[Fediverse] The future will be federated and self-hosted – Elena Rossini

Walid: Welcome to all. For this new episode of Projets Libres of season 4, it’s my first recording on season 4 and today I’m really excited because we’re going to talk about one of the topics I like the most, we’re going to talk about the Fediverse. First of all, I have to tell you the story of the meeting with Elena Rossini, our guest of the day. It all started during the preparation of a conference that I was supposed to attend, and Elena too, to give feedback on the YunoHost self-hosting solution.

And it’s Mathieu from Yunohost who says to me “Oh you’re going to see right after you, there’s Elena, you don’t know her, she’s going to pass, she’s great, I’m sure you’ll get along well.” So I do my conference and right after me there’s Elena who passes by and I was speechless. I thought to myself that this was really great: there are two great conferences on the Fediverse that I heard this year. One by the founder of Ghost at FOSDEM and then Elena’s. So then we talked for 5 minutes with Elena and I told her “You absolutely have to come and tell her more about the podcast.” It’s good because she’s with me today. And if you want to know more about her career as a director, very recently, April, in the show Libre à vous, published an interview with Elena, interview that I listened to this morning, which was very good, it’s episode number 256. If you want to know more about things that we are not going to talk about, I strongly invite you to go and listen to him. So, we’re going to talk about Fediverse. We’re going to talk about self-hosting. And it’s really great because these are subjects that I’m passionate about. So, Elena, thank you very much for accepting the invitation. And welcome to the Free Projects podcast.

Elena: Thank you very much, Walid. I’m delighted to be here. So, thank you for the invitation.

Introducing Elena

Walid: Shared pleasure, it’s great. Could you start by explaining to us who Elena Rossini is, please?

Elena: Yes, of course. I am an Italian director and photographer. I discovered the Fediverse three years ago. And since then, in fact, I’ve been so excited that I started a blog about the Fediverse in June 2024 to try to explain what the Fediverse is and to try to get more people to come to the Fediverse. So there you have it… It has become my main activity now to communicate about the Fediverse.

Walid: It’s something I think is great because the Fediverse is something that I deal with in my work, but rather by interviewing people who make the tools, who program the tools that are connected to the Fediverse. And so, we had a rather technical approach and rather, here are the tools, what do they bring to the Fediverse. And now, in fact, with you, we’re going to inaugurate a new series where we will ask people who use the Fediverse why they use the Fediverse.

Elena’s life before the Fediverse

Before we start, what I’d like is for us to explain your life before you discovered the Fediverse. Can you explain to us a little bit where you come from and how you used social networks so that afterwards, we can understand why you started using the Fediverse, please?

Elena: Yes. In fact, I was always… I don’t know how to say this in French, but I was always an early adopter. So, I really… I’ve tried everything on the social media side, so from MySpace to Flickr, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, in fact everything except Snapchat and TikTok, but for everything else, I’ve really tried everything. And actually, I was really excited about Twitter, I don’t call it X because I wasn’t on Twitter when Elon Musk became the owner. I’m talking about my life before. I used Twitter for 14 years and it was my main communication tool.

It was thanks to Twitter that I created an audience for all my creative projects, whether for my documentary films, but also for projects on equality in cinema. Not many followers, it was quite modest, let’s say about 8000 on my main account. But they were very influential people. So they were very influential people from my milieu, from the cinema, journalists, politicians, even the former prime minister of my country. And so, in fact, when I published something, I knew that I could have a fairly targeted audience of influential people. And I pretty much put everything on Twitter for my communications because I didn’t really like Facebook and Instagram very much. And above all, after Donald Trump’s first election in 2016, when I discovered Cambridge Analytica’s role in the manipulation of the public, I abandoned all of Meta’s social networks and really bet everything on Twitter. And in fact, I created a lot of bonds and friendships also with activists who had the same values as me and who wanted to fight on the same issues. And I also created some cool projects. Just to give you an example, I realized that at the time that GIFs were becoming an increasingly important communication tool on social networks, I started to look to see if there were any women directors, because I’m a director and I know that there aren’t many of us. And in fact, I came across Giphy.com, which is the main site for distributing GIFs. And there were only images with men. Above all, there was a gif of David Lynch pulling a pair of panties out of his mouth. And I found it mind-blowing.

So, I said, “OK, I’m going to start creating gifs of female directors.” And I started doing it every day. And after a month, the people at Giphy contacted me. They offered me to have my own official channel on Giphy, and thanks to the audience I had on Twitter and thanks to the amount of retweets, etc., it was a real success. So, I created about 200 gifs of women directors and also of cinematographers. It’s been really successful and I really give Twitter a lot of credit for all of that.

And that’s when, unfortunately, Elon Musk became the owner, my world on the internet really came crashing down. Because he represents everything I’m against, actually. And so, I decided, the day he became the owner, October 28, 2022, I created my Mastodon account.

The discovery of Mastodon

Walid: On all your artistic projects, etc., I really invite people to listen to the episode of Libre à vous where you talk a little more about it. So there, you had bet everything on Twitter. I also used it at the time and I remember that a long time ago, it was pleasant, there were lots of experts. Really, I found a lot of information on Twitter, it was really great. Especially since I was using a TweetDeck interface that really allowed me to have columns per person that I was following and everything, it was really good, which is what I do now on Mastodon. And so, you decide to go to Mastodon, but already, when did you hear about Mastodon? Had you heard of it before?

Elena: No. I went to look at the screenshots of October 2022 on my account just to see a little bit of what I did at the very beginning when I was on Mastodon. And I found out that the first account I followed on Mastodon was Andy Piper, who, at the time, was working for Twitter and who, like many people who were hired by Twitter, was fired in the first wave of Elon Musk and he started communicating about Mastodon. And I remember that he was talking about an instance that was created by former Twitter employees, macaw.social. So I was curious, I went to see and… In fact, it was the day Elon Musk became the owner that I created my account because I had heard Andy talk about this, about this migration to Mastodon.

Elena’s relationship with digital technology

Walid: I didn’t ask you, what is your relationship with digital technology? Have you always liked computers? Was computer science just a tool?

Elena: So, my father worked in IT. So, in fact, he would come home in the evening. I remember when I was little, he brought back computers: we had the first laptops that were practically ultra-heavy suitcases. And I was always fascinated by computers. When I was a kid in the 80s, there was hardly anyone in my class who had computers at home. And I remember that I was fascinated by the instrument side, a tool for creative projects. So, I used them to create graphic projects. And when, afterwards, I grew up, so when I was in high school, I started to look a little bit at how to create websites. For example, I’ve had my WordPress site since 2010. It’s been 15 years. And as my first job, I had the job of creating websites for people, associations or creative people. So I had a slightly technical side, but it was more on the graphic design and website creation side, but thanks to CMS like WordPress that already exist. So, you don’t necessarily have to know how to code, actually.

Walid: Elon Musk is buying Twitter. You decide that you have to leave. So there, you have a community. And there, you will create a Mastodon account. You will discover the Fediverse. It’s a complicated decision, because you have a whole community that you abandon, in the end.

Elena: Yes. And at the very beginning, the hope I had was maybe that my friends would come to the Fediverse too. And so at the very beginning, I thought that a lot of people had switched from Twitter to Mastodon and that I had started to follow.

But after a few months, they quickly gave up. And so, there is really a minority of people who have stayed. But I can count on the fingers of my hand the number of people I knew before who switched to Mastodon or the Fediverse. So for me, it’s always an argument, a bit of a sad subject because I lost my communities.

I have lost my communities of activists and creative people. Where did they go? Unfortunately, on Instagram, but it doesn’t correspond to my values at all. I decided that for me, the Fediverse was something that corresponded better to my values, my personal values. And so, I said, I have to rebuild a community. We would have to start from scratch.

Elena Rossini

The discovery of free software

Walid: Did you already know about free software and the whole philosophy of free software before you really joined the Fediverse? Or was it something new for you?

Elena: Not at all. And even the first year and a half, actually, I was there, but like it was a replacement for Twitter for me. I didn’t really think about the technology behind it. I just knew that there was this possibility, with the Fediverse, of having more power over your own data. So, I often heard people say “Well, if there’s something going wrong on your instance”, so in my case, it was mastodon.social, “you can migrate to another instance and you can migrate with all your followers. And you can also export the list of people who follow you. And so, suddenly, you can recreate all of that pretty quickly.” So, no more days when everything changes networks and you have to start from scratch.

Walid: So, you didn’t know more than that, but you came up with the idea that I was going to be able to administer my data and then if I want, I can take my data and go to another instance.

Elena: Exactly, because actually, as I said earlier, I had tried pretty much everything on the social media side.

So when Flickr started, I was very active. After that, it was almost dead, actually, so I gave it up. All the people I followed and who followed me, it was over. It was a severed link. It was the same for Facebook, the same for Instagram. When I decided that it didn’t align with my values at all, I said, “Okay, I’m giving up.” But that way, all the links I have with people are cut. And for me, the most attractive thing about Fediverse was: no more days when you cut ties with your contacts, because in fact, you are in control of your data.

Elena Rossini

Was it hard to arrive on the Fediverse?

Walid: I really understood this when I did an interview with the people from the Castopod team, where they explained that indeed, the interactions that people have with my Castopod instance, they are on my Castopod instance, they are at my home, there is no intermediary between the two. And in the same way, the people who interact with my WordPress instance, the interactions, they’re on my WordPress. They are not elsewhere. And that’s something I didn’t understand at the beginning. And so, what I’d like to understand is… We, both of us, did the work of going to the Fediverse and understanding. Was it complicated for you at first to understand how the Fediverse worked?

Elena: Actually, it wasn’t complicated. There’s something that bothers me a little bit when I hear criticism about the Fediverse. Critics are “yes, well, it’s normal that it’s not at all attractive to ‘normal’ people because it’s too complicated to use”. Actually, no. For me, the interface was almost like the interface of Twitter. Except that at the very beginning, you had to choose an instance. But otherwise, for me, it’s absolutely the same. Let’s say the design, we have a column, actually, where we have all the options to see the profile, the messages, etc. There is a column where you can choose trending topics, etc. And the feed that is in the middle. So for me, it’s really like any network.

And in addition, now, with all the experiments I’ve done on the Fediverse, I’ve even found, I don’t know how to say this in French, but web clients that are very similar to the ones we already know, like Twitter’s. For example, Elk.zone is just like Twitter. It’s super well made, very easy to use. So for me, it wasn’t a technical or even design hurdle at first.

For me, the first year in the Fediverse, it was more of an obstacle from the audience or people, because I didn’t have my friends. So we had to rebuild a whole network from the beginning. And in fact, I was also used to expecting a certain type of behavior, after 15 years in the GAFAM social networks. And as a result, I was a little lost, I think.

Walid: Can you give an example? What did you expect in terms of behavior?

Elena: Maybe behavior, that’s not the right word, but maybe, for example, the metrics are now very much highlighted on all the GAFAM social networks. So, to see how many “likes” or “shares” a post can have. So actually, I think now we’re used to, when we see a feed, take a look at the numbers right away and say, “Okay, is this interesting? Am I going to read this message?” Algorithms are now absolutely everywhere in all the GAFAM social networks. So we’re used to having messages that maybe cause a shock or that leave you glued to the feed. On the Fediverse, everything is chronological: you only have the messages of the people you follow. So, it’s kind of…

I’m making a comparison, I don’t know if it’s appropriate or not: for me, the Fediverse is a little bit like homemade food bought in an organic store. And in fact, the GAFAMs are more like McDonald’s that attracts you, in fact, where you have junk food, with lots of sugar and salt that attract you to eat more and more. And in the Fediverse, maybe it’s broccoli, but actually, it’s good for your health. So, there you have it. That’s a bit like that.

Elena Rossini

Who is Elena’s audience on the Fediverse?

Walid: And so, what kind of people are you had on Mastodon? Who started listening to what you posted, reading you and discussing with you?

Elena: Actually, I created a blog called The Future Is Federated in June 2024. And the audience, I was hoping that it would be people who are not too used to the Fediverse, to try to attract them. But in fact they were more regulars, but they were very enthusiastic to see someone who is not part of the industry, so someone who is not a developer, who talks very enthusiastically about the Fediverse’s software. And as a result, I think it was more of a male audience, you could say that, developers, very technical people who work in IT or who are even the creators of Fediverse’s tools.

The thing that’s amazing to me is that actually, after two or three months that I published articles, I started to see feedback from people at the Fediverse who were telling me “Well, Elena, actually…” You too could self-host, but why not? Try to look at that tool, etc.” And I thought it was something so unattainable for someone who doesn’t have a background like that. And I thought, yes, but no, it’s impossible. And that was in October 2024. So actually, the devs who followed me were telling me, go for it, go ahead, you can do it. And then, at the beginning of November 2024, Donald Trump was re-elected president of the United States, this time helped by all the giants of the GAFAMs, openly helped, supported, etc. And so, for me, it was a shocking moment where I said “actually, yes, I absolutely have to understand how to self-host for a question of digital sovereignty, for a question of independence”, but also because the next four years are going to be a nightmare. So, I need a distraction. I need a challenge.

Elena and Self-Hosting with Yunohost

Walid: I have to say that I’m part of this audience that thinks it’s great that you, who aren’t a developer, talk about the Fediverse. There is a bias: that is to say that if I talk about the Fediverse and I say that it is not hard, as I come from the technical background, people will not believe the fact that it is not very hard. They will say: “but you’re a computer scientist, you’re a computer scientist”. I have the profile, you know… It’s not easy to convince my colleagues, to tell them “no, it’s not very hard”. Whereas you, who are not from our computer world, who have known all the other networks well, you can find it easier to find words to present what we try to say, but we say it either in an overly technical way, or, maybe people don’t believe us completely, you know. I think it’s very interesting for us to have people like you. And I’ll invite other people behind who also use the Fediverse and I’ll ask them the same question as well. Because it’s important that we have people who are not from our community and who can explain why they use the Fediverse and what they find there.

Elena: Actually, something very interesting about this is that I remember pretty much every day I had feedback messages from people at the Fediverse who were saying “go for it, but it’s easy, you can do it”. But with recommendations that were so technical that in fact, it had the opposite effect. It was “no, but he explains that, but it seems too complicated, it’s not possible”. And I got a very, very long message from someone called Ilja, who told me when he read my post about, actually, my reaction to the election and the fact that I had a goal in four years to maybe be able to set up my instance, after four years of the Trump presidency, he said to me: “You know, there’s YunoHost. It’s really easy. Look at this.”

And in fact, that was at the beginning of November. And, Walid, I spent a month looking at YunoHost’s initial page thinking “what is a VPS, actually? Can I do this with my Raspberry Pi? But no, I don’t even know where to start, etc.” And then we arrive in December. With, in fact, in the news, announcements that even Tim Cook was going to donate a million dollars to Trump’s inauguration ceremony. At that point, I said ‘no, ok, no more excuses’. So, I bought a subscription to a VPS for 5 euros per month. I started looking on the Internet. Unfortunately, I think I watched tutorials on YouTube at the beginning on, actually, how to install YunoHost. Because even though their guide on their site is very simple, I was intimidated. And I came across a video of someone, it was a video in French, which said “it’s so easy that even a child could do it”. He repeated that several times. And then I thought, “Well, if he even says a child, I’ll try.” So I put my watch next to it, I launched to see how long it took. And I installed on the YunoHost VPS in 5 minutes. After that, it was a bit of a headache to wait for the DNS to propagate, but it was super easy, actually.

Walid: I must admit that I spent years telling myself that I had to install YunoHost, and then a weekend when it was very ugly outside and I didn’t have much motivation to do anything else, I got into it, and indeed, it’s very easy. And with a tool like YunoHost, there are others, but this one, it’s very well-known, very good, and what’s more, it’s partly French people who do this, it allows me to test super easily. I say to myself “oh well, I’m going to try to test Mobilizon“, in 5 minutes I have a Mobilizon instance that is mounted and I can do my tests. It’s really great, that’s exactly what you’re saying, it becomes really easy to test things. It doesn’t cost much.

Elena: It’s even too easy and a bit addictive because I installed YunoHost and I hesitated between installing Sharkey or Friendi.ca.

Walid: Wait, you have to explain what Sharkey and Friendi.ca are, because we haven’t talked about it yet.

Elena: Ah, sorry. In fact, these are Fediverse software, free software that allows you to make micro-blogs. But they have quite different characteristics. So Sharkey, it’s from Misskey, it’s a fork of Misskey which is super nice on the design side and I find it super fun actually. For me, Sharkey is the Fediverse software that has the best design.

Walid: What can you do with Sharkey?

Elena: Actually, it’s like a Mastodon but with more features. It’s hard to summarize in a few minutes, but in fact, it’s very beautiful, the interface. You can customize the interface very easily. And there are also reactions that are a little more sophisticated than the reactions we have in Mastodon. You can create pages. We have antennas where we can program it to listen to keywords and exclude words. And so, to have a special feed where we see things happening, so very targeted topics according to our desires and interests. That’s Sharkey. And Friendi.ca, it’s a bit like Facebook for the Fediverse. So I always say that Friendica, for me, is the most sophisticated Fediverse software I’ve used so far because you can also integrate Bluesky, RSS feeds , so you can subscribe to RSS feeds . And then, we see them appear, in fact, in the feed with the posts, the things that followed, the people we follow. And at one time, because Friendica dates, if I’m not mistaken, from 2011 or 2012, it even integrated with Twitter, but of course, all that was cut, the integration with Twitter’s API. But it’s very well done, Friendi.ca. The only downside… The GUI is quite dated. So, it reminds us a little of the early 2010s. There you go.

What is the Fediverse and was it hard to get to grips with?

Walid: ok. I realize that I forgot to ask you a question. Two things that are linked. The first is how would you describe the Fediverse? And the second is: you arrived, you discovered Mastodon, but was it natural for you, the Fediverse? Or was it complicated to understand the concept of the Fediverse? So first, first question, what is the Fediverse for you? I think you must have wondered that at first.

Elena: Don’t worry. In fact, as I say in a video I make about the Fediverse, for me, the Fediverse is a galaxy of interconnected free social networks. In fact, I’m a little ashamed to say that at the very beginning, even for a year, for me, in my head, there was an equivalence between Mastodon and Fediverse. So for me, Mastodon was the Fediverse. But in fact, this is not the case at all.

Because there are a lot of free software and projects in the Fediverse that have nothing to do with Mastodon. Mastodon is just the project that, for the moment, is the most successful and the most users. But it’s just part of the Fediverse, but it’s connected to other projects and compatible with it, because there’s this notion of interoperability.

Elena Rossini

Walid: I saw the concept very well at the beginning, but despite everything, I came up against something. This is the first time, it’s the day I installed the ActivityPub plugin for WordPress. I was there, but where do I create an account? Where do I put my account information?

And in fact, it took me a while to understand that from the moment I installed the plugin, my WordPress, it was able to talk through this protocol to anyone who had my address. Whereas I understand this protocol, but at first, I had trouble understanding it. I was thinking, but I have to put my account information somewhere to log in to the Fediverse. And that’s something I think you have to understand, that each of your tools, it has its particular address. My Castopod, you have an address [ActivityPub], it’s accessible. All you have to do is tell people, “there you go, you can follow me to such and such an address”. That wasn’t easy for me at first.

Walid Nouh

Elena: And maybe, I’ll use this just to say… How many ActivityPub accounts do I have? Because maybe it will give me a little more credibility with your audience.

Walid: Tell me.

Elena: Do you know how many I have?

Walid: I know because I listened to Libre à vous. OK. Go ahead, tell me.

Elena: It’s about 17. I have 17 ActivityPub accounts. In fact, it scares me a little bit to say that because in fact, you can participate in the Fediverse with only one account. So, you shouldn’t have as many as I do. But I’m so enthusiastic, so passionate about the Fediverse that I wanted to try just about everything. So, that’s why I have so many accounts. So, not only classic Fediverse software accounts, you know, like Mastodon, Misskey, Sharkey, GoToSocial, Friendi.ca, but I also have three WordPress websites that are federated and I also have accounts in the… It’s called the threadiverse. So everything that’s the equivalent of Reddit in the Fediverse, so communities where we share news, there are forums with discussions. So, I also have Lemmy, Piefed and MBin accounts. That’s why it’s going up quickly, actually.

How to manage the multitude of ActivityPub accounts

Walid: Well, I’m going to ask you a very interesting question, but I also have a lot of accounts. Well, I have several. And for the podcast, I have several. How do you tell people “Here, you can follow me to all these places”? In fact, that’s a lot of accounts.

Elena: Yes.

Walid: It’s not necessarily easy to say, if you follow me on WordPress, you’ll subscribe to all the articles I’m going to put up. If you follow me on Castopod, as soon as I publish a new podcast, you’ll find me there. If you follow my general Mastodon account, you’re going to find all the podcast information and everything. It is not necessarily, I think, that obvious. I don’t know how you manage to explain to people all these accounts and what they are for.

Elena: Yes. In fact, I have a system that, in my head, is quite simple. I have two main accounts in the Fediverse: my Mastodon account, which is my personal account where I talk about my articles and my passion for the Fediverse, and my GoToSocial account, I use it to talk about my adventures in self-hosting. After… if I publish articles on my WordPress sites, if I publish photos on PixelFed or videos on PeerTube [see the episode on Peertube]

Walid: Just, PixelFed is an alternative to Instagram and PeerTube is an alternative to YouTube. There you go. Excuse me. Excuse me.

Elena: yes, don’t worry. I’m so into it that in fact, for me, now, you don’t even have to say it anymore. But yes, of course, of course.

And in fact, even if I post content on other accounts, I still use my Mastodon account as my main account to redistribute media content that I can publish elsewhere.

And for me, my goal is not to accumulate followers like that. In fact, I don’t care. It’s really about creating connections, real human connections, friendships. So, I don’t have a PeerTube account to have followers on PeerTube. It’s just a place where I put my videos. PixelFed is a place where I put my photos and it makes me feel like I have control over my data. After that, if I have three followers or 300, for me, it doesn’t really make a difference.

Elena Rossini

Keeping in touch with activists?

Walid: So all the activists, all the people you used to talk to on Twitter, do you manage to share your adventures with them? Or is it that finally, it’s over, they’re on the GAFAM networks, you have a new audience, and you don’t communicate anymore. How does it work?

Elena: Very little, actually. And it’s interesting that you ask for it, because I mentioned this in my presentation in Lyon [Lyon Free Software Days, JDLL 2025], where we met. And ten minutes after my presentation ended, so we went out, and I was waiting in line to go buy a sandwich. After saying “Oh yes, I’ve lost all the activists, all the people I was with on Twitter”, I hear someone behind me talking about the Sans Pages account. And it was Natacha in fact, from Sans Pages, which was an account that I followed at the time on Twitter and which aims to talk about women who are a little invisible on Wikipedia, in fact. So, I recognized her right away. I say, “Ah, but I’m Elena! It’s great to meet you here.” And so, there you have it. At least, in that case, it’s someone I’ll have found in real life, like that. But otherwise, most of the activists, unfortunately, are still on the GAFAM networks. And it’s a real job, in fact, to make people understand that it’s perhaps better, in terms of values, etc., to move on the Fediverse. So that’s my next big project, actually.

The promotion of the Fediverse

Walid: That’s it, that was the next part I wanted us to talk to. It was the promotion of the Fediverse. Because I’m following you on Mastodon, and I saw there that a few days ago, you were in Berlin for a big conference on the Fediverse [Fediday 2025]. So what I find very interesting is that finally, on the one hand, you can talk directly to the developers of these tools. Which, I suppose, is quite different. You couldn’t necessarily talk to Twitter developers before in the same way and talk to them. Same thing. So, on the one hand, you can talk to very technical people who make the tools and who will, I suppose, listen to you because also, you bring something that they can’t do, which is this promotion side. And then, on the other side, you definitely want to talk to people who aren’t on the Fediverse. Can you tell me a little more about how you promote and also how you integrated into this community of people who develop these tools?

Elena: Actually, that’s a super interesting question because it was even the subject of my presentation at the conference. So, the conference was Berlin Fediday, and I was the first person to present on Saturday, and I talked about the difference between the GAFAM social networks and the Fediverse in two aspects: the choice aspect, but also, and again, I don’t know how to say this in French, I said agency. Maybe the power to act? The power of action?

And in fact, I was saying that if you talk to someone, someone who thinks they can have an influence on the future of TikTok, Facebook or Instagram, they’re a megalomaniac. Because it’s impossible for a common person to have an influence on the GAFAM’s social networks. But in the Fediverse, it’s so on a human scale, it’s created by people, for people, that in fact, the thing I find extraordinary is that we can all do something to contribute to the health and success of the Fediverse.

Elena Rossini

And there, you were talking about the ActivityPub plugin [for WordPress], I talked a lot with Matthias Pfefferle, who was there, who is the nicest guy. And every time I have a problem with the plugin, just send it a message on Mastodon and it answers you right away. He’s really a lovely person. And I met practically all the developers of the Fediverse’s software. Because it’s on a human scale and it’s all people who want to have a better Internet, a better online space. And conversely, on the GAFAMs, for me, they just want to get rich. So it has nothing to do with it. These are completely different objectives.

Walid: I’m making a micro-aside for the listeners. If you want to know more, in part, about how these tools are funded, I invite you to go and listen to the episode on the NLnet foundation. I think it’s very interesting because you may understand who finances these projects in part, of course not totally, but in part and why. I’ll close the parenthesis, I won’t say more, but it’s really worth going to listen to this.

The promotion of the Fediverse to the general public

Walid : That’s great because in the end, you come in and you can meet the developers, talk to them, ask them questions, maybe even talk to them about the interface. Anyway, it’s good. In fact, I tell myself that next year, I really have to come. And on the user side, what can you do to promote the Fediverse for people who don’t know it?

Elena: My goal is to be a kind of bridge, to create a bridge between users and very technical people who are already in the Fediverse. And so to do that with articles on my blog. But after a while, I saw that articles were not enough. And so, in June, I released a 4-minute video that tries to explain what Fediverse is. Because I thought it’s much more immediate, a video, for people who aren’t in the Fediverse yet. Because it’s also important to intrigue the audience a little bit and tell them, it’s worth taking a look, so give it a try.

And so, since I’m a director and photographer, I’ve always thought, what could I personally do to help the Fediverse? Except that in the Fediverse, there are a lot of very technical people who do absolutely great stuff, but really great. But maybe there’s no marketing at all, already. There is not too much emphasis on the design or on the videos. So, I said, I have this background, so maybe I can try to help. And for example, another example that I also mentioned in my presentation in Berlin was that I had discovered an article in Forbes in January that talked about the Fediverse. Small problem. The article was illustrated by a photo where we saw a hand holding a smartphone with the icons of TikTok, X, Facebook, Instagram, for something that was on the Fediverse. So I said to myself, but it’s not possible. And since I’m a photographer, I had my professional camera right next to me. I put it on a tripod. I took my phone, I created a background and also a… how do they say, like a folder…

Walid: a file?

Elena: yes, a folder with the icons of all the official apps, but also shortcuts to sites that don’t have an official app, like Friendi.ca or Lemmy. I took the photo. I posted it on my Mastodon account to ask for feedback. And I had an offer of help from a follower who said, “If you want, I can help you improve the outline around Lemmy a little bit.” So, he did. Afterwards, I have other followers who told me “Ah, but you could publish it on Wikimedia and on Unsplash, etc.” And maybe do that with a Creative Commons license that allows it to be remixed. So, I did that. And all this took between half an hour and an hour, approximately. And then, followers, they immediately modified the Wikipedia page of the Fediverse, in English, Italian and French, and they put my photo. And all this really took an hour maximum. And it really showed the power of collaboration, the magic of collaboration in the Fediverse. I thought it was magical. Really great.

Walid: You didn’t have this kind of interaction before, when you were on Twitter or other GAFAM networks?

Elena: Not at all. That is to say, in fact, yes, maybe we could have had collaboration, but…

I don’t know if I’m going to say something a bit controversial, but for me, the main difference in the behavior in the GAFAM social networks and in the Fediverse is that in the Fediverse, I really see a community that aims to help each other. In fact, there is #mutualaid, which is one of the hashtags that works the most. And I find, in fact, on the GAFAMs, it’s much more individualistic. In the sense, “look at me, pay attention to me”, that’s it. And I prefer, for my personal values, I prefer the Fediverse, actually. I find that in fact, even how the GAFAM social networks are made, it’s something that privileges a bit of a narcissistic side.

Elena Rossini

And in the Fediverse, not at all. In the Fediverse, I find that it’s the community. I love the fact that now, actually, when I post a photo, I usually put the alt text , make a description for people… How do you say that in French?

Walid: visually impaired.

Elena: Exactly, visually impaired, yes. And that now, it has become a habit. I even have, how can I put it, a notice in my app that I use, Ivory, which says, if you’re posting a photo that you’ve forgotten… Well no, you have to put it on. As I did in Berlin. I was actually posting a quick picture and I said, “oh no, I forgot to put alt text“, and I think that’s great. So the focus on community and creating a better world versus “look at me, I want to be popular, I want to have likes, I want to have followers“. For me, that’s a bit like the spirit of GAFAM.

Walid: I must admit that the 4-minute video you made and also the conference you gave in Lyon, I showed them to a lot of people around me because they are short formats. 4 minutes is a short format. You can spend 4 minutes watching a video. The Lyon conference is a little longer, but it explains all the issues well. I was telling people, if you want to know more, watch these videos. I don’t need to tell you more. It will be better explained. Elena explains it better than I can. Look at this, and then, if you want, let’s talk about it. But despite everything, it’s still complicated to get people to create an account or who will actually stay on the Fediverse, try to understand the thing, etc. The first thing I get asked is “how many people are on the Fediverse?” Ok, there aren’t many people, I’m not coming. No, but you’re not going to find the same things, actually. What I like is that you can wander around, you can discover things you don’t see, find yourself on an instance of PeerTube and then watch a video that you didn’t plan to watch at all. Anyway, there you go. We talk about it in the episode with the people at PeerTube, precisely on this side I can discover new things that no algorithm has pushed me. I just stumbled upon it, I looked, I was interested. There you go.

Elena: So,

The thing I like about the Fediverse is that I really learn new things, almost every day. There is also a level of conversation that is much more sophisticated, much more mature than in the GAFAM social networks. If I think about when I was on Instagram, Instagram, the typical comment is “Ah, great, so good!” with an emoji. And in the Fediverse, you can have long explanations or really well thought out, well thought-out messages.

Elena Rossini

Walid: We don’t find the same thing at all, we don’t find the same people at all. There are plenty of communities that meet on it depending on the instance you’re on.

Elena: And actually, Walid, sorry, I want to go back to a point earlier, because I felt guilty about comparing Fediverse to broccoli, because it wasn’t very fun. I would rather say, in fact, a very healthy dish, a very healthy homemade dish. And for me, the GAFAM is more of a thing… How can I say, once again, junk food, with lots of sugar, lots of salt, which makes you want to eat more and more. But no, it’s not all broccoli. It’s much more interesting than a broccoli dish.

Walid: I explain it in a totally different way. I tell people: imagine that you enter a hall and around you, there are stands. And you go through the first booths and in the first booths to talk to people, you have to have an app because you don’t understand their language. So if you pass in front of X, you need the X app to speak. Then you pass in front of Snap, you need the Snap app. They cannot talk to each other. They’re all going to try to pull you out to stay with them. And then you move on to the other part of the hall. And then, it’s a bit of a mess. There are lots of people. But you have an app, and then you can talk to the app called Mastodon. Then afterwards, you can talk to the app called PeerTube. Maybe it’s not their natural language, but in any case, they all speak a common language, a bit like English or Esperanto. And then, they can at least talk to each other about the most basic things, even more than basic. And so, you, with an app, you can talk to everyone and then they can all talk to each other. I explain it a bit like this.

Elena: You could even add that for the people who are at the entrance… whether they need the X or Meta app, they have people behind them who listen to all the messages to show ads.

Walid: And steal their personal data.

Elena: Exactly.

Walid: But then, wait, I’ll come back to a point. Regarding the users, what project do you have to try to… And how could you contact users who don’t know about the Fediverse? Because you make videos, you write articles, etc. And how are you going to reach this audience? Are you going to go to conferences? Are you going to go on the radio? What can you do to contact these people, talk to them?

Elena: It’s a bit difficult, it’s not easy, but yes. So, conferences, for sure, are important. For example, I was contacted by the organizers of Bologna Tech Week, in Italy, who told me, usually, in fact, we do conferences on the GAFAM social networks. But this year, it’s the first year that they’re going to talk about Fediverse. Do you want to come and organize a whole dialogue with other people from the Fediverse to talk about this to the public? I said, of course. So, there is that. I also have a project to prepare presentations for schools. Because in fact, with my film projects, there was always a side of media education. So, I am used to giving conferences in schools, in high schools, in universities. And I’m going to use my contact points so that I can do the same thing, but to talk about the Fediverse. And also, I have a little project of… Actually, zine, so I don’t know how to say it in French, but to create, in fact, on a page, an illustration that explains what the Fediverse is, as if it were a magazine, in fact, but homemade. And someone in the Fediverse, one of my followers, Michel, he said to me: “why don’t you put it in the Little Free Libraries?” These are places where we put books to exchange them. They exist absolutely everywhere. In Paris, in Italy, in England, etc. So, in fact, to reach an audience that won’t necessarily come across my messages, on my site or on my posts in the Fediverse, why not insert them in books that…

Walid: book boxes.

Elena: Right, the book boxes.

Walid: yes, excellent. That’s really great.

Elena: So, that’s kind of the project, yes.

Walid: There’s another level, but I don’t know who’s promoting it, but for me, there’s a whole level of promotion too. I really don’t know who is working on it, at the level of the European institutions. Because the European Commission had created a Mastodon body at one point. I think they may have stopped. Anyway. But there is really a whole trick in going to promote these tools which are partly financed by European funds. So, make sure to promote it. Instead of advertising only on the GAFAM networks, at least come and advertise on networks that you, who will be in Europe, etc.

Elena: Yes, I find it amazing that there are many institutions in Europe, cities, even politicians, who communicate mainly on GAFAM social networks, which have algorithms that are like black boxes. We don’t know why some messages will be seen and not others. And for me, it’s really super important to try to convince, in fact, associations, but also institutions, schools, universities and people in the media and in politics to start communicating in the Fediverse as well. There was a whole campaign that had been created, I forgot the name of the person, who was already in Berlin, but I forgot. It’s the Plus One. So for all these institutions, and politicians who already communicate on X, Facebook, etc., why not add a profile in the Fediverse, because they already do it elsewhere. And so, I find that this is the easiest way, actually.

Walid: We’ve done a lot of work. I wanted to know if there were any additional topics or things you wanted to say or projects you want to share that we haven’t talked about yet. The answer may be no.

Elena: Actually, my main project is really to promote the Fediverse as much as possible. So, the video that I produced, which explains in four minutes… Since I speak Italian and French, I did it in those languages too. And there, I have many people who have volunteered to translate it into their language. There is someone who produced a version in Finnish, in Czech. I made a German version that I showed for the first time this weekend in Berlin. And there, I was editing a Spanish version. But more than that, yes… It’s really about trying to create a presentation for schools, so for high school and university students, and to make it so that it can be translated and used by other activists if they want to use it. So I’m not doing this for myself, I don’t care, it’s really creating something and giving it away so that it can be used as a promotional tool.

Walid: In video, for example, would it be more of an animation, comic book type? Do you already know how you want to do that? I know that, for example, comic book messages go over very well.

Elena: Yes. In fact, the presentation is really a presentation in schools where there is a speaker who presents. It’s not in the form of a video. No, don’t worry. It’s more really an in-person presentation where… We give a testimony to the students. So I’ll do it here in Paris or in Italy, but I’ll give it as a tool to someone else to take it up and do it in their own country, in fact. Because I find it much more influential when students see the person coming into their classroom explaining things to them, rather than watching a video. And the Fediverse, for me, is something on a human scale. And I think it’s very compelling, actually, when you see someone giving a face-to-face testimony with the students. That’s kind of the idea, actually. A presentation, a presentation with slides that takes place in real life, in person, in schools.

To make a living talking about the Fediverse?

Walid: ok. Now, you started talking about it, but in what way, by promoting Fediverse, can you make a living? It’s the interventions in schools, it’s… How can you develop an economic model that allows you to make a living from that? I might as well be a director, I understand.

Elena: Actually, there are a lot of people who put subscriptions as a possibility on their blog. So, to say, you have access to all of my items: if you pay a little bit more, you also get access to items just for you. Or maybe to the audio version, a podcast. But actually, Walid, I had an idea. In fact, after doing the April podcast, it gave me ideas on how we can try to find funding for the Fediverse. Because that’s the thing that’s missing. When I think… to all the money that companies, but also organizations and institutions, pay to Microsoft for licenses. If they all turned to FOSS tools, with all the money they saved, they could donate funds to finance Fediverse software and instances.

Walid: Yes, absolutely, of course. You, for example, have tried to… well, I don’t know, have you tested Ghost?

Elena: Yes. In fact, my blog, it’s on Ghost.

Walid: Ah, okay.

Elena: But I haven’t switched to the new version, version 6, yet, because in fact, to integrate ActivityPub, the federation, you have to switch to Docker. And Docker is something I don’t know. And so, I’m learning Docker so I can move on the new version. But I love Ghost. I think it’s great, really exceptional. It’s mostly something very elegant for me, which allows you to publish articles, but also to have a built-in newsletter. Something I don’t have on WordPress. So, I want to stay on Ghost, but I still need a few months of learning Docker to be able to do that.

Conclusion

Walid: I would like to leave you a final word. I would like you to send a message to the listeners of the podcast Projets Libres. Your last word, what would you like to say before we part, Elena?

Elena: ok. It’s not to think that Fediverse is too complicated or that it’s too technical, but to try, to get started, to create an account and not to be discouraged if at first it doesn’t look at all like the GAFAM social networks. In fact, there are experts who say that a habit, to be integrated, takes at least 21 days. So invest 21 days. If you create an account, you can mention me. I’m @_elena@mastodon.social.

And in fact, the thing I find great about the Fediverse is that when there are new users, if we use the hashtag #introduction, there are always kind people who want to help newcomers a little bit. So, I would say try that, because it’s another world, it’s much healthier, and it corresponds to really human values. It allows you to be part of a community and to free yourself from the tyranny of the GAFAMs.

Walid: I don’t see what to add to this. I couldn’t have said it better. Personally, this is one of the great learnings of the podcast. That’s when I started to discover the Fediverse. I felt like I was going back to the days of Web 1, when there was everything to discover, there was everything to do. I really like the Fediverse, precisely, all this… multitude, we haven’t talked about BookWyrm for example, which is a very nice tool also to be able to review books. I’m a big fan of Inventaire [see the podcast episode] to be able to make your online library where people can subscribe to your account and see each time you add a book. There are a lot of great things. We even get to incredible things like forum tools that can talk to each other because each forum tool integrates ActivityPub. And so, you can follow a thread on a forum from your Mastodon feed. Finally, it’s quite incredible to see how, quietly, really under the radar, there is a whole set of tools that are starting to integrate ActivityPub and that now, we just have to manage to make it known.

Elena: Yes.

Walid: ok. Listen, thank you, Elena, for taking the time. It was really a great pleasure to have you. I was really looking forward to discussing this because I think you’re as passionate as I am.

Elena: Thank you, Walid.

Walid: So, it’s really great. Maybe we’ll talk again, who knows, in a few months to see where you’re at and also where the promotion of the Fediverse is.

Elena: With pleasure. I have to try BookWyrm, so yes, maybe soon.

Walid: That’s very nice, I advise you. Well, Elena, see you soon. Thank you very much.

Elena: Thank you, Walid.

Walid: There you go, for the listeners, you can follow us on the Fediverse networks. You just have to go to the Free Projects website, in the bottom of the page, you will find all the accounts you can follow, or if you listen to it from your podcast platform, you have the same in the description all the social networks, including the Fediverse networks, on which you can follow us. So, don’t hesitate to share, to comment on these messages, to say hello to Elena, to follow her. You’ll see, there are some really nice things, it’s very nice. And then, see you soon for other episodes, knowing that there will be others, episodes where we let people who use the Fediverse speak to tell us what they like, the difficulties they have encountered, if they have encountered any or not, and also to see what new audience they have found in the Fediverse. Listen, see you all and then be well and see you in a few weeks for a next episode. Bye!

Episode production

• Remote check-in on October 6, 2025
• Plot: Walid Nouh
• Editing: Walid Nouh
• Transcript: Walid Nouh

License

This podcast is released under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license or later

Episode production

• Online recording on October 6, 2025
• Basis: Walid Nouh
• Editing: Walid Nouh
• Transcript: Walid Nouh

This article has been automatically translated from the original language into English.

License

This podcast is released under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license or later