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Since Mastodon saw its initial popularity circa 2017, I've noticed that most users and those reporting on it either don't think about the Fediverse as anything more than Mastodon, or treat its history as beginning with Eugen Rochko and the beginning of Mastodon. In fact, Mastodon is the latest in a long line of federated social networks going at least back to Identi.ca, and though I wasn't around for all of it, I find this history pretty interesting. (Thread; boosts welcome!)
This entry was edited (2 years ago)

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Tobias
My rememberings about that time are vague, but I think the term came up when the first Laconicats settled on new servers so explore their own Laconica servers. At some point (before the identicalypse) it came up.

It might have been in the time when Mistpark (now Friendica) implemented OStatus (and the diaspora* protocol) and we needed a broader term that was not platform specific.

At that time the people from the diaspora* project used the term "The Federation" a lot, and "The Fediverse" was the other side of the coin divided by the different protocols.

Marjolein did a great part of promoting the terms of Laconicats and Fediverse back then. But I have no clue who wrote it the first time.

@Linux Walt Alt (@lnxw37a2) {3EB165E0-5BB1-45D2-9E7D-93B31821F864} @a Claes unto himself πŸ‡ΈπŸ‡ͺπŸ‡­πŸ‡°πŸ’™πŸ’› @f00f/eris/continuum/etc
@clacke: inhibited exhausted pixie dream boy πŸ‡ΈπŸ‡ͺπŸ‡­πŸ‡°πŸ’™πŸ’› @Linux Walt Alt (@lnxw37a2) {3EB165E0-5BB1-45D2-9E7D-93B31821F864} @f00f/eris/continuum/etc
Tobias
@Matthew Exon @f00f/eris/continuum/etc yes, both Mistpark (Friendica) and diaspora* started out somewhat inspired by Facebook to make a non-public (private) socializing not limited by 140 characters on a self-hosted FLOSS platform possible.

IIRC @Sean Tilley once did an interview with @mike about the origins of Hubzilla at that time. And (again IIRC) Mike spoke a bit about it - but I cannot find that blogposting at the moment.
@Mike Macgirvin @Matthew Exon @f00f/eris/continuum/etc @Sean Tilley
f00f/eris/continuum/etc
The open-source microblogging software Laconica was developed by the company of the same name, owned by Evan Prodromou, starting around 2007. It was to be the basis of the social network Identi.ca, and a hosting service for the internal networks of various companies. Since Laconica was open-source, any user had the right to run their own public instance of the software, and Prodromou wanted these instances to be able to communicate with one another, like e-mail servers.
f00f/eris/continuum/etc
For this purpose, he created the OpenMicroBlogging protocol, which, although limited, allowed Identi.ca users to communicate with users of other Laconica instances, like Leo Laporte's TWiT Army. In August 2009, Laconica - both the company and the software - was renamed to StatusNet. The same year they began developing OStatus as a more advanced protocol for federation, which by March 2010 had allowed different StatusNet instances to act almost as a single social network.
f00f/eris/continuum/etc
Adding to this were other projects, such as Friendica and GNU social (which would eventually replace StatusNet), which used the same protocol but with a different (in the provided examples, Facebook-like) feature set. Though Identi.ca remained the central server that most users went to, this collective of servers communicating using OStatus became known as the "federated social web," or alternately as the "Fediverse".
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f00f/eris/continuum/etc
In 2013, StatusNet Inc. was running short on money. Prodromou closed registrations for Identi.ca and laid off the company's staff. But his efforts continued, as he developed a new, more extensible platform called Pump.io. It was never as popular as Identi.ca or StatusNet, but those interested in the future of the federated social web followed its development closely.
f00f/eris/continuum/etc
That June, StatusNet development merged with GNU social. Without Identi.ca as a central hub, the number of instances expanded and decentralization was realized. I started getting involved a few years after this change; I tried out GNU social as part of a broader effort to open-source my life, and I found quite a lot of people also involved in open-source.
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f00f/eris/continuum/etc
Unfortunately, the federated social web of this time was quite poorly moderated; there were servers with rules against certain kinds of harmful content, but their admins had difficulty keeping up with other instances that did not share the same rules, including a lot of "free speech" instances that permitted everything within the law. The existing platforms were not yet able to suspend entire instances, so the moderators of each instance were effectively required to moderate the whole fediverse.
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f00f/eris/continuum/etc
Mastodon's arrival on the scene nearly constituted a reset of the federated social web. Upon its release in 2016, it federated with GNU social, but it quickly eclipsed that platform in userbase, and most of the new users were unaware of the history behind the federated social web. While Mastodon expanded, GNU social seemingly stagnated, with major instances either disappearing or moving to more advanced federated platforms like Mastodon or Pleroma.
f00f/eris/continuum/etc
Mastodon saw significant expansion in 2017, with #DeleteFacebook and similar pushes against proprietary social networks, and a few larger companies supporting the platform. This was also the first time many instances began suspending, or "defederating from", entire other servers in the Fediverse.
#DeleteFacebook
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f00f/eris/continuum/etc
Blocklists of instances with problematic content were widely shared, effectively shutting those instances out of the network; most successful was the #FediBlock hashtag, started by Black users such as artist Marcia X. For a time, this was highly effective in protecting some users, and even led to the fediverse becoming a haven for queer, leftist, and neurodivergent communities. Unfortunately, racism on the Fediverse persists to this day, even on some otherwise well-moderated instances.
#Fediblock
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f00f/eris/continuum/etc
Around the same time, Pump.io's ActivityPump protocol was being built upon by a number of experts to form the W3C standard ActivityPub. Mastodon, Friendica, and Pleroma were eager to adopt the new standard, even before it was formally published, and eventually Mastodon and Pleroma would drop their support for OStatus. The Fediverse would continue to expand and new platforms were developed - PeerTube for video sharing, Pixelfed for image sharing, BookWyrm for book reviewing, etc.
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f00f/eris/continuum/etc
In October of 2022, billionaire tech mogul Elon Musk completed his purchase of Twitter, the platform that the largest Fediverse platforms had always aimed to compete with. Under his leadership, in just a month, most of the company's staff was fired, several features of the website became broken, right-wing content was massively promoted, and fears rapidly rose about the website dying or becoming the exclusive territory of the far-right.
f00f/eris/continuum/etc
As a result, many fledgling social networks, as well as established networks with better reputations, absorbed massive influxes of Twitter users. The Fediverse was among the more established networks; it saw activity rise into the millions of users, and that's where things stand now. Amidst chaos on the large instances, the usefulness of the Fediverse in finding communities has increased greatly.
f00f/eris/continuum/etc
But this influx has brought new challenges as well - slowdowns and moderation issues on many instances as they have difficulty absorbing the increased traffic, a further increase in the zealous use of instance suspensions threatening to fragment the network and create centralized silos, and many new users having difficulty understanding how the network functions.

(Thanks for making it to the end of this thread! I hope I didn't make any egregious errors.)
f00f/eris/continuum/etc
A couple additional notes:
- There were plenty of federated communication platforms before Identi.ca. Usenet, FIDOnet (federated BBSes), IRC networks, and of course, e-mail are examples. The lineage to Mastodon is less direct, but it's there.
- The Diaspora social network, founded and crowdfunded in 2010 by four NYU students and inspired by the ideas of Eben Moglen, is another large federated microblogging platform, but uses its own protocol and is separate from the others.
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f00f/eris/continuum/etc
- The maintainers of GNU social also worked on the federated music community GNU FM, of which the most prominent instance was Libre.fm (which I also used around the same time I used GNU social). As @mattl describes it, GNU social was his effort to redirect use of GNU FM as a social network, to something better suited for social networking. Both projects started around 2009.
@Dr. Matt Lee πŸŽƒ
This entry was edited (2 years ago)
f00f/eris/continuum/etc
Made some edits to the thread. @clacke tells me that the term Fediverse has been in use since 2011-12, and I can believe that. @jesuisatire confirmed my suggestion that instance suspensions didn't exist in the fediverse during the GNU social era - at the very least, Friendica did not have such a feature.
@clacke: inhibited exhausted pixie dream boy πŸ‡ΈπŸ‡ͺπŸ‡­πŸ‡°πŸ’™πŸ’› @jesuiSatire β€¦α˜›βΜ€α•α·
f00f/eris/continuum/etc
More edits: comments by @mattl indicate that the GNU social project existed long before StatusNet merged with it, which is confirmed by this FSF blog: <https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/fsf-to-host-gnu-social-architecture-meeting>. I've updated my wording to reflect that.
@Dr. Matt Lee
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f00f/eris/continuum/etc
Another note (updated thanks to detailed explanations in a reply by @clacke):
I previously left out Diaspora from this thread because it doesn't directly federate with the social networks I mentioned, but it does, partially. Thanks to common elements in Diaspora and StatusNet software stacks, users of Identi.ca, and StatusNet and GNU social instances, can see posts from Diaspora users. However, the differences mean that Diaspora users can't see their posts, and replies do not work.
@clacke: inhibited exhausted pixie dream boy πŸ‡ΈπŸ‡ͺπŸ‡­πŸ‡°πŸ’™πŸ’›
This entry was edited (2 years ago)
f00f/eris/continuum/etc
Friendica also has long had support for federation with Diaspora, and both the OStatus and ActivityPub protocols, plus extensions to read many other social networking and link aggregation services.
Cole LeFavour (they/them)
appreciate all the history. Thank you.
Mike Lerch
great thread, And that was my exact reaction when I understood the model: this is like a BBS joining FidoNet or WWIVNet!
Neo Qwerty
Thank you very much for this thorough history thread! It's amazing to see the evolutionary paths of tech like this.
Beverly Bambury
This was fantastic. Thank you so much for a concise overview!
maloki 🍍:ghostbat:
I feel like it's valuable to maybe slightly expand on the ActivityPub section.
But overall it's a great summary, and matches with the knowledge I have too.

Thank you for the writeup.
f00f/eris/continuum/etc
@maloki if I were more familiar with the protocol internals I'm sure I'd have something to say about how the differences between OpenMicroBlogging, OStatus, and ActivityPub influenced things but alas, I'm not sure what else to say...

thanks though!
@maloki 🍍:ghostbat:
maloki 🍍:ghostbat:
yeah, I'm familiar with it only because I saw into one or two meetings, very few, and the has been an ActivityPub conference, and because I know some people before and since. Who worked on it.

But pretty much the entire team who hacked it together are trans, which might not be amazing technologically, but definitely culturally (even if some didn't realize at the time).

May I follow you here, and or maybe from my more tech related account? @maloki@goblin.technology
@maloki
f00f/eris/continuum/etc
@maloki@rage.love @maloki@goblin.technology yeah, I follow the whole team. it's two trans girls (maybe three, not sure if Jessica Tallon is), an enby, and the identi.ca guy. all awesome folks beyond just their tech work

and please follow away! you may also be interested in my other accounts, especially:
- @f00fc7c8@libranet.de, sort of my secondary main lately
- @continuum1024, where I stream SuperTux
- @f00fc7c8_videos, where I plan to move my videos in the future
@maloki 🍍:ghostbat: @F00FC7C8 likes to infodump @F00FC7C8 Videos @accounts/continuum1024 @maloki
Jon
this is a great history. Can I include a quote from it and link to it in "Mastodon: a partial history"? Some of the feedback I got on the draft was that I should include more discussions of the broader fediverse.

Here's the current draft, I'm in the midst of reworking the 2016 discussions to have more context on the fediverse.

https://privacy.thenexus.today/mastodon-a-partial-history/

Mastodon: a partial history (DRAFT)

Feedback welcome!
Jon (The Nexus Of Privacy)
Jon
thanks much, I'll let you know when I've got the new draft up!
f00f/eris/continuum/etc
@jdp23 that's a nice way of putting the article in context, I think. Appreciate the effort to inject nuance and multiple perspectives.
@Jon
Wouter Tebbens
by then I was identi.ca/wtebbens - I believe the toots of the first phase went lost, but still good to see those efforts of an emerging federated net.
Everton Zanella Alvarenga
excellent thread on the history of the #Fediverse.
#fediverse
mauimom
still trying to understand it all.
I see I have even more to understand than I thought 😬
f00f/eris/continuum/etc
@mauimom Ultimately if you know how to use Mastodon and understand that there are different servers, you're fine. No need to perfectly understand its history or internals, though it helps. This thread was my attempt to place Mastodon in context, so the simple version is - there's a long history to this social network we're on - the fediverse - and Mastodon is just one part of it.
@mauimom
AndrΓ© Koot
I posted some of my experience on my blog https://blog.myfed.space/mastodon-or-else

Mastodon or else? | Make Fed Work

What are your server options next to Mastodon?
blog.myfed.space
dr πŸ› οΈπŸ›°οΈπŸ“‘πŸŽ§:blobfoxcomputer:
identi.ca? nntp would like a word. as would email.
f00f/eris/continuum/etc
@davidr I'm not saying Identi.ca was the first federated communication platform, just that it's roughly where the fediverse as we know it began. It federated with GNU social, which federated with Mastodon, and it led to the development of both of the protocols Mastodon has used to communicate between servers. I mention email and Usenet in a note at the end of the thread.
@dr πŸ› οΈπŸ›°οΈπŸ“‘πŸŽ§:blobfoxcomputer:
clacke: inhibited exhausted pixie dream boy πŸ‡ΈπŸ‡ͺπŸ‡­πŸ‡°πŸ’™πŸ’›
@f00f/eris/continuum/etc @dr πŸ› οΈπŸ›°οΈπŸ“‘πŸŽ§:blobfoxcomputer: The thread starts "a long line of federated social networks", but the relevance of identi.ca is that it's the start of *one* network with multiple node implementations, the Fediverse, which is now running on its third protocol (or fourth, depending on how one counts).
@f00f/eris/continuum/etc @dr πŸ› οΈπŸ›°οΈπŸ“‘πŸŽ§:blobfoxcomputer:
Garry Knight
I wondered why you hadn't mentioned Hubzilla. When the G+ "sunsetting" announcement was made I set up accounts on Diaspora, Friendica, and Hubzilla. The servers for the latter two were slow so I ended up on Pluspora from some years. Now on Friendica at libranet.de and moving over to social.trom.tf, though I still have the diasp.org account open.

I used Usenet more than anything and BBS before that, going back to the 80s. Mastodon is best, IMO but could be better with more chrs, etc
f00f/eris/continuum/etc
@garry To be honest, that's mainly because I don't have much experience with Hubzilla. All I know is that it's extremely advanced with a built-in CMS, and was created by a maintainer of Friendica (perhaps based on it?) I do use Friendica though - also on libranet.de - and I like the feature set a lot.
@Garry Knight
Garry Knight
It's obviously meant to be more than just a Facebook replacement. It lets you build your own website, for example, as well as having your own photo gallery, set up your own forums (like Friendica), cloud storage, and more.
f00f/eris/continuum/etc
@garry Sounds like I should give it a shot. The website building and cloud storage sorta sound like Misskey features, but I'm guessing they would work a lot better in the more established Hubzilla.
@Garry Knight
Anne
@garry I remember those early days circa 2006. Had no idea they were all still running (with the exception of Diaspora which I still get notifications for) until I joined Mastodon a couple of weeks ago. Mid 2000s were such hopeful times! Dare we hope again?
@Garry Knight
Officially Jessica!
thanks for the write up. New to mastodon and the fediverse so I’m happy to learn some of how we got here.
Mike Taylor πŸ¦•
I've only just got got to this thread. Just wanted to thank you for it, really useful!
Terrafied Kestrel :v_trans:
I was an early adopter of Identi.ca.
Adam Gurri
identi.ca! I’ve been trying to remember what that was called
Dekkzz :emacs:
Indeed not Mastodon isnt the be and end all of the #Fediverse

https://emacs.ch/@shelenn@nerdica.net/109530309717349418

dekks herton :emacs:

@boles What may be a workaround is to host the media externally then link in your posts. Mastodon servers host a lot of media internally, it's one of the "i...
emacs.ch
#fediverse
clacke: inhibited exhausted pixie dream boy πŸ‡ΈπŸ‡ͺπŸ‡­πŸ‡°πŸ’™πŸ’›
@f00f/eris/continuum/etc @NΓ©stor Yes. Mike has a history of dropping a project and starting a new one based on the old one. Sometimes, with Friendica and Hubzilla, a community has built up and continues maintaining that iteration. Often not.

Mistpark -> Friendica/Friendika -> Red Matrix -> Hubzilla -> Zap + Osada -> ??? -> Streams
@f00f/eris/continuum/etc @NΓ©stor πŸ‡΅πŸ‡Έ
Amelia Bjornsdottir (she, they, he)
This is the only post of this thread that I see as at the 13th of February, 2023.
f00f/eris/continuum/etc
hmm. I just boosted then unboosted the last post in it, idk it that'll do anything. I could also just compile it back into one text file and send it to you if you really want to read it.
NΓ©stor πŸ‡΅πŸ‡Έ
I was unaware about the new ones. I'll take a look to them, thanks!

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