Happy #GlobalSwitchDay

Signal isn't federated ^[1][2][3.1]; it's decentralized ^[1][2][3.2]. Though, for all practical purposes, I would generally argue that it's centralized.

Yeah. I love Signal but it doesn't belong in that list. Dansup (creator of loops and pixelfed) is apparently working on "Sup" that will be a decentralized alternative to whatsapp.
- To me this person sounds like they have too many big projects at once. I wish them success tho
- XMPP is an established federated messaging app with encryption.
- Delta.chat already exists
- sup is how I update my FreeBSD /usr/src tree! Twenty years ago.
Don't let perfect be the enemy of good
- My comment wasn't protesting the use of Signal; it was rather clarifying the misinformation in OP's post — ie misinformation that Signal is a federated service.
Signal is hostile to third party clients like Molly.im as well
- That's not true. Moxie only had a problem with a fork called "LibreSignal" because it was using their name. He didn't want users to confuse the apps.
it’s decentralized
No it’s not. From literally your own comment:
Signal relies on centralized servers
For a decentralized messenger use https://delta.chat/
- it’s decentralized
  No it’s not. From literally your own comment:
  Signal relies on centralized servers
  I was using "decentralized" to mean that there isn't centralized control over ownership of the service in general — eg anyone can spin up their own server (impractical, imo, pushing it more towards being centralized) and people can use it (making it decentralized, imo (Please correct me if I am wrong, but I do think my usage of the term is appropriate in this way.)), but people who use that server can only communicate with that server (making it not federated). But yes it could still be said to be centralized in that it operates on a client-server model ^[1].
  This is more an argument of definitions, though. I'm not trying to claim anything in bad faith.
Yeah, Moxie has openly shot down the idea of adding federation to Signal, and I’ve never heard them claim Signal was decentralized.
Matrix is federated, distributed, and decentralized.
XMPP is federated and decentralized.
- Matrix is […] distributed […].
  It is? How so?
but I no longer believe that it is possible to build a competitive federated messenger at all.
The fact that we have a telephone system that works with separate providers contradicts this sentiment. If I want to pick up the phone and talk to my cousin's puppy in New Zealand, I can do that without creating an account on his provider's service.
I don't understand why we've forgotten this as a society. Yes, it was difficult to upgrade the phone systems over the past century, but it's worth it in my opinion. I really wish we'd start seeing government regulation that says "you should be able to talk to someone on a service without having to create an account on said service." I thought the DMA would do this, but sadly, Whatsapp still requires an account to talk to people using that service. Very disappointing.
- How is the puppy?
  As for interoperability between services… Monetization of surveillance data. The social media companies are Ad companies, and they make their money surveilling people and selling access. It’s harder to build an accurate model of a person when only pieces of data is available, and they need to have more data then the other Ad tech companies they’re competing with.

For the avid readers out there, bookwyrm is a fantastic alternative to goodreads.

https://joinbookwyrm.com/

Yes it’s excellent! Also noting for those that aren’t aware: Goodreads is owned by Amazon.
Folks should also check out neodb.social . it's good reads, letterboxd, and steam reviews all in one.
- I've been looking for something to track my physical book, music, and game collections. An instance of this might work nicely. Thanks!
It could be but I find the android app buggy (this month I've been using bookwyrm, GR, Open Reads, and The Story Graph to compare them all and still nothing is as smooth as GR. Plus bookwyrm has no apple app. I love where Bookwyrm is going but right now the switch is not the best
- It doesn't have an app, how is it buggy?

Signal is not Fediverse! Element/Matrix is!

Absolutely, signal isn't federated, but I don't want my messaging app to be federated. I want my social media to be federated. Lemmy is good because it's open. Signal is good because it's shut.
- That’s your preference and there’s nothing wrong with it. Doesn’t make Signal a Fediverse alternative. Matrix fits that use case.
  I prefer my messaging to be federated for the same reason I don’t want my other services depending on the benevolence of a single actor. But that’s me.
Don't use Matrix the devs knew about sidechannel vulnerabilities and ignored them for years. This is peak negligence and should immediately disqualify you from touching anything security related.
- You do not have a solution.
- the author literally picked random projects from github tagged as matrix, without considering their prevalence or whether they are actually maintained etc.
  if you actually look at % of impacted clients, it’s tiny.
  meanwhile, it is very unclear that any sidechannel attack on a libolm based client is practical over the network (which is why we didn’t fix this years ago). After all, the limited primitives are commented on in the readme and https://github.com/matrix-org/olm/issues/3 since day 1.
  From your link.
No, Matrix is federated differently.
- And Signal isn’t?!
Element/matrix aren't part of the fediverse, either. It doesn't speak AP.
- Matrix is federated, Signal is not.

Unfortunately, the switch from YouTube to PeerTube has not worked for me so far. I can't find a decent instance (not full of right-wing/conspiracy content) with interesting stuff that also allows me to make an account.

Yes finding the right instance on peertube is a nightmare — and also the general lack of quality content, or subtitling, which makes it as good as useless for deaf people like me.
- Yeah, it is already hard to find reasons to use it for the average user, so people with disabilities (deafness, blindness,intellectual etc.) probably even have reasons to NOT use them (no subtitles, each instance might have different elements or structure that might be a nightmare for screen readers, it might be too complex for some people, etc.).
Have a look here for potential instances: https://lemmy.wtf/post/15816115 and also check these links out for channels to follow: https://lemmy.wtf/post/15810205 / https://peertube.wtf/home

Ah. I see...

Don't worry, your successor isn't offering anything big. You'll still be around for many more days to come.
I don’t get the joke

Hear me out.
Creators should be hosting peer tubes. And they should host exclusively their own content. Fans of their can subscribe to whatever systems they want to pay and support.
For creators, it's a backup for when YouTube the project inevitably fails. For fans as well. But it's also a backup of their content.
- Tech-savvy content creators, sure...
  Your average content creator that wants to make Minecraft videos? Unrealistic.
  I hate the monopoly Youtube has, but all of the federated alternatives have a learning curve the general public isn't willing to deal with.
A lot of youtubers make a living posting videos.
They dont have a good enough reason to risk going to a much smaller audience with no ads and no membership system
They also probably arent knowledgeable enough about computers to switch
- You don’t need to have a YouTube login to watch those. But you can join Peertube to post your content that you make without money as an end goal.
For Mastodon, the people you follow will also need to switch. This is even harder than getting your friends to switch.
Well I switched from the birdsite to Mastodon because a) I like to shout in the void and b) see what other people are shouting into the void. Doesn't really ultimately matter who's doing the shouting. People who go to social media exclusively for news and updates are a bit strange when you really think about it. You've got to have the shout in you.
(I'm only being half facetious here)
You also can't just switch from whatsapp to signal. I have hundreds of contacts on whatsapp that message me constantly there, and 2 on signal.
- @jonjuan That's totally true! I tried to use WhatsApp just for work and Telegram for my friends and contacts, but only my wife and mom were talking to me there 😂. However, I think it's important to keep talking to people about alternatives. That way, we can switch from this "proprietary web" to a free one.
Remember the early days of YouTube? When people made garage videos for fun? Remember Vines? When people were making videos instead of businesses making content?
That’s what Peertube is for. It’s to have fun. Showcase your high school band. Talk about your potted plants. Share your excitement about trains. It’s not to make money. It’s to live.
PipePipe is on F-Droid

How is signal considered part of the fediverse?

It's not federated, but it is an open source secure texting alternative.
It should be something like SimpleX

Unpopular Opinion Lemmy and PeerTube logo look ugly.

Unpopular opinion: your opinion is not unpopular at all.
I think it's just the colours for the peertube one. I like that it's three individual play icons to signify the federation aspect, but the colours are just dull.
- Yeah it’s an easy fix to update the colors, logo shape can remain.
I like the Lemmy one, but peertubes logo looks like it's gonna stab my eyeballs in my sleep
- The colors in the peertube logo are pretty hideous.
The Lemmy logo always looks so sad or angry to me. Wished he could look happier.
The only ones on the right I really like are signal and friendica. (I had never seen the friendica logo before. This is really well done whoever designed that. Good job.)
All the big guys of course can afford graphic design teams and marketing/PR research.
The notable exception for me is mastodon. While I’m still not a big fan of that logo either, it certainly looks better than the X logo. I’m guessing Musk DOGE’d his design teams in favor of some yes-men.
They're horrible

Signal is centralized, loops is closed source and not accepting new users.

Loops will be open sourced later they say.
Is Loops open source? It will be! We plan on open sourcing the platform after it reaches a stable and easy to maintain state.
- That really is not a satisfying answer. It is incredibly nebulous and even if it did have a nice definition I guarantee most software developers will tell you a lot of software rarely reaches that state.
  I can see why they might want to avoid 1000 GitHub issues bike shedding things but they could open source the code and just not have open contribution
- That means very little to me. Actions speak louder than words, and it would probably help the development of loops if it was actually open source.
- Loops is anti-libre software confirmed.
So Matrix it is?
- I was told that unless you self host, matrix is less secure because it leaks more metadata. Something to consider

I support the cause in general but: Signal is not federated at all. It may seem like a decent alternative to WhatsApp but is it really? It still falls under the same US jurisdiction. Let's say the US gov starts agressively prosecuting dissidents and certain minorities (they already do): can and should we still use signal in this case? I don't think so. Sadly i can't name a much better alternative. Maybe matrix. But it has other issues.

Signal is open source. They absolutely do always comply with US warrants. They have never provided any information to US law enforcement, because they can't access it. They literally have no way of accessing the information contained inside the texts. The most they could provide is metadata, but they currently aren't collecting that. I also think if they started, it would not work well for their user base. You can see all their requests for information, and the responses they gave, here: https://signal.org/bigbrother/
- I really hope they stand strong. We need some influential entities standing up to the shit going on. Sadly, given the current situation in the US I have to assume that the Trump gang will sooner or later try to crack down on Signal. Who knows, forcing them to give out meta data to identify dissidents etc.
  At least the open-source app makes me hope that there's a little less nasty things they can do than Facebook/Whatsapp.
We should stop being naive. Immersing ourselves as a society into facebook and twitter significantly contributed to the shit situation we are in now. Going to Signal seems like a short term solution. We should have some idea where to go on the long term.
- Facebook and twitter are not the same as signal. The signal protocol is a free open source project, that WhatsApp, Signal, and many other use. It secures the data so that whatever servers they are stored on, the company storing it does not know what the texts say. Facebook and Twitter are all about getting as much data as possible. Even though WhatsApp uses the signal protocol, they still collect all metadata with the texts (which is really what they want anyway). Moving to open source project is absolutely the long term goal to get out of this shit hole.
Jurisdiction is not that important. Even if it was in Switzerland it'd have to comply with international law enforcement and warrants. The key is that sure Signal is obliged to give out whatever data it has, but the point is that it doesn't have much useful data to give. It's the same as Mullvad, and a far smarter approach than "lol we just gonna ignore the warrant huhuhu look at us we host somewhere in Shitzerfuck" (oh btw "We are in X country which is not in N eyes" is just marketing).
Oh and btw the same goes for instances of the fediverse (which are ran by volunteers you need to trust), and if they don't comply and the US government really wants to break into them they probably will find a way. Doesn't even need some complicated backdoors or anything it just needs to find an OPSEC slip-up, do some social engineering, arrest someone or at worst find a bug to exploit, and I can guarantee that unless you have some serious security wizards running your instance you're not beating the FBI there and if the FBI is really persistent and focused on you for some reason then the wizards won't be enough you need state actors.
If your threat model actually includes the US government (aka you're actually in danger and not some paranoia or just-in-case situation, be realistic with yourself) and there's credible threats you may be targeted by it or other governments then you're probably going to be using tor, briar, all that jazz, and wouldn't be on lemmy. If you're just some guy who just needs to message your family and shit Signal is perfectly fine, I can tell you that unless you're a serious threat to the government they won't waste resources cracking down ways to capture you via signal or whatever you use that is even somewhat secure (so no telegram, no WhatsApp, no messenger, etc), even if you're a minority or activist, if not because you're not important enough then because they have other easier ways to do it.
Edit: oh and btw Signal was banned in Ruzzia (a country way more authoritarian than the US currently is) because the FSB couldn't crack it so that goes to show it is pretty secure.
- (oh btw "We are in X country which is not in N eyes" is just marketing)
  Why do you say this? There are real data-sharing agreements between the Eyes.
  Doesn't even need some complicated backdoors or anything it just needs to find an OPSEC slip-up
  This already happened with kolektiva, unfortunately, but from what I hear they've since strengthened their security.
Let’s say the US gov starts agressively prosecuting dissidents and certain minorities (they already do): can and should we still use signal in this case?
Definitely no. Russian government already is aggressively prosecuting dissidents and you can't join Signal there. I don't know whether it's due to sanctions or if the government is blocking 2FA SMS messages. In either case, it is impossible to join without a phone number confirmation. At least I wasn't able to. I don't see the USA being that far off with all the recent TikTok drama.
- you can't join Signal there. I don't know whether it's due to sanctions or if the government is blocking 2FA SMS messages. In either case, it is impossible to join without a phone number confirmation.
  What do you mean? You need a phone number to join Signal in any country.
There is also simplex chat

A federated social fitness app(like Strava) would be cool

instead of switching ive mostly just been ditching entirely. I need less time interacting with internet people.

literally the only thing on this list im still using is facebook messenger, for my work colleagues. and youtube. everything else ive migrated (reddit-lemmy), or abandoned and torched

It’s funny how things work out.
I’ve spent years checking social media multiple times per day, and due to current (and not so current) events, I initially just deleted twitter. I tried mastodon, but it was a complete echo chamber. Twitter on the other hand was 25% bots and 50% porn, so I just deleted it. Turns out I didn’t miss it.
I recently did the same with Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and Snapchat. Guess what, not missing those either.
Facebook messenger is tough to get rid of though. I have kids that attend after school activities, and there aren’t really any easy fixes. I doubt I can successfully persuade 100+ people to migrate to signal just because of my political crusade.
It’s not being helped by the fact that ~75% of the people here use iPhones, so most communication not going through messenger goes through iMessage. Last I checked I knew a total of 4 people on signal, despite having 50+ people i regularly communicate with over messenger or iMessage.
- I doubt I can successfully persuade 100+ people to migrate to signal just because of my political crusade.
  Don't know till you try! And if you're playing the long game, you don't need to convince 100+ people -- the more individuals that join, the easier it will become to convince everyone else to make the switch too.
Only ones I use are YouTube and fb marketplace because Craigslist is totally dead here, but it's from an alt account I've never used for anything at all.
- Check out Flohmarkt https://codeberg.org/flohmarkt/flohmarkt Instance list here: https://codeberg.org/flohmarkt/flohmarkt/wiki/flohmarkt-instances
More recently I've felt like there's issues with being completely disconnected from any sort of critical mass. If I wanted to join a protest in my local city, I have doubts any of the fringe social networks could organize that. I can do my part to try to get more people on there.
It's part of why I joined BlueSky over X. It's more popular, and issues be what they are, that counts for a lot.

Hi, I think too many people are focusing too much on the type of software included in this chart. I don't think the goal of the person that created the chart was to create the ultimate guide to move to the Fediverse or FOSS apps with all the options available for them. I believe it prioritizes simplicity, and it's clearly directed towards people unaware that these alternatives exist.

Most people I know don't even know what the Fediverse is, and I think this initiative is for them.

I know that debating which FOSS/Fedi apps are the best is a big matter of concern for people that are already aware of the problems some platform have. But focusing too much on this debate not only creates more division among supporters of FOSS/Fedi, but it is also drawing attention from the main point: Bringing more people to the Fediverse.

Thank you. Please jump in faster with a tldr of this on other posts like this.

Loops.video isn't accepting new users atm. Even if it was, I got in on early signup and I have next to zero functionality out of it rn. Just informing the curious masses

Loops isnt even federated or open source yet. Deleted my account
Loops really isn't ready for primetime. It's too new and unpolished, and will need a bit more time.
I wonder if peertube can scale. YouTube has a whole sophisticated system for ingesting and transcoding videos into dozens of formats, with tradeoffs being made on computational complexity versus file size/bandwidth, which requires some projection on which videos will be downloaded the most times in the future (and by which types of clients, with support for which codecs, etc.). Doing this can require a lot of networking/computing/memory/storage resources, and I wonder if the software can scale.
Yeah it’s no where near ready for mass adoption. It’s made a couple improvements, but it crashes every time I try to leave a comment.

I was already on Mastodon by just having a Vivaldi (the chromium browser) account, and it's just lovely I've spent most of the day setting up lemmy, even though I joined feddit.dk 2 years ago, it's only just now I'm taking it seriously.
And, while not related to the fediverse per se, I switched to linux a year ago.
The only service that's hard to drop/switch away from is Youtube imo.

It doesn’t have to be an all or nothing. If you have a decent ad blocker and don’t interact, even if you’re logged in, you’re already out of YouTube. Leave your interactions and uploads to Peertube.
I’ve removed yt from my phone and it was a positive change. I just watch stuff I get like sent or I search for. No more rabbit holes. Also no ads, background playback, playback with the phone locked… the only drawback is that closed captions don’t work full screen.
I’m having more trouble dropping Facebook messenger.
Pretty much everything “real life social” is organized through that. While I haven’t posted anything on Facebook for years, news from my local community, kids after school activities, birthday parties, etc are all organized through that.

I keep seeing this type stuff but neither peertube or friendica are genuine replacements at this point, mastodon is weaksauce compared to akkoma or a misskey fork, and loops is alpha software. also yes signal is centralized but it just works and has contact discovery so it owns matrix and xmpp when compared to whatsapp. basically none of this stuff is truly ready

As software, PeerTube is great and there’s actually plenty of content to consume if you can find it. The more content creators we can get to use PeerTube, the more appealing PeerTube will also become.
Check this link out, if looking for content: https://peertube.wtf/
- "If you can find it" ... that's the crucial point I suppose ... but without a discovery algorithm, interesting creators, and a VAST content archive, it can hardly be called an "alternative" for YouTube.
  When I was looking into it I found the best use case was to use it as a self-hosted video archive to replace/extend my Vimeo. At least at that point, all instances that were remotely interesting were not taking any users, and the generic ones seemed to be very far away from what I'm doing content-wise.
  And I guess as long as that's the case, and you have no ways to monetize content nor any significant reach due to the federated fragmentation, I don't think it's an interesting software/federated platform for creators ...
matrix too has contact discovery, if you add your phone number (or email). most users don't, and that tells me something
- they don't have it on the new app yet, and it's not super intuitive to begin with compared to signal or whatsapp
[Signal] has contact discovery so it owns matrix and xmpp when compared to whatsapp
Can you please elaborate? Idk what this means
- It means that, because signal mandates you to use your phone as ID, all your phone contacts that have signal are immediately signal contacts. Matrix, XMPP, SimpleX, etc. can’t really do that. That’s by choice, to preserve privacy, but it does create a friction point when migrating.
- matrix and xmpp just don't have the intuitive onboarding that signal has when coming from whatsapp

Switching from WhatsApp to any other messaging service isn't a realistic option for quite many places. I'd be more than willing to switch but of all the people in my contacts (including my entire customer base) there's like 3 people using Signal but every single one of them has WhatsApp. Even the 60+ year olds.

This does not help.
- And yet it gets repeated (and upvoted) in every thread.
- Help with what?
Same (Brazil), Whatsapp is pretty much a requirement and I hate that I'm forced to give Meta my information by using their shitty app.
- I’ll link my previous comment and add that it’s easier for Brazil.
  Lembra de quando prenderam uns políticos pelos bate-papos do Telegram? É só lembrar a tua família que o WhatsApp tem a mesma fraqueza. Pergunta se eles confiam no Zuckerberg outra mandar os dados bancários que toda família manda de vez em quando. Documentos escaneados, dados pessoais…
  Não consegui convencer os meus amigos mas confesso que poderia ter sido um pouco mais insistente. Quando o pessoal manda screenshot de transação bancária pelo wpp pra acertar conta de bar, dá pra dar uma instigada de leve. “A AI do Zuckerberg adorou ver os teus dados.” E deixa assim, vez por outra um comentário curto pra elevar a consciência de privacidade das pessoas. Uma hora vem. Ou não, mas tás fazendo tua parte.
I would say it's a step by step work. I have moved my family from Whatsapp to Signal years ago and then to Matrix. I forced them in some way but I just said "sorry if you want to keep contact we will have to find another app, I don't accept Whatsapp ToS." It took some time but my close family and friends are there and I regularly get someone to join, friend or family. It's still close circle but it's also a good thing. Same went with work. Colleagues wanted to do a whatsapp group for a project and I basically said "No, best I can do is Signal." and they went with it.
- Yeah I don't want to be that guy telling others to install an app to stay in contact with me. That would be extremely hypocritical on my part as I'm the one those people who refuses to install any apps people tells me to and it wouldn't solve the issue anyway as then I'd still be using WhatsApp as well but now I just have one more additional app to communicate with certain people.
  Nowdays doesn't seem to matter where ever you go there's always an app you need to install to do XY and Z. I don't even have a Lemmy app as I only use it via browser. Same applies to YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Pixelfed, Reddit and so on.
- I stopped with Signal. Getting coworkers/family to move to signal was enough work, but I also trust the signal protocol enough to use a centralized service
There is always SMS for these.
- At least WhatsApp is encrypted and let you have propre group chat
My trouble as well, I'd love to switch from Whatsapp, but literally every person I talk to and most people in my city/estate/country uses It.
There's a "vendor lock" term, maybe this would be a "social lock"?
- It has to start with someone. I made my entire family switch to signal by boycotting WhatsApp. I just said, of you want to contact me your can either SMS, email or install signal. It was surprisingly easy. For non family members, I tell people to switch all the time. Most of my contacts now use signal. It was worth the trouble.
I got my family out after some high profile data breaches on WhatsApp. We feel a lot safer sharing personal info over Signal and the switchover was painless. Even the video calls are great on signal.
There’s inertia, for sure, but once you highlight that some evil corp isn’t the one handling grandma’s inheritance data, it makes for a compelling case.
We all still have WhatsApp because we need to talk to the others. But our family chat only exists on Signal now.

I'm surprised this hasn't been said yet... but what I hate most about Signal is its requirement for a phone number. I don't want to be identified, and I want to be able to create multiple separate accounts with different identities if I want to.

I also hate the fact that it's a mobile-first service. Yes, there is a desktop application (and just one really crappy one at that), but it's clearly designed to revolve first and foremost around your phone and be virtually impossible to use without one. As someone who hates writing on a 3-inch screen, this is a also non-starter for me.

I understand the arguments about perfectionism, but this is too much. I'll stick with XMPP, Matrix and IRC, thanks.

It's meant to replace people's text messaging apps with .i imal barriers to entry. People's existing SMS/MMS contacts aren't stored by user account names, but by phone number.
When I added Signal to my device, I was able to open up my existing contacts and go.
- My understanding from what you're writing (and from this article) is that the phone number is really the account number. That's all well and fine, but then they force you to verify that the number is yours (or at the very least, one that you have access to because you need to receive a confirmation over SMS), so you can't use something more private. And sure, it makes it a little harder to find your new contact, but I don't think it's really that big of a deal - just exchange your other "account number" via some other channel.
  Besides, don't think for a second that when this identifying information inevitably falls into the wrong hands that it will benefit you in any way. "What are you hiding, citizen?" and all that bullshit.
  The part of it that bothers me is the sense of entitlement that these companies exhibit. The "Give us your phone number or fuck off" sentiment is something I just refuse to accept. If Google forces us to do the same and we refuse, what makes Signal think that we'll do it for them when they're so much smaller by comparison? Especially when you're trying to claim you're more secure and private to people that much more tech savvy than average, this just comes off as not understanding your audience very well. I'm sure I'm not the only one that is holding out against using Signal because of this.
- They used to allow their client to be used to send unsecured SMS. Then they stopped. Whatever they thought they were doing, they killed the simplest path to onboarding laypeople they had. I kinda gave up on signal after that.
I’ll
That's why Signal's spreading and your not.

why signal?

Because atm is the most adopted alternative but isn't any better then SimpleX.
- but it is not federated. that would be matrix

Why didn't I hear about this until the day of?

FB Marketplace --> Flohmarkt is missing!

I haven't heard of it yet but it's very interesting! link for those who struggle to find it among german search results
- Does it have categorization like eBay?

I like this. I hope it starts conversations. Does anyone know if there are good alternatives to Discord?

Matrix. Seems to be the hottest thing for group chats. Also what a lot of open source projects that used IRC before are switching to (or, if not switching, are providing a bridge for).
TeamSpeak is doing an overhaul to be similar to Discord. You can self host.
- oh cool!
IRC?
- IRC isn't really a replacement for Discord given that discord replaced irc for most people. Discord does a lot more than irc.
- @M154nthr0p3 @malcriadalala that is a nice one. Or #xmpp ;-)
Revolt is the way.
revolt.chat
Mumble + Element (Matrix)
guilded could be consider one but really matrix and revolt are the privacy ones
yo, fuck discord, this is by far the most important one to emulate for me.
There are a few that I can't recall off the top of my head

Feel like Matrix or Email would have made more sense as a federated service for communication, but get Signal is a lot more well known.

Also an entirely different thing, email is nothing alike to IMs.
- E-mail is an excellent protocol for messaging, see delta.chat
- How so? Seems like just a slightly different UI for the same thing to me?
- Deltachat would like a word

A LinkedIn alternative, anyone?

Mastodon seems to be filling this niche (professional networking and job seeking) at the moment. I'm curious if something more targeted is emerging yet as well.
- Good to hear. Just yesterday I decided to remove my LinkedIn account!
But will it have the lunatics and toxic positivity?

Thank you for this! Bookmarked this post, downloaded the image, sent it to all my friends. Love you!

Yeah. This guide is going to make some rounds in my peer group. I've got a lot of dissatisfied friends who just need an easy guide to remind them what to try. Very cool!
- Agreed!

Loop.video is “currently not accepting new members”.

It's also a pretty rough experience tbh. It took about 2 days for me to gain access after signing up. Only usable via the Android sdk or iOS beta app. The infrastructure just isn't there yet.
- Do you mean the android apk?
Damn
- I was able to sign up just after seeing this comment. The wait is only 2 days...

Anyone on Loops? I tried signing up a few days ago, but the sign up page wasn't working. Now the landing page says they aren't accepting new users.

It took a day before I got my activation email. There was no indication on the website it was gonna take that long, but I'm guessing it's early enough that it might still require manual approval.
That said it's still very much a ghost town
- How is it a ghost town if there is a new video someone posts like every 10 minutes?

This should promote matrix, not signal

Where is matrix?

Hidden inside the whatsapp->signal box in tiny faint font. I was wondering why there isn't a big "Discord -> Matrix"
- Matrix still lacks some signature fearures of discord that its users like, like one-click voice channels (I heard Element is experimenting with it with video) and guild/channel-level roles. role based access control is being planned for a long time, but it doesn't really go forward unfortunately
- Bad on-boarding
- So, is Matrix like halfway between Whatsapp and Discord? I downloaded it and I still don't know much about it (not like I have ANYONE I know to test the app with). I felt like it was more Whatsapp-like
- Here Revolt is suggested as an alternative to Discord which looks quite similar.
  https://retro-gaiden.com/@Oregon_Pacifist/113929785493554770
Right in the Signal box, it says "Or Matrix/XMPP". It's super tiny for some reason.
It is all around us. Even now, in this very room. You can see it when you look out your window or when you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work; when you go to church; when you pay your taxes.

I'm not really all that invested in trying out Friendica, because Facebook is basically the exact sort of social network service that I really don't give a darn about. I wanted to check it anyway, but the only tangible information on what Friendica is about is the project/marketing page. I can't browse the instances. If I go to your massive social platform, the last thing I want to see is just a brick wall of a login page. Then I looked at fedidb and... um, those aren't huge user numbers.

So I guess I'll keep posting on the services that seem more sensible to me, like Mastodon, Pixelfed and Lemmy.

Check out Circles

In my case I deleted instagram, instead of whatsapp I'm going to Matrix (I'll see who I get there), I changed Reddit for Lemmy and I'm trying to find an active Peertube instance that allows for account creation, live, and uploading videos

Check this list out: https://lemmy.wtf/post/15816115
yeah I'll be honest, peertube is nowhere near a youtube replacement

Friendly reminder that peertube can expose your IP address.

To stop it, disable "Help share videos being played" in your options

Are any of these actually good?

I mean, aside from Lemmy. I tried Mastadon and no one was actually on it, seems like everyone is jumping to Bluesky.

I can vouch for Signal. I got my whole family out of facebook messenger to make a new place for family chat. Even my parents in their mid 60s had no problem changing.
I can vouch for Matrix unfortunately it is not listed and instead they mentioned Signal which is further from the fediverse.
Depends on how many you follow. Lemmy is way more dead than Mastodon for me.
People only move to Bluesky because they don't want to change their thinking (picking instances is hard!) and keep using "Twitter".
- I can understand it. I was banned without reason from 3 of the top mastodon instances before even posting anything. Creating new accounts is a hassle, and it's easy to lose faith in the system when bans happen without reason and none of the instances cared to respond to my appeals. In heinsight, I'm sure the ban was due to my username looking like a hash, but I still find it crazy that the appeals were ignored.
no one was actually on it
It might feel that way at first, but my Mastodon feed is very robust nowadays. You just need to follow more people.
I'm on Mastodon and I see plenty of activity, I don't miss twitter at all. I see less activity on Lemmy tbh
George Takei is active of mastodon. There are many journalists and scientists. Tons of developers. A few small celebs. Also, many people I don't want to be here are not here. That's a plus for me.
From lemmy.ca
While not part of the fediverse if you want Twitter like activity I would suggest BlueSky. However I am also on Mastodon and I find it to have plenty of activity. It’s not the fire hose that Twitter is but to me that makes it much more manageable.
I've seen some authors I like on Mastodon, like William Gibson. It's a quieter place but I like that about it, as someone who never used Twitter.

has anyone tried Friendica? is it devoid of people?

The UI is fucking awful and way too complex, so it's difficult to get anything done. I've tried two different instances and found them both to be unusable.
It's a shame because Friendica is way more powerful than most Fediverse platforms -- they leverage way more of ActivityHub's potential, such as a system for calendars + events. But the UI needs to get sorted out before it's ready for mass adoption.
That’s ironic

Is there an app for Loops.video?

Edit: Go to https://loops.video/ Make an account, and you should get an email afterwards to download the app from TestFlight or an Android APK.

Yup, its just called Loops, there is a download link once you log in for the APK directly or to the iOS testflight. (On a related note why does everything keep like this picture keep calling it "Loops.video" when it is just called "Loops"? - we don't call it "Lemmy.ml", "Mastodon.social" or "Peertube.tv")
- Mastodons have been extinct for millennia and don't come up in conversation often. Lemmy and Peertube aren't words at all. Loops is a pretty common word, though, so it needs something extra if you want people to know what you're talking about.

(momentary confusion as I wonder why I'd want to switch from the X Window System to Mastodon)

Could the software selection be more diverse? There's also MBin/Piefed, and Misskey/Sharkey/Firefish/Akkoma/Iceshrimp. Just a suggestion tho. (obviously they can't all fit in the image, but it would be nice to see an alternative to popular software like lemmy/mastodon.)

PS: Signal is not federated at all, it's centralized. It should either be replaced with SimpleX or matrix/Jabber.

Could the software selection be more diverse?
Not if you want people to actually consider switching instead of feeling overwhelmed and confused.
- If only there was a website that helps you choose, instead of inclining users to just use lemmy and only lemmy.world anyway. (also with mastodon and mastodon.social).
  Overall i think more software choices are great but you are right in that it could repel users :/

PeerTube appears to be completely devoid of content

no, there's tons of furries, like the rest of the fediverse. >.>
It feels pretty quiet here. At least going by active posts. They're often the same for a while. New is a bit better. Unless it's my expectations that are wrong?
That's the problem with the fediverse in general. It's a lovely concept, but it's hard to sell people on something that has 10% (if we're being generous) of the content they're used to.
Take a look at the 2 pinned posts in this community: https://lemmy.wtf/c/peertube

Unfortunately, I don't know a single person who uses Friendica, and that is also, unfortunately, self-defeating because there's no way I could convince them to go without more than just me using it.

Apparently it makes a good RSS feed aggregator if nothing else.
- And that makes it a Facebook replacement how? Facebook is terrible and the only reason I ever go there is to check in on people I know. I don’t understand Friendica at all. I can get all the social interaction I need from Mastodon, BlueSky and Lemmy if my goal isn’t people I know and just like minded people.

Woo! Made one of first steps of switching today!

Fediverse is awesome!!

This is such a beautiful guide!

Nice to see the rear of them, was tough making the call to disconnect from a bunch of people, but I've told them where to find me. Hopefully it snowballs!

It will. I did the same thing a couple years ago. Make sure you share links to things like articles, videos, news, from the fediverse to your contacts. That helps them switch, when they see the platform in their mobile browser.

I’ve been on Signal for a while now. Have a bunch of groups but iMessage works with everyone.

It’s been a year and a half here on Lemmy. I still spend a lot of time on Reddit, but won’t comment there anymore.

I don’t WANT a Twitter replacement as it’s really only for celebs and idgaf.

I actually see enough value to pay for YT premium (kids complain incessantly about ads).

Friendica doesn’t seem to have an iOS app, and there’s a critical mass issue with wanting to connect with people that I know in real life.

I’m trying to get my Pixelfed feed to be with checking, and trying to be a regular poster, but it’s still REALLY sparse, and none of these offer the endless meme-video-clip scroll that my wife will have to have before switching away from Insta.

Snubbing bluesky is a great way to get people to not take you seriously. When you're making a recruitment thing like this you need to remember you're trying to draw in people who don't fully agree with you.

Bluesky isn't federated as much as they pretend to be and say "they're working on it"
It's just another corporate social platform that will fall into the same thing
- Psst, OP included Signal in this post which isn't federated at all, so the argument of Bluesky not being "federated as much as they pretend to" is a bit irrelevant.

Ok, downloaded peertube (because to hell with Google and YouTube) looked around... Um, is there not too much to look at right now? Are the people I normally watch on YouTube unable to be seen on peertube? Don't get me wrong, all about decentralized everything but if the people I like aren't there I'm feeling a bit up a creek.

Or, more likely, am I missing something? Forgive me, please, I am rather new to this concept and how to work the federations and such.

It's not an alternate way to view Youtube, it's a totally separate service. You're not missing anything, if no one's using it to post content, then there's no content. Youtube is a tough one to compete with because the infrastructure needed to host that much data and distribute it is insane. Peertube is super niche and not many know about it, but I do wonder how fast scaling would become a problem if it suddenly got an influx of new users.
- Apart from that, it has to compete against the content monopoly Youtube has on the video platform industry.
Are the people I normally watch on YouTube unable to be seen on peertube?
Basically this. There are some creators that either switched or publish on both platforms, mainly from the Linux sphere (and, unfortunately, also some crackpots and/or scammers who got kicked from other platforms), but overall, it doesn't have a lot of content, especially content that's on a "professional" level.
The app is not really that great yet. I suggest to check this page out for content creators on PeerTube: https://peertube.wtf/home and also this list: https://lemmy.wtf/post/15810205
If you are also looking for a PeerTube server to register on, I suggest you look here: https://lemmy.wtf/post/15816115
- There will definitely be few content creators who post to PeerTube, if they are dependent on ad revenue. Those creators that are not, have a much easier time posting to PeerTube, because they essentially expand their reach.

Mastodon ❌

Bluesky ✅

Unfortunately that does seem to be the way it's going, I give Bluesky 8 years before it's as bad as current day X.
Bluesky is just Twitter but with a different techbro in charge
- This time it will be different, because... errr well it is not the same time as last time.
- techgal*
Kinda feels like bluesky is already going to hell in a handbasket, so maybe not.
People moving from Xitter to Bluesky don’t understand why they moved. They have no clue.
- They understand Twitter sucks now and it feels more peaceful on BlueSky.
Bluesky is a for profit company. Not the way to go.

Facebook messenger to sup fediverse messages platform

Friendica seems like a new thing? No apps for that yet either

It's been here the a long time actually
Bookface replicates the Facebook UI in Friendica :)
I heard that it was one of the earliest Fediverse projects. It just hadn't surged in popularity like Mastodon and Lemmy had after the Twitter and Reddit exodus.
- I actually think the facebook format is great, and I miss it despite having NO desire to use anything meta owns.
  Friendica has the unenviable position of trying to convince people what sucked about facebook was not inherent to the format of the social network. That is why the fediverse is inspiring, people make tools they connect with, and then if popularity comes, great!
  I need to try it out!
- Interesting. Is there a client you could recommend for Android?
Raccoon
- I wish it wasn't basically just a mastodon client though

An change your email to protonmail or tutamail. Starve those gmails, outlooks, iCloud’s and etc

Protonmail aren't necessarily worthy of the support, look up the recent news about them
- Yes I noticed that, that’s why I changed to tutamail. It’s everywhere this neofascism wild capitalism thing
Email is a shitty protocol we should abandon
- I need to use email to work

Anyone know if loops has a good app out, or if there's one in the works thats coming out soon?

The app is really bare bones. It's also not federated (yet, but use a product for what it is right now, not what it promises to be).
Has potential but also dansup keeps running head-first into controversial takes.
- Oh, i see. Still interesting, thanks for the info
The app worked for me when I first downloaded it but hasn't since

Here’s a link you can use to share this post with your friends. The default share link makes you have to click to see the picture and many users will be confused and not click it.

https://photon.lemmy.world/post/lemmy.world/24984716

I already done my part. I only keep WhatsApp for professional reasons (and barely use it) but the rest is already done. 😁

BlueSky is the transfer from X. Mastodon isn't it bro

Why do you think so?
So far I'm getting much more interaction on Mastodon than Bluesky
Bluesky isn't part of the Fediverse, it uses the AT protocol, not ActivityPub or the likes of it.

thanks for the pic, it's good to share with friends who are curious!

Wouldn't Matrix be a better alternative to Signal, since it doesn't need a number? Maybe it has a too difficult learning curve to the average user, though

The best number-free protocol is SimpleX atm
Matrix isn't fediverse though. It is Federated but uses its own protocol
- Well, Signal isn't federated either, and doesn't have a fediverse-like technology like Matrix does...

Thank you, this covers everything I could have thought of!

isn't that just every day?

Facebook Marketplace - > Craigslist

No, that's anti-libre software.

as i say peertube is currently a alt to twitch as well as youtube

Looks like Loops isn't accepting new users at the moment. Hopefully that'll open up again soon.

Is there only one website?
- At this moment, yes! I'll operate an instance as soon as the code is public.

Can anyone send me a link to the android version of loops.video, I can't see it on the play store

It's available on GitHub
- I've never downloaded anything from GitHub before. How does it work? Do I need to manually update the app when a new version comes out?