Pleroma
(Diesen Beitrag gibt es auch auf Deutsch…)
If you're on one or some social media networks, you regularly see Social Media alternatives to Twitter and 'Evil Facebook' popping up. Everybody rushes over to create an account, posts three messages, says 'not much is happening here' and disappears forever. Recently the candidate for this kind of short glory was the somewhat questionable Vero…
Almost a year ago the target was Mastodon. It has a decentralized approach like Identica, Friendica and other. And can exchange (short-)messages using GNU Social, ActivityPub or OStatus.
In principle, anyone can set up an instance of Mastodon. However, the technical requirements are quite high. A new project called Pleroma tries to change that. Actually, these are two projects: a Frontend (the stuff you see in your browser and use to send your messages) and a Backend (that does the communication work in the background). Project member 'soykaf' wrote an easily understandable introduction to Pleroma, that also contained a small list of running instances (via A Fresh Cup).
If recent developments at the 'big ones' continue, the alternatives concerning 'social stuff' will be 'quitting' or going to install something decentralized on your own. The latter will, of course, require some work…