A Simple Guide to the Fediverse & Matrix
This guide explains two powerful alternatives to mainstream social media and chat apps in very simple terms.
The Fediverse
(Like different social media sites that can all talk to each other)
Imagine all the different social media sites (like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram) are different buildings in a big city. Usually, if you’re in the Twitter building, you can only talk to people who are also in the Twitter building.
The Fediverse is like giving all the buildings special magic doors.
If you have an account in the “Mastodon” building (which is like Twitter), you can open a magic door and send a message to your friend in the “Pixelfed” building (which is like Instagram). They can see your message and reply right in their own app/service! This also means that every post/message you make you should consider as public to the whole world.
-
You Choose Your Home: You get to pick which building (called an “instance” or “server”) you want to live in. Some are for artists, some are for gamers, some are for people who like cats. Each building has its own rules. You can also host your own Home, read more about that here: Host your own Fediverse home
-
Everyone Can Talk: Even though everyone is in a different building, the magic doors let them all be part of one giant neighborhood.
-
No Single Boss: No single company owns the whole city. Each building owner is in charge of their own space.
So, the Fediverse is just a bunch of different social media sites that have all agreed to work together, giving you more choice and freedom of your experience.
What does the Fediverse looks like
The illustration below shows how this giant neighborhood works. You can see how someone living in one home (like Mastodon) can easily talk to neighbors in other homes, even if their buildings (like Pixelfed or Lemmy) look completely different.
Click here to see an illustration of the Fediverse
Common Fediverse Services
Here are descriptions of the services used in the illustration:
-
Mastodon: The most popular Fediverse application. It’s a microblogging platform similar to Twitter, where you can post short messages, images, and polls. Its strength is in real-time conversation and following topics via hashtags.
-
Pixelfed: A federated photo-sharing platform that is a direct alternative to Instagram. It focuses on beautiful visual timelines, photo albums, and stories, all without ads or invasive algorithms.
-
Lemmy: A federated alternative to Reddit. Users can subscribe to communities (like subreddits), post links or text, and vote on content to determine its visibility. It’s ideal for topic-based discussion forums.
-
WriteFreely: A minimalist, distraction-free blogging platform. It’s designed for long-form writing and can be followed by users on Mastodon and other services, effectively giving your blog a built-in social feed.
Read more here about setting up your Fediverse social media here: Getting Started on the Fediverse
Matrix
Imagine you want to send a letter to a friend. You can use the Post Office, FedEx, or DHL. It doesn’t matter which one you use, because they all know how to deliver letters to your friend’s address.
Matrix is like a universal post office for chat messages.
-
Discord, WhatsApp, and iMessage are like private mail services: They only deliver messages to people who also use their service. You can’t send a WhatsApp message to someone on Discord.
-
Matrix is different: It’s an open system, like email, but with chat services.
-
Matrix is secure and private: It’e end-to-end encrypted by default so even the ones hosting the server can’t see your messages unless the server owner is also part of the room or group message that you communicate in.
Here’s how it works:
-
You pick an App (your “Post Office”): You can use an app called Element, or another one called FluffyChat. This is just how you write and read your messages.
-
You get an Address (your “Mailbox”): Your address looks like an email:
@yourname:matrix.org(or some other server other than matrix.org). You can also host your own “Mailbox”, read more about that here: Host your own Matrix “Mailbox” -
You can talk to ANYONE: You can send a message from your Element app to a friend using a completely different Matrix app, and it just works and is secure and private!
The Coolest Part: Bridges! Matrix can build “bridges” to other chat apps. Imagine your Post Office has a special employee who can take your letter, put it in a Discord envelope, and deliver it for you. Your friends on Discord get the message and don’t even know you’re not using Discord!
So, Matrix lets you use one app to talk to all your friends, even if they are on other services like Discord, Facebooks Messenger or other messaging services.
Read more here about setting up your Matrix chatting experiance here: Getting Started in the Matrix