Distributed social network

<h2 id="history">History</h2>
<p>The <a href="/facts/Electronic_Frontier_Foundation/vCy44tuo">Electronic Frontier Foundation</a> (EFF), a U.S. legal defense organization and advocacy group for civil liberties on the Internet, endorses the distributed social network model as one "that can plausibly return control and choice to the hands of the Internet user" and allow persons living under restrictive regimes to "conduct activism on social networking sites while also having a choice of services and providers that may be better equipped to protect their security and anonymity".<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:1" href="#fn:1"><sup>1</sup></a>
</p><p>The <a href="/facts/World_Wide_Web_Consortium/lGWmhF6M">World Wide Web Consortium</a> (W3C), the main international standards organization for the <a href="/facts/World_Wide_Web/wvnTrWFq">World Wide Web</a>, launched a new Social Activity in July 2014 to develop standards for social web application interoperability.<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:2" href="#fn:2"><sup>2</sup></a>
</p><p>In 2013, the <a href="/facts/Open_Mobile_Alliance/5sQQMsvo">Open Mobile Alliance</a> (OMA) released a candidate version of the Social Network Web enabler (SNeW) that was approved in 2016. Its specification is based mainly on <a href="/facts/OStatus/NrXeWTIK">OStatus</a> and <a href="/facts/OpenSocial/XGmV9R7n">OpenSocial</a> specifications and designed to meet <a href="/facts/GDPR/RMLY6ohr">GDPR</a> recommendations. It is a tentative of the telco industry to establish a operated-led federation of social network services.<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:3" href="#fn:3"><sup>3</sup></a>
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<h2 id="differences-between-distributed-and-federated-networks">Differences between distributed and federated networks</h2>
<p class="note">See also: <a href="/facts/Peer-to-peer/wCCdPb0H">Peer-to-peer</a></p>
<p>Both kinds of networks are <a href="/facts/Decentralised_system/0b9I89GD">decentralized</a>. However, distribution goes further than federation. A federated network has multiple centers, whereas a distributed network has no center at all.<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:4" href="#fn:4"><sup>4</sup></a>
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<h2 id="active-projects">Active projects</h2>
<p class="note">See also: <a href="/facts/Comparison_of_software_and_protocols_for_distributed_social_networking/WAtbXfC1">Comparison of software and protocols for distributed social networking</a></p>
<p>While early federated social networking projects traditionally developed a protocol along with their software to fit the needs of the desired architecture, modern projects use a protocol and network that already exists to accelerate adoption of their platform by allowing existing users of other services to migrate seamlessly to the new project. Software that is developed for such networks are almost always <a href="/facts/Free_and_open-source_software/1cHtjLCB">free and open-source software</a>, with the protocols in use being <a href="/facts/Open_standard/RGvhGQVI">open standards</a> that do not charge <a href="/facts/Royalty_payment/8caVPHCP">royalty fees</a> for actions that are taken on the network.
</p><p>Various open standards that are used to provide a complete network include <a href="/facts/OAuth/gIu2zsv1">OAuth</a> for authenticating users and managing their sessions, the <a href="/facts/ActivityPub/EAPMvEAF">ActivityPub</a> protocol for <a href="/facts/Federation_(information_technology)/3SUojUub">federating</a> content between services, <a href="/facts/WebFinger/KxIIk63M">WebFinger</a> for discovering profiles and content on the network, as well as various standards for <a href="/facts/Metadata/qt35z79C">metadata</a> such as <a href="/facts/Microformat/NCueM8H6">Microformats</a>, <a href="/facts/Facebook_Platform/IoHpQE94">Open Graph</a> and others. While this combination of technologies are most associated with the concept of a federated social network and are universal among these networks, the federation protocol has been a major source on controversy regarding the ideal architecture for transmitting content. While ActivityPub (and its predecessors OStatus and ActivityPump) have been used by most services when implementing support for a federated social network, alternatives have been created over the years that attempt to fix perceived issues with the current stack of standards. The most successful of these alternatives has been the <a href="/facts/AT_Protocol/wD0dwy3l">AT Protocol</a>, an open standard created by <a href="/facts/Bluesky/Yc03zlx9">Bluesky</a> that has been built to solve various portability, discovery and content format issues that have arisen with the adoption of ActivityPub among a variety of social networking services. A more experimental protocol that has built its own networking stack is <a href="/facts/Nostr/JF5w6qWf">Nostr</a>, which has been designed to be simple for implementors to build as it has no dependencies on any existing standards. The protocol has gained some traction among newer SNSes, particularly within the <a href="/facts/Cryptocurrency/Rg6JAS8y">cryptocurrency</a> community.
</p><p>While many of these standards have been in use for both early and modern projects, some older projects typically used standards such as <a href="/facts/OStatus/NrXeWTIK">OStatus</a>, <a href="/facts/XRDS/eY00MJgF">XRDS</a>, <a href="/facts/Portable_Contacts/rVMLls8G">Portable Contacts</a>, the <a href="/facts/Google_Wave_Federation_Protocol/wWRBrecd">Wave Federation Protocol</a>, <a href="/facts/XMPP/hgulEuRA">XMPP</a>, <a href="/facts/OpenSocial/XGmV9R7n">OpenSocial</a>, microformats like <a href="/facts/XHTML_Friends_Network/eBSFydlq">XFN</a> and <a href="/facts/HCard/3ozSeSmG">hCard</a>, and <a href="/facts/Atom_(web_standard)/69syB8dH">Atom</a> web feeds. Some of these standards were referred to as the Open Stack, due to their status as open standards.<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:5" href="#fn:5"><sup>5</sup></a>
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<h2 id="see-also">See also</h2>
<ul><li><a href="/facts/AT_Protocol/wD0dwy3l">AT Protocol</a></li>
<li><a href="/facts/Comparison_of_software_and_protocols_for_distributed_social_networking/WAtbXfC1">Comparison of software and protocols for distributed social networking</a></li>
<li><a href="/facts/Fediverse/fIBCh4ya">Fediverse</a></li>
<li><a href="/facts/Nostr/JF5w6qWf">Nostr</a></li></ul>

<h2 id="further-reading">Further reading</h2>

<ul><li><a href="http://svn.aksw.org/papers/2011/ESWC_MobileSocialSemanticWeb/public.pdf">Paper on FOAF in an Android environment</a> <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20221206223548/https://svn.aksw.org/papers/2011/ESWC_MobileSocialSemanticWeb/public.pdf">Archived</a> 2022-12-06 at the <a href="/facts/Wayback_Machine/nmQ3a6JC">Wayback Machine</a> by Tramp, S., Frischmuth, P., Arndt, N., Ermilov, T., and Auer, S. (2011). Weaving a distributed, semantic social network for mobile users. In Antoniou, G., editor, ESWC 2011, Part I, LNCS 6643, pages 200–214.</li></ul>

<h2 id="external-links">External links</h2>
<ul><li><a href="http://www.w3.org/Social/">W3C Social Activity</a>
<ul><li><a href="http://www.w3.org/Social/WG">W3C Social Web Working Group</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.w3.org/Social/IG">W3C Social Interest Group</a></li></ul></li>
<li><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20110411074400/http://d-cent.org/fsw2011/">Federated Social Web Conference 2011</a></li>
<li><a href="https://vimeo.com/30014844">Video</a> by Henry Story demonstrating FOAF in an Android environment</li>
<li><a href="https://appmus.com/software/buddycloud">BuddyCloud</a></li>
<li><a href="https://joinmastodon.org/">Mastodon</a></li></ul>

<h2 id="references">References</h2>

<ol>
<li id="fn:1"><p>Richard Esguerra (March 21, 2012). "An Introduction to the Federated Social Network". Electronic Frontier Foundation Deeplinks Blog. <a href="https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/03/introduction-distributed-social-network" target="_blank">https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/03/introduction-distributed-social-network</a> <a href="#fnref:1" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li>
<li id="fn:2"><p>"W3C Launches Push for Social Web Application Interoperability". World Wide Web Consortium. 21 July 2014. <a href="http://www.w3.org/blog/news/archives/3958" target="_blank">http://www.w3.org/blog/news/archives/3958</a> <a href="#fnref:2" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li>
<li id="fn:3"><p>"OMA Social Network Web (SNeW) v1.0". Open Mobile Alliance. 13 August 2013. <a href="https://www.openmobilealliance.org/release/SNeW/" target="_blank">https://www.openmobilealliance.org/release/SNeW/</a> <a href="#fnref:3" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li>
<li id="fn:4"><p>"Unlike Us | Beyond distributed and decentralized: what is a federated network?". networkcultures.org. Retrieved 2022-03-27. <a href="https://networkcultures.org/unlikeus/resources/articles/what-is-a-federated-network/" target="_blank">https://networkcultures.org/unlikeus/resources/articles/what-is-a-federated-network/</a> <a href="#fnref:4" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li>
<li id="fn:5"><p>Recordon, David (2008-10-09). ""Blowing Up" Social Networks by Going Open". p. 27. Retrieved 5 January 2009. <a href="https://www.slideshare.net/daveman692/blowing-up-social-networks-by-going-open-presentation/" target="_blank">https://www.slideshare.net/daveman692/blowing-up-social-networks-by-going-open-presentation/</a> <a href="#fnref:5" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li>
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Distributed social network open-in-new

Distributed social network