Welcome!
Your first steps in the world of federated social networks.
Your first steps in the world of federated social networks.
If you landed on this page, you must be taking interest into federated social networks, or you were simply directed here by a friend. Anyway, heylo and welcome!
If you have ever joined a large chatroom online (or entered a large assembly), you must know that feeling one gets while trying to pick a proper greeting between hey and hello (hence heylo). If you just discovered federated social networks, you must be feeling the same: unsure about which application to use, which instance to join, or even wondering what federation and instances are all about.
This is exactly why heylo exists: to introduce you to the federation and answer the questions it raises, so you can benefit from its wonders while avoiding most pitfalls.
Most popular social networks are centralized, which means a company or a person owns the social network, requiring you and all your contacts to use their app, their website, and to trust them with your data while following their rules. This is problematic in a number of ways (described further in following pages), the most obvious of which: you are stuck in their system and you cannot move unless everyone does, or you will end up all alone on your own not-so-social network.
Federated social networks are very similar to political federations. Much like the USA states or German landers coexist within the federal laws of their country, instances of a federated network are virtual locations (each hosted on a server) that all agree to the same federal rules, while having their own local habits, traditions or laws.
Newcomers choose their instance like they choose the US state they want to move into. Each instance hosts its own community, provides varying services, and has its own local rules. Most importantly, the instance’s server will hold the newcomer’s data – it is important to pick an instance you can trust. However, people are still free to relocate to another location, and to communicate with people from different instances. The federated network provides the highways to link instances altogether.
In the following pages we cover federated social networks in more details including drawbacks, tradeoffs and frequently asked questions.
The year is 2021 and federated social networks are a real thing. A handful of them exist, each offering features to meet different needs (just like there exists different centralised social networks). The first step of this guide is thus to pick the social network that best fits your needs:
