Meta Lends a Crowbar to Open the Gates of Social Media
It didn't receive much fanfare outside of tech circles, but Meta Platforms Inc. took a pretty monumental step last week. For the first time, it allowed content posted on one of its apps to be interoperable with a social network it didn't own or control. After two decades of running a strictly walled garden, Meta was starting to open up.
The “why” is fascinating and quietly revolutionary. Please stick around to hear it, because unfortunately I must first explain the “how” — knowing full well that words like “fediverse,” “decentralized” and “protocol” can send even the most dedicated reader scrambling for an exit.
The current status quo with most social media — or other online spaces where users might build an identity or post content — is that accounts are locked down. If you want to leave X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, say, you're free to start an account somewhere else, but it means starting from scratch with zero posts and rebuilding your “social graph” — the people you follow and those who follow you. This is by design: Social networks want to make it hard to leave so that you don't.
We don't put up with this in our offline lives. You can meet the same friends in different pubs without having to reintroduce yourselves. And you could go with those same friends to the movies, or the tennis club, or the mall without having to create a new identity in each place.
The fediverse — meaning, federated universe — is an effort to re-create that experience online and, in doing so, solve some of the most pressing problems that exist on the modern internet. The core principle is the idea of a shared protocol adopted by many apps, allowing users to bring their identities to each as they see fit. More important, it gives
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