Why a federated internet is a better internet
Since Facebook took over the world by storm, the internet has gone through a very fast evolution. After it became open for everyone, there was a decade of optimism, innovation and experimentation, which led us into the dotcom bubble. When that bubble popped, a new era began. The internet became more professional, with lots of investment in tech startups, and more and more people went online.
Since Facebook took over the world by storm, the internet has gone through a very fast evolution. After it became open for everyone, there was a decade of optimism, innovation and experimentation, which led us into the dotcom bubble. When that bubble popped, a new era began. The internet became more professional, with lots of investment in tech startups, and more and more people went online.
This lead to centralization of popular services, because lots of non-technical got their first introduction to the internet. Centralizing services meant more convienence, simplicity and accessibilty for people who previously found the internet too complex.
Who remembers the free webspace that came with a Belgacom (now Proximus) ADSL subscription? Hobbyists, Nerds and technologist used this in the pre-facebook era as their profile page back then. Essentially this was a “federated network”, because visitors did not have to be Belgacom clients to be able to browse nerdy profile pages. And besides Belgacom, every other ISP offered a similar service, so hobbyists could visit each others pages, regardless of their subscription.
Centralized internet
When Facebook was introduced, those webpages hosted on ISP’s free webspace quickly became irrelevant. New users didn’t know how to write HTML and Facebook didn’t require that knowlegde to have a profile page, which was revolutionary at the time. Understandably, Facebook gained massive popularity. In those days nobody was really concious about the fact that centralization could also have perverse effects. It took around 10 more years before the world started realizing that companies like Facebook and Google were collecting data about users’ behavior to offer it as a product to advertisers.
The commercial data collection is one thing, another big issue with centralized services is that when they go down, they go down for everyone at the same time. This happened to Twitter, Facebook and virtually every centralized platform at some point. In 2021 the messaging platform WhatsApp had such a severe outage, that 40 to 50 million users moved away from WhatsApp to Telegram or Signal. But Signal and Telegram are also centralized services, so they could face the same problem some time in the future. It always happens eventually, no system is perfect.
Another problem with centralized services is that there is a tipping point. At a certain size, such a vast network becomes impossible to manage by a central authority. Think about all the scandals like Cambridge Analytica, Friendship scams and other nefarious activities on the big social networks. Because most of the business models that support the network are based on advertising (you pay money, you get attention), they can easily be weaponized to influence public opinion. Social networks that do not rely on advertising, are much less susceptible to this danger.
Federated internet
Recently, an older idea got revived; the federated network model (as opposed to the centralized model). I can hear you ask, “what does federated mean?”, so here is the definition from Wikipedia: The fediverse (a portmanteau of “federation” and “universe”) is an ensemble of federated servers that are used for web publishing (social networking, etc) and file hosting, but which, while independently hosted, can communicate with each other.
The image is an over simplification. A real federated network can exists of tens of thousands of service providers!
In simpler words: in a centralized model, 1 party is the central “hub” where all the communication needs to go through. In a federated model, there are many “hubs” that all peer together, so that communication can take different routes, should one of the hubs experience problems. A federated network can never go down entirely, since it is quasi impossible for all parties to experiences issues at the same time. It is also better for the user’s privacy, since no single party can record all (meta-)data by itself.
Visit the neighbours
A really cool feature of Federated networks is that users can “visit the neighbours”. This means that even when your friends have signed up with a different provider than you did, you can still commucicate with one another over the network. Imagine yo would use a different centralized service than your friends, then the only way to stay in touch is that one party gives in to the choice of the other. In the Fediverse this is not even an issue.
Rules of the house
Another thing to keep in mind if you are exploring the fediverse, is that different providers have different implementations of the same app. Instead of having one company with a “take it or leave it” TOS (terms of service), you can sign up with a provider that has a TOS that fits your ways. And different providers do not have to offer the same TOS’s, which essentially means the end-user is left with more choice than with a centralized service.
And it’s not just the TOS. Different providers can cater to different audiences with different needs. For example, one provider of a Matrix node might allow users to join in as a guest, where another provider requires sign-up in combination with text-message verification. Both the provider and the user have much more choices than in the centralized world.
If everything is the same, life would be boring, right?!
Examples of federated applications
To conclude this short post, I will make a small list of popular centralized applications and their federated alternative.
| Purpose | Centralized | Federated |
|---|---|---|
| chat | Matrix | |
| microblog | Mastodon | |
| filesharing | Dropbox | Nextcloud |
| video | Youtube | Peertube |
| social | Pixelfed |
Doing Business in a federated network
Maybe you think: “Well, this is all very nice, but I am a business person. Facebook gives me the tools to reach my audience”. It is a perfectly valid thought. But here’s the thing: if you play it smart, you can leverage federated networks to grow your business. And it is going to cost you less. Since federated networks are designed for interoperability, it is much easier to interact and integrate with customers, suppliers and the environment. Federated networks have tens of millions of users, and mostly they less active on centralized networks, so you would not reach them with any paid for advertising. Being present on, and participate in federated networks will allow you to access a whole new audience. Growing that audience organically, presenting them your products and services in an authentic way, will help you build strong relationships with the customer, and ultimately develop a stable, long-term and profitable business.
Since federated networks are build by communities (of individuals, non-proftis and for-profits), there is much more discussion and participation in the ways the network will evolve. This is not true for centralized networks, where one entity can make or break the network. For instance, remember the Twitter API. When Twitter decided to block access to 3rd parties, a lot of businesses that were relying on this API for their commercial services where immediately put out of business. Similar situations have happened at the Facebook network.
Businesses that build on Federated networks will not have this problem. Sure, technology will change over time, but no single party can decide to cut access for thousands of others, without explanation. If technology changes, all participants’ services will remain accessible until they had the time to evolve.
Conclusion
Federated networks are an interesting model for the internet. They allow for much more freedom as opposed to centralized networks, and offer new opportunities for individuals, communities and businesses altogether. I believe federated networks will help us to solve the problems with the current social networks, and make the internet more democratic, more social and more fun. I hope I inspired you to explore the fediverse, why not start with Element?