What the F is Decentralized Social Media?

Bluesky, Warpcast, and Damus, oh my. 

And wait! What’s that? Another?! WTF is Substack Notes?!

We need to talk about decentralized social media and Substack (and Substack Notes), and what the hell is happening on the Bird site. First of all, let me start by saying, I am not a tech industry person at all. I love some podcasts about InfoSec and learning about how hackable everything under the sun really is. I like learning about that stuff, because I like to know what I need to protect myself against. Lately, I’ve been lazy. I haven’t been keeping up with a lot of topics that are current in the tech world, which is fine, because I can only spread myself in so many directions at any given time. 

One thing I’ve been following all along is the current unraveling of Twitter. I have been on there in some capacity since 2008. I knew about it in 2006-2007, but I didn’t buy in right away. Then around 2008, I realized with MySpace out of vogue, and Facebook turning into a place where all my real life friends hung out and stayed connected, but it also wasn’t really my favorite thing ever. Eventually, I turned to Twitter. 

Once I bought in to Twitter conceptually around 2008, I kind of never looked back. I deleted accounts every now and then to start over, and eventually, in 2011, I stopped doing that and stayed with my account. After I started using Twitter, I still used Facebook for my “normal” friends, but I preferred Twitter. Then eventually, Instagram happened, and well, I liked that one all right, but I still preferred Twitter out of the three major players. 

I won’t get into the entire saga of Twitter, but the shortest version I can really present is this: 

Twitter was cool, then it got a little polarized, then it got really polarized, then it became the only place to get real news while Orange Man was in charge in the US, along with other world news from other oppressive countries, because media outlets could only report on so much without getting into some sort of bullshit trouble. 2016-2020 were hard years for media outlets as we can all recall. Also, the country I live in was also somewhat being run via Twitter, so you know, there was also that. Then, after the 2020 election, it was still super polarized, then the insurrection in the US happened, and then it just became even more fighting with each other than it already had been—no matter what “side” you were on: fighting the other side, in-fighting within your own group, just a place full of anger and FIGHTING all around, or generally weird discourse. Just lots of exhausting topics. Meanwhile, some people were still trying to connect and just have conversations, which were always a breath of fresh air, although they became less and less visible. Then Elon Musk got involved. 

Obsessed with the site, he decided to joke about buying it, and then it turned into a real thing. And now he owns the site, and he’s slowly been destroying it ever since. 

(Also, I don’t care if you disagree, if you do, you might want to get out of here, because I won’t be listening to anyone Musk worshipper or not explaining how Musk is actually good for it. He’s ruining everything about it that I enjoyed, that’s the point, so hush.)

So, once Musk took over, everyone was trying to leave Twitter. So many places came up: Hive, Mastodon, wherever else. I didn’t listen to any of the noise, because I thought, “Maybe Musk won’t be that bad…?”

I was so wrong. It’s been worse than I could have imagined. 

So, he’s got the place in shambles. 

I don’t bother trying Mastodon or Hive at this point, because it’s clear I missed those ships. But it was also unclear as to whether that was where we were all migrating anyway. I stick it out with Twitter, watching the place burn more and more.  

I have a friend who is in the tech industry try to explain NOSTR to me, tells me about Damus and Amethyst. Nostr is short for Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays. Relays are servers. Nostr is a protocol, not an app. A protocol is similar to email: it does a function and you can use various set ups to use it: there can be multiple apps. Damus is the app for iOS and Amethyst is the one for Android. There are multiple websites that you can access Nostr through, but I have yet to try it anywhere outside of Damus/my phone. I don’t know what those sites are well enough to point you to them.  

I join, and overall, it seems weird, very Bitcoin-centric, and hard to figure out how to follow people. It seems very geared toward a specific niche group online. Very not for me. My friend tries to explain it, gives me resources, tells me Jack Dorsey (of Twitter) backs and loves it, but I just can’t get into it. LATER, I FOUND OUT THAT IF YOU USE NOSTR, YOU BETTER USE A VPN BECAUSE THEY JUST LET YOUR INTERNET INFO HANG OUT FOR ALL TO SEE. SO USE VPNS IF YOU ARE GOING TO EXPERIMENT WITH NOSTR.

A few weeks later, one night, I’m up very late. It’s a work night. I should be asleep, but instead, I’m awake, ridiculously sad about Twitter and scrolling through the App Store, wishing I was a cool teen who knew about the next big apps, knowing that if I, an adult, knew about the apps, then they were already not the next cool ones. I scroll past this weird sky icon that is just an image of sky, not really an icon at all, so I’m thinking wow, that scam of an app got through the App Store? Weird. 

Dismiss it, then give up scrolling for a new Twitter. 

Within 48 hours, the friend who told me about Nostr is telling me about Bluesky Social. He says it’s a Twitter offspring, sort of. It’s a thing that Jack Dorsey was trying to do at Twitter to undo all the wrong moves that happened at Twitter. Curious. I didn’t think Jack Dorsey would the knight in shining armor in this situation. I look it up. it’s invite only.  And it’s the weird sky icon in the App Store from a few days ago. Feels like a weird dream. 

I research for hours, figure out how to get an invite code, get one within a few days of researching. I join Bluesky. It is glorious. It looks and feels like Twitter. The vibe is a giant party. I feel like I am home! This one is the ONE. 

Bluesky is an app for a protocol, but it’s running on a different protocol than Nostr. This one is called AT Protocol. I read about it. I read about web2, web3, web5. I am getting in deep, and I don’t know what most of that means STILL. But I understand that de-centralized social media is the future. 

Through Bluesky, I learned about Warpcast and was able to get an invite to that invite-only space. Warpcast is an app for the protocol Farcaster. This one is really nice. I like it, but it seems more NFT-centric than I’d like. People are friendly enough. This is nice. 

I decide with my new and fragile understanding of de-centralized social media, of web2, web3, and web5, I will give Damus another chance. I figure out how to find people, I interact with some people they walk me through how to set up a Bitcoin wallet, and I talk to a few people on the platform. They seem nice enough. But I keep running into a lot of conservative folks, because apparently, Bitcoin attracts a strange, religious niche? It’s weird and I don’t really understand it. 

But the site is a bit more useable.

I have found Twitter alternatives that will certainly do. 

I am thrilled. And I’ve learned so much new information about the online revolutions that we’re all sleeping on. 

This next part is absolutely something to be taken with a grain of salt, please do your own research on the following. This is based on my weak-sauce understanding of everything I learned about while I’ve been diving in this very deep part of the internet. This is me trying to explain it both to myself and to other non-tech industry people, who don’t understand what they’re reading online. If you’re more knowledgable about this stuff, please @ me on Substack Notes (another thing we’re going to get into in a minute omg!)

My weak understanding is this: 

Centralized social media is a website where you go and they control the sandbox you play in. 

Decentralize social media seems to typically be centered around a protocol and you have much more control over the sandbox you’re playing in. The protocol has structure, and people can build apps to run on the protocol like you can join Yahoo, Outlook, or Google for an email account, you can pick a protocol and an app for that protocol, and then once you’re there, you can join or set up servers similar to Mastodon and Discord, but different enough that the comparison is sort of weak honestly. And you can control more of your experience online/in the app/in the space, and data. 

Decentralized social media kind of gives me the sense of the early internet days, where things were not so connected and together. Like message boards/forums, weird websites like Funny Junk and eBaum’s World. Just all out there, like loose marbles. Before MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. 

The other very exciting thing about the decentralized spaces is currently, there are not ads in those spaces. There are not people pushing products as influencers, and whatever else, it’s refreshing. Nobody is telling you how to feel. Yet. I am sure it will come in time, but right now, it’s not happening. 

After learning about decentralized social media, I wanted decentralized versions of everything, specifically Instagram, and I found it. Someone posted about it a few weeks into my time on Bluesky, but the iOS beta was full at the time. However, within the last week or two, someone Bluesky alerted me to the beta possibly being open again! I was able to join Pixelfed! 

Pixelfed is Instagram without the ads, without the noise. It’s wonderful. There is an official app, but there are also third-party apps. 

It’s already federated, it’s got a lot of servers, and to join each one, you have to make an account on that server, so that’s a little cumbersome, but I believe the federation of decentralized social media all leads to that road, if I understand correctly, so the solution I have found is to find an app that allows you to see content all in one place from all of your servers. I think I found that for Pixelfed, so that’s great: Vernissage is the app I think does this for me. 

I could go on and on about Bluesky, and maybe in a different post, I will, but this is where I’ll stop talking about these four as in depth. 

Just know that I like these four in this order:

Bluesky (AT Protocol) 
Warpcast (Farcaster Protocol)
Pixelfed (ActivityPub Protocol) 
Damus (Nostr Protocol) 

Meanwhile, I am still on the sinking ship of Twitter. I am using it less, because most of my time has been on these four apps instead. But I am still there, still watching the horrors unfold, wondering what “my last straw” will be, especially now that I have found new places to go and spend time instead. 

Two Twitter-events happen that are quietly, maybe breaking points for me. 

One: Something about the doge-coin (a crypto-currency thing—if you don’t know, consider yourself blessed and don’t ask) takes over the Twitter site. I don’t know what the hell happened exactly, but I start seeing a lot of people saying stuff like, “Why is this weird dog showing up on the site?” 
I’m not seeing it on my app, and I’m seeing suggestions that it’s on the website only not the app? I don’t know, but luckily, I have yet to encounter the dog. But the dog haunts me.

Two: Substack announces their new feature(??) called Notes. I read about it in the email from Substack, thrilled to see another platform that looks similar to Twitter. I’m instantly sold. 

Elon Musk HATES this announcement. All mention of Substack on Twitter is destroyed within days of this announcement. The links posted on Twitter directing you to a Substack break or warn you that you’re going to a “dangerous” site. If you try to search Substack, you get posts about newsletters, as if the word in the posts were replaced with newsletter instead of Subtack—you can’t find the word Substack on Twitter. Bluesky, which is still invite only, is now trying to be a safe haven for the Substack writing community to migrate to, which I was very excited to see happen! 

There were other weird Twitter-events, leading up to these two, but those were not the things that finally felt like “this is too much” for me, so I’m not mentioning the 2FA debacle or the account verification stuff, or the re-instatement of accounts that have zero business being in widely accessible spaces online. Those were all awful, and I hated them, but none of them directly bothered or affected me so much that I thought I couldn’t just sit on the sinking ship and watch it burn. Because for some reason, I felt like a captain who had to go down with her ship with Twitter. But at this point, I am not so sure. 

A while back, before he owned Twitter, before he was the evil villain of the internet, Elon Musk tweeted about whichever side needed to build a wall to keep people in was the BAD side. 

Does he know he’s now the bad side? The bad guy? I don’t know. And frankly, I don’t care if he knows. I just know that to me, it feels like I am watching Twitter on its deathbed, and I can’t look away. I keep hoping that maybe there will be something that changes, turns this situation around, but I don’t know if that’s going to happen. I just keep watching. 

Now, to talk more about this Substack Notes announcement. Substack Notes, for all the information about the feature/service, I’ll direct you to the Substack announcement information, but as a space that I’ve been playing around with, the place seems cool and exciting as any of the other new places I’ve been checking out. I think it feels similar to Twitter, and I’m hoping the writing community will migrate from Twitter to Bluesky and Substack Notes eventually. I think a lot of them will go down with the ship, because for the fist time in a long time, I have been seeing a lot more from the writing community showing up in my feeds on Twitter. Refreshing, yet kind of sad to see that while the site is falling apart around us. 

Substack Notes is definitely going to be a space I use. It feels geared more towards Substack promotion than the other spaces, but it also feels like you can do whatever you want in the space. 

So, the order in which I am enjoying all of these new things: 

• Bluesky

• Substack Notes

• Warpcast

• Pixelfed 

• Damus 

Bluesky and Substack Notes are the most accessible to people like me: the Non Tech Industry person who doesn’t know much about the online revolution happening, web2, web3, web5, Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies, or NFTs. If you want to check out Bluesky, I sometimes have invite codes!

Warpcast is a really wonderful space to watch conversations about the tech world unfold, the talks I’m seeing there are really tech industry focused so I’m getting to learn about things in that sphere, and I learned about NFTs there, which was interesting. I don’t think I’m sold on NFTs at all, but I do spend a lot of time looking at the NFTs to just see what’s out there and popular. It’s definitely like being on a different planet. 

Pixelfed is a great place to enjoy all the things I like about Instagram without the garbage of Instagram: no reels, no ads, no influencers pushing product. It’s like an Instagram experience that I control so much more than on Instagram. I think this might almost beat out Warpcast for third place, but the federation is a little weird, and I don’t like that I have to make a lot of different accounts for each server. But that’s probably because I’m lazy. But it’s also cumbersome to have multiple accounts to juggle. I’m still learning about this so I think that’s the main reason I am still preferring Warpcast over this one. 

Damus is …something else. I don’t know why I keep going there, honestly. I’m not sold on Bitcoin, and I don’t think anything anyone says will sell me on Bitcoin, but that’s not a topic I’m tackling here (not today, not ever!). But I think I am curious about Damus as an app, and I am enjoying watching the space. Most of the space is Bitcoin people talking about Bitcoin, but there are other accounts as well, I just haven’t really…found those yet. A lot of it is about value for value (V4V), and trading zaps back and forth (Bitcoin) for posts they find value in. It’s interesting to watch. It feels like being at an EDM festival and being an outsider to the general culture and community, just watching as it all happens around you. I think I keep going to this site, because it DOES remind me of Twitter, and I like the interface general UI of Damus. It’s smooth and clean. And I’m enjoying being a voyeur in that space for some reason. I think it’s to keep a pulse on what’s going on there. IF YOU CHECK THIS ONE OUT, PLEASE USE VPN PROTECTION. PLEASE. 

I know this post was probably less informative and more informative than it could have been. Hopefully, you found something useful in this babble. 

Overall, I think decentralized social media is something worth checking out if you haven’t checked it out yet. I do think that, in time, it will become more prominent and will be more of the “norm” for popular sites. I’m excited about Bluesky more than any of it. But Substack Notes is a very, very close second. Those are the two I’d encourage you to check out the most, closely followed by Pixelfed. 

There’s a lot of speculation and rumors about centralized social media platforms trying to implement decentralized aspects, but I don’t know anything about any of it. I’ve just heard whispers that I haven’t felt like pursuing yet, because that’s not the direction my learning has taken me right now. 

Links to all of these, so you can do your own research: 

https://blueskyweb.xyz/

https://www.farcaster.xyz/

https://pixelfed.org/

https://nostr.com/ — again, while VPNs are generally a good idea, please definitely 100% use a VPN if you decide to use this one. But also, please do you research about VPNs, so you know you’re using a decent one. Nord VPN was friendly to me as someone who knows very little about VPN set up. (NordVPN is 100% not paying me to say that! Do I look like someone who gets sponsors or knows HOW to get sponsors?)

Introducing Substack Notes

I couldn’t tell you what rabbit holes I fell down to learn about web2, web3, web5, but I believe the research started based on something from some blog posts on the Bluesky website blog, so I don’t have any helpful links for that. 

Just know that web3 and web5 have different meanings depending on who you ask and where you look, so good luck! 

Also, I am not getting paid to endorse any of these sites. I’m just enjoying this journey I am on and wanted to share in case anyone else is really bummed about Twitter. Elon Musk buying Twitter is what made me come to Substack in the first place!