Decentralised Social Media Offers An Alternative To Big Tech Platforms Like X And Meta. How Does It Work? Podcast

(MENAFN- The Conversation) When Elon Musk acquired twitter in 2022, many users looked for alternatives, fuelling a wave of online migration from the social media platform. Musk says he's using Twitter, now named X, to champion free speech and that“cancel culture has been cancelled”. But his closeness to Donald trump and his use of X to support far-right Political ideologies around the world, have driven even more people to explore new options.

How do these alternative platforms differ from traditional social media, and what does the future hold for these online spaces? In this episode of The Conversation Weekly podcast, we speak to Robert Gehl, Ontario Research Chair of Digital Governance at York University, Canada, about the evolving landscape of decentralised social media.

In 2018, technologists working at the World Wide Web Consortium built a new protocol for social media called ActivityPub . It would give birth to the Fediverse , a decentralised form of social media. Robert Gehl likens the Fediverse to email.

ActivityPub does the same, but for social media. Somebody could set up a server that speaks that protocol and invite their friends to sign up. Somebody else could set up a different type of server, and those two could connect using ActivityPub's protocol. Gehl explains: "You can build a big network out of all these little servers that removes a centre.”

Examples of platforms on the Fediverse include micro-blogging site Mastodon, image-sharing site Pixelfed and video-sharing platform PeerTube. By comparison to these decentralised systems, traditional social media platforms like X, Instagram or YouTube centralise user data, content, moderation and governance and control how information is organised and distributed to their users.

Other alternative platforms, which aren't part of the Fediverse, include Bluesky, which launched to the public in 2024. Bluesky grew out of Twitter, and Twitter's founder, Jack Dorsey, used to be on its board. However, Gehl says analysts still see Bluesky as a quite centralised because of the way it's designed.

Listen to the interview with Robert Gehl on The Conversation Weekly podcast, which also includes an introduction with Nehal El-Hadi, interim editor-in-chief at The Conversation Canada.

This episode of The Conversation Weekly was written and produced by Mend Mariwany with assistance from Katie Flood and Gemma Ware, Sound design was by Michelle Macklem, and theme music by Neeta Sarl.

Clips in this episode from NBC News and CTV News .

Listen to The Conversation Weekly via any of the apps listed above, download it directly via our RSS feed or find out how else to listen here .

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