not optimised for actually finding good partners at this point, because gamified swipe dating keeps people hooked. Computation and toxicity are still pretty intractable.
to a reasonably large audience
That's a measure of success that makes sense only in a for-profit, growth-oriented environment. Software just has to be sustainable and "bigger" doesn't necessarily imply "more sustainable.
That said, what is now possible with social media is extremely restricted and our idea of what a social media is is constrained by profit motives. Social media could be much more, connect humans for collaboration and exchange instead of data extraction. We are so used to the little crumbs of positive experiences on social media that we normalized it.
Bonfire, for example, if we want to stick to the fediverse, is trying to challenge this narrative and push the boundaries of what a social media is supposed to do.
Another space would be non-siloed notion-like tools.
Anothe entire can of worms would be to go beyond the "dictatorship of the app" and start building software and UX around flexibility and customizability for the average user, rather than keeping this a privilege for tools targeting power users. Flexibility in UX means harder trackability and less CTR, so most end-user "apps" avoid that.
Okay, sure, you could make an ultra-niche Fediverse app that has integration with a digital toothbrush or something, I'll give you that. If three people can productively use it I'm not sure that counts as a form of social media, though. I'd use a descriptor more like "add-on service". The "social" part means you need a certain number of bodies involved.
What's the deal with Bonfire? As far as I can tell it's microblogging with an emphasis on customisability.
Open source endpoints are great. I'm a big fan.
Edit: Oh hey! They have a blog post about that. So basically, it's another framework on top of ActivityPub. I like the sound of that. From their GitHub they currently integrate microblogging and some weird thing that I can only describe as socially distributed accounting.
they are also doing a whole flavor just for research-oriented social media, geared towards the OpenScience community and the academia in general. It will launch soon.
Then they have a whole set of collaboration tools and groupware, that now kinda incorporates the basic features of Trello and GitHub, but on top of a social media with granular permission systems. There the use cases are many more, but it's also much more general-purpose than the research flavor. I think the end-game would be to have a platform that acts as a middleware and connect social life, gift-based collaboration, work and consumption in a single open platforms.
I also wrote an article envisioning a federated notion-like tool built on top of Bonfire, that clearly would allow to structure knowledge and implement no-code software on top of Bonfire, but clearly this would require a disproportionate effort for what the project is at the moment: https://fossil-milk-962.notion.site/Fractal-Software-for-Fractal-Futures-71e515597d6b424c994cae74f3341521?pvs=4
That's actually really neat! I'm going to have to play around with Notion so I can tell what you're talking about.
Disqus. Would be great to add federated comments to any news, blog or static site.
“Tiny knowledge projects”: https://observablehq.com/@jsomers/we-need-more-tiny-knowledge-projects-heres-one
Something like a decentralised dynamic web page like the one linked would be cool. But generally, stuff that’s more like “web gardens” where people can build “places” rather than feeds. Wikis being the best known successful example but still somewhat simple (in a good way).
Im working on this under the name of Ibis. Hopefully I can announce the first release within a few weeks.
There is a nostr app working on this. It's not very far along but it's an interesting idea https://wikistr.com/
federated linkedin would be baller and would take so much pain out of the job application process, and i never even thought of that before. yeah, of course its still ran by filthy capitalists, but it would save a ton of time for job applications
