A few years ago, a handsome George Clooney told us, “Imagine, you can,” referring to the idea that by paying an outrageous amount, we’d get super-fast ADSL.
The ad was lying like many do, but man, that slogan was effective. And I’d say it helped to have Clooney’s good looks too.
IMAGINE, YOU CAN...
Imagine all the apps and services you use every day in your digital world: socials, cloud, email, listening to podcasts, videos, searches… now imagine if they could all talk to each other and let you interact using just one account from any of them. Like, from your Facebook account, you could upload videos to YouTube, comment on posts on X/Twitter or TikTok videos. Imagine being able to upload or listen to podcasts with just one account.
Imagine, you can…
But take it a step further—imagine these services don’t have a “mind in charge,” the well-known “algorithm” that decides your friends, tells you how much and when to post or publish articles, or else you get cut off from the virtual world. Imagine it doesn’t exist. Imagine a world where you’re truly free to choose what to read, who to talk to, and where likes and hearts don’t decide whether all your personal data gets sold to some money-making machine.
IMMAGINA, PUOI...
The commercial social platforms, the Big Tech companies, don’t want to talk to each other. Their goal is to get you hooked on a single service or app and keep you there as long as possible. Because that’s where their profit comes from.
Their algorithms are designed to optimize the “capture” of your personal data, your choices, what you like, and what you might want to buy. With your data, they can leverage certain psychological and neurobiological aspects to push you into buying what their advertisers want.
Instead, there’s a world that doesn’t want to sell you anything—unless you want or need it. A virtual world where there’s no algorithm, no race for likes, where you don’t get banned for not posting regularly or for talking about stuff the boss doesn’t like. There’s a whole universe of apps and services that talk to each other, collaborate, and can interact. Apps where your account can connect with other similar or different apps.
A universe—of apps and services—that’s federated. The FEDIVERSE.
So here’s the “YOU CAN”: what you don’t dare to imagine, maybe because you don’t remember (or weren’t born yet!) when the internet and the web used to be like that. When links took you where you actually wanted to go and no one decided for you.
The FEDIVERSE is born from that idea of the web and evolves with modern technologies. Open source apps, socials, cloud, email clients, search engines that can all interact with each other, that leave your data with you, that let you choose—in fact, they give you the responsibility to choose.
Because the FEDIVERSE requires some effort—it doesn’t “spoon-feed” you like commercial socials (or Big Tech services) do. They’re not hard to use, but they don’t give you everything on a silver platter, they don’t choose for you. So, for example, a Fediverse social will be pretty boring if you don’t look for the people and topics you’re into. YOU have to choose, YOU have to search.
After the initial surprise, the feeling of freedom becomes overwhelming. It’s impossible to go back after that.
CREDITI FOTO/PHOTO CREDITS: fediverse.org