Note: certain entries moved to the bottom because they are defunct.

So, because our page was recently banned from Facebook, I decided it was a good time to go on the offensive about some of the shadier aspects of them, and their connections with statism. This is part two of a series I began about Facebook, with the first part being concrete proof that Facebook is not a private company, and proof that they consistently work for the agenda of the US government, and proof that they’re a cornerstone in the US government’s intelligence apparatus, which might explain why they were primarily funded by US government interests in their early stages. Tens of millions of dollars from CIA-connected people for a startup based out of a dorm room? Yep. Nothing suspicious at all going on here.

That article has gotten some traction, but not much. Most people aren’t very interested in reading something long, and I kinda knew that to start with. The revolution will not be televised, much less mass shared on the Internet. But to be specific, one of the things I promised in that article was a part two, going over some alternatives to Facebook. Since Facebook is a government controlled operation to propagandize you while robbing you of privacy, making you beholden to a giant intelligence connected facial recognition control grid, what alternatives are out there which don’t do that?

I’ll be listing the best I found, along with describing some of the ones that other people have mentioned, but that I don’t feel are as worthy of note. I’m gonna emphasize decentralization, open source, and reasonable simplicity. If it’s a true alternative to Facebook, it should be easy to sign up, use, and navigate. I mean ultimately, if you want your ideas out there, and you don’t mind a little more work than signing up for a social network, or you don’t mind an investment, there’s little replacement for starting your own website, and hosting everything yourself. But people who sign up for social networks aren’t typically in that group. And even though the web would be much more interesting and diverse if people did make that decision, most people don’t wanna put in the time and energy necessary, which is why social networks were so popular to begin with. So I’ll be going over social networks that can compete with Facebook in terms of utility, while not being too opaque. So, to get this started, I’ll start with an obvious one that I’ve been going over lately, since it’s been in the news, and all.

Parler

Don’t use Parler. It’s a buggy, legally questionable, pit of bigotry and conservative circle jerking. It’s been out for years, yet it still feels like it’s in alpha phase (maybe the fake-chad behind the joint, Dan Bongino, thinks it’s fine it’s still in alpha phase cause he falsely thinks he’s “alpha” too), because as it turns out, all it is is a poorly implemented installation of WordPress. The reason I found this out is because somebody sent me a hacker’s findings, whereby Parler had all of the necessary salts and passwords to compromise the network listed in an easily accessible address on the surface, without even any password protection. Parler is a highly insecure data mining operation demanding conservatives hand over the reins of their entire identity for the privilege of being able to do basic actions such as direct messaging people, and that’s just the surface of it. Parler is a poorly executed example of what happens when conservatives who can’t code try to tell other people how websites should work, and it’s completely worthless unless you want to get scammed. To put some final nails in its coffin, it’s not even as useful as any other social media platform, even some of the ones designed as an alternative to places like Facebook and Twitter. Like, for instance…

Gab

This site is a trash fire too. Like Parler, Gab has rules against porn and porn-like content. That is, unless the people discussing sex happen to be discussing sex with minors. They seem to be okay with that, and generally block people on Twitter for bringing it (or any other problem they have – like racism, sexism, and more) up. They also have no problem censoring people. So much for “free speech”. But at least Gab is more useful.

Users can post photos, videos, polls, website links, and more. They also have 3,000 characters instead of the 1,000 characters available to users on Parler. All the more room to fit in whatever bigotry or otherwise creepy and vile content you want. As long as you don’t piss off the admins, that is. There also groups on gab, so you can find people who share your interests. Like the currently 14 member 1488 group, or groups for you to hate on ethnic minorities. Those are allowed, and any racial slur is allowed in your username, just like on Parler, as is any racist discussion you want – but no porn or pornographic discussions – this is a Christian site, run by a Christian. At least that’s what Andrew Torba wants you to think, which is why his name has a cross in it. And why the Twitter account pushes basic theocracy. But man, for a “Christian site”, a lot of users seem to hate a lot of His creations made in His image. And I wonder what Christ would say about pedophilia?

Anyway, sarcasm aside, if you want a place to have a right wing ringwank, Gab is your best bet. And to be fair, Twitter has started the mass censorship of Qanon accounts, so many of these people will have nowhere to go BUT alternatives. It’s also federated, meaning all the sites in the Fediverse that haven’t blocked Gab are accessible through Gab. The list grows smaller regularly though, so you’d better get it while it’s warm. Actually scratch that – nobody should take anything warm from Gab.

But there’s a problem with both of those services that’s common to many of the services that I could mention, which is why I’m leaving a lot of them out. They’re all centralized. What that means is that their say goes. All content exists under platforms at their discretion and at their whim. They can decide at any point to take anything off. This means that neither of the platforms I listed are truly free speech platforms, because neither of them have any way to ensure that the common person can keep their content up. It’s all by the grace of whoever runs the platform that whatever statements you make, whatever effort you put in, and whatever you do to make their site popular, gets to stay. That’s why Facebook was able to destroy our pages, and the pages of so many pro-freedom people. because they’re centralized. And anyone centralized is a threat to free speech. But let’s say you want an alternative that isn’t infested with Trumpsuckers, and you still don’t mind centralization.

Flote

Flote is good. Not only do they not have a character limit on posts, meaning you can say what you want to, without being unnecessarily brief — meaning Flote is a better alternative to Facebook than either of the two sites I mentioned previously — but Flote also allows video uploading, video streaming, direct messaging, and the sending and receipt of Bitcoin. Additionally, it has a recurring payment system just like Patreon, so it’s an inhouse content creation platform as well, with a full service direct messaging system that you don’t have to suck somebody off to get access to. I recommend it, as a centralized alternative to the other choices, and hope to see more people over there. It was one of the backups that this outlet had access to when we were fraudulently banned from Facebook, and I’m sure that will be there for a long time too. So what’s an even closer centralized alternative?

Minds

Minds is pretty well known at this point. But if you’re looking for a centralized alternative to Facebook, little gets in its way in terms of functionality. The thing Flote has that it doesn’t is streaming capability. But if you can do without that, the rest of what Minds provides is great. It allows you to make long posts, which is still one of my standards, because if you remember the last piece, I suck at brevity. It also allows you to post a variety of posts, including monetization options, much like Flote. What it has that Flote doesn’t is the ability to create groups. This means that you can make a group for your whole identity, much like a Facebook page. Additionally, everything you do can be boosted by using their inhouse cryptocurrency, the Minds token.

Which is good, because unlike some of these other alternative social sites, they have a full service blogging platform, which not only allows you to speak your mind in long form, but also allows you to make formal articles and posts which rival those of Tumblr. You can use this blogging system to add hashtags, determine post privacy, determine whether it’s not safe for work, put it behind a paywall, schedule it, and even edit the metadata. It also has a feature where you can add a license to it, meaning you can make it Creative Commons licensed, Apache licensed, BSD licensed, GNU licensed, or BSD licensed. This makes the Minds posting system infinitely more exhaustive and usable than Facebook’s posting system, so really, the only reason you would use it, is if you’re married to the idea of inefficiency, or really like it when a platform isn’t complex enough to do useful things.

Remember, Facebook is primarily there to mine your data, not to be a useful place for spreading information. It’s why fake news spreads on there so easily, because their system is designed to feed an algorithm which makes the money, and it’s not designed for healthy discourse, or a nuanced political take. Minds, however, has the vast potential to be a hub for a variety of different opinions, and a series of fantastic posts, if people decide to use the platform to its fullest capabilities. This is why many creators moved there, also because their algorithm is designed to feed people content they want, rather than rigging their mentalities and emotions against them like Facebook does. For centralized social media, there’s little better you can do than this one. So what else gets close?

Mewe

Mewe is an interesting platform as well. It allows the formation of pages, communities, events, chat rooms (including video), and even a shopping section. It also allows a broad range of emojis for reactions, rather than a simple thumb up or down, or Facebook’s six algorithm-feeding emotion signifiers. If you’re looking for a direct alternative to FB, and don’t mind centralization, Mewe is the closest you’ll get – for now. But here’s another worth noting.

Twetch

Twetch is interesting. It’s an app built on the Bitcoin Satoshi Vision Blockchain, and it utilizes MoneyButton or Relayx in order to work. The catch on that site is that everything you do must be paid for. Want to post? Want to like a post? Want to comment? Want to quote something or do their version of a retweet? You have to pay. You don’t have to pay much, mind you. But you do have to pay a small amount to do every single transaction, and the cost increases with the amount that needs to be hosted on the chain in order to post it.

Now for those of you who’ve been following me for awhile, and reading what I put out, you’re gonna wonder why I’m calling something on the blockchain a centralized platform. Well, because though this blockchain is immutable, and while everything you say is permanent, which I do like, the actual interface for accessing the blockchain through this website is not decentralized, and the interface that the site uses is controlled centrally by several admins. Now, if you don’t mind that, this is not a bad thing. And I’m certainly willing to throw the $2.50 that I threw at it to test something like this out. But to be clear, it’s not decentralized just because the admins use a blockchain. Remember, when I wrote about the digital dollar they’re making to strip the privacy of every US citizen, and make us beholden to their financial system, and hugely invasive system of IDS, checkpoints, and general loss of freedom, I made it a point to bring up the fact that digital dollar is being made by the same company that has long been making blockchain based solutions for tech companies. The fact that something’s on a blockchain does not mean it’s decentralized, nor does it mean you’re free to do what you want just because you’re on it. A blockchain is simply a ledger, and it can be controlled by whoever happens to be at the helm when it gets adopted, or whoever takes the reins down the line. This is the reason so many people are concerned about decisions affecting blockchain, because those decisions affect everyone, and often there’s nothing small people can do about it.

But the data on Twetch itself is decentralized, and if you do say something to piss them off sort of like Craig Wright did, and you do get banned from the place, it’s not like they can erase what you wrote. So if you think what you’re saying is going to get you banned, make it good, and make it worth it. Because you might not be there for long. But it’s not like that’s remarkably different to social networks that most people use every day. Both myself and the person who runs this site are on Twitter, and Twitter recently banned Twetch’s official account, as part of their recent QAnon purge. So just keep in mind that what you do there might be the last thing you do there.

But it’s not that different to anything else I’ve listed already, and at least it’s not like Parler, where posting the female nipple or criticizing the people who run it too much will get you banned. But that’s part of the intrigue of Twetch. They also have a system called the “troll toll”, whereby you can charge somebody who’s being annoying for the privilege to speak to you again. This prevents spam entirely, because somebody would have to pay in order to do that both for the privilege of speaking to you, and for the post itself. This is an interesting mechanic, because it prevents people who aren’t very serious about being dicks from doing that. Also, since you pay for everything, there’s no data being sold to advertisers. This kind of privacy is something that I value, and among the reasons I prefer blockchain based websites is this privacy. So all around the app is good. Although it lacks some of the features I would like to see, and its file size is absolutely minuscule (none of my 6 GB of Sonic gifs I use for reactions can be uploaded, and there’s no DM feature), it’s certainly not a bad site. So that brings me to less centralized options. In keeping with the theme, I’ll mention more blockchains first.

Pocketnet

Pocketnet is a site and app designed as a brutally simple alternative to most modern social media. You can post photos, status updates, and comments, all for their in-house token. They came out as a direct censorship alternative to most social media out there, and they rely on a reputation system to prevent spam and illegal content from being primarily seen on the network. They also have a multiple account login, and invite system, and the ability to swap around tokens. But most importantly, they have a blogging feature too. And they won’t ban you for saying things, not that they could, since grabbing a copy of the node is as easy as contacting administration, and they have no direct control over the interface itself.

It is a platform in the purest sense, and not at all a publisher. And they’re trying to get listed on an exchange, so people can start to earn fiat currency, or converted cryptos, from posts they make on Pocketnet. The people behind it have a vision of the future where people can say what they want without being silenced, and it’s a respectable vision. They take little chunks out of development, making it better and better over time, like the ability to re-share posts on a blockchain, which was not common at the time they developed it. It’s definitely a good network, and I would recommend people join as many of the networks I list as possible, but definitely this one, as it has a huge amount of potential to be a great application.

Somee

Somee has a blockchain as an option to eternally preserve your posts. It doesn’t have unlimited characters like some of the others I’ve mentioned here, which is a definite downside. But what it does have is 10,000 characters, which is usually enough to say what most people want to say. It also has both friends and groups, so it’s much more like Facebook than Twitter in that way. It has a bookmarking system, an interest system, and a full social dashboard, for your inner superuser.

That’s actually a very interesting feature, because what it does is allow Somee to integrate with the rest of your social media presence on places like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Google, Pinterest, and more coming soon. It gives you insights as to what’s going on on all your social networks, and allows you to see notifications for all of them in a dashboard available on the Somee platform. It’s a pretty impressive thing to do, and it also shows how confident the people behind the platform are about their own, because they’re convinced that you’ll stick around even though you’re on all the other platforms you’re on. It has a bunch more features, and it’s best to watch their tutorial video. But it’s an interesting idea. Another thing this platform does is allow you to list company information, just like a place like Facebook would let you, and just like various others would let you. This means it’s also a professional network on a blockchain, allowing DMs as well. It’s very good, overall, but there’s something competing with it, which has been there a long time…

Steemit

Steemit is interesting. It’s been here for a long time, and started out as a humble blogging application for the blockchain. But its openness, along with a very comprehensive API, allowed it to morph and flourish into a multimedia content hosting application, with a ton of decentralized apps, or ‘dApps’, around it. That being, 68 of them, as of 4 years ago, and more now. The adaptability of the blockchain they use meant that it could not only work with complex applications like video hosting, allowing sites like Dtube and Dlive to spring up, but also allowing alternatives to SoundCloud like Dsound, social media sites like Busy, collaboration sites like Utopian, video games based on their blockchain, and just so many more things that I’m not gonna list, because it would take too long. The Steemit model was so successful that it spawned sites that are not only still being used, but still being improved, to this day. It’s evidence that a ton of people were invested in social media alternatives, which is a good thing, because it means that at least some people are tired of the technocratic monopoly on information. It has relatively complex post editing features, and you earn money for everything just like another place.

So why didn’t I list this with such high praise as some of the others? And why did I wait till now to describe it? Well, there is some trouble in these waters. The fact is, Steemit runs on a system of up votes, and a somewhat hidden system of down votes. Those down votes are spam votes. What people can do is fraudulently brigade posts of people they don’t like. In an attempt to not only suppress their posts from feeds, but remove all financial incentive for using the platform, thus removing some of the incentive to take a risk by putting one’s content on such a site.

What this means is that there are certain people you can’t piss off, or they’ll take significant steps to damage your career. It’s a hierarchy. It’s less free than it could have been, and this is because of the way the blockchain is run, and the fact that there are whales running the nodes, and acting as content arbiters. This has led a significant amount of people away from this site, and it has also led to a significant amount of controversy around the site, creating a stigma associated with the site that prevents many new signups. A lack of user growth kills websites. The moment there isn’t as much interest as there could be, the site dies. This is how things usually work, and why many other social networks strive for high numbers, sometimes even at the expense of quality, or safety.

Take Twitter, for instance. They recently suspended a bunch of conspiracy theorists because those people were supporting the idea of Qanon. They accuse these people of being a danger to society, and took thousands of their accounts down, requiring verification for many others. But somehow the platform still allows pedophiles to use it, and a wide variety of other unsavory characters, and they don’t seem to have a dramatic problem with that, since their terms of service even discuss what kind of child nudity is allowed, and how you can discuss pedophilia on their platform. So clearly, they’re OK with skipping some morality lessons, and that probably has a lot to do with the fact that they have numbers, and they’ll only ever axe those numbers if it means more profit. I guess for some reason it’s not profitable to ban pedophiles, or they already would have done it. Especially since my petition (which is trending right now) to try and get them all suspended has over 7,000 signatures with no response yet. And I guess Trump supporters are considered worse for their budget. Funny that.

But the point is, Steemit is still good, but they could have been great, and could ostensibly still be great, if they got rid of the toxic elements there. The fact that people can abuse a spam feature to get somebody effectively silenced should be reserved for places like Twitter, where mass reporting is regular, and a central authority dictates who gets to say what. On a blockchain-based site that’s allegedly designed to reduce the likelihood of censorship, there shouldn’t be people who go around in groups trying to suppress other people’s words, and if there are, the site has lost its purpose nearly immediately.

Now, there is one other type of decentralized social media with multiple examples that I’d like to discuss. This is federation. What this is designed to do is give anyone who wants to host something access to the tools necessary to make their own social presence. When I brought up Gab earlier, I mentioned that it falls under this category, without delving deep into what that was. This is because I wanted to cover less complicated things first.

It operates by way of multiple sites with similar enough code but different goals, rules, and moderation, so that they can talk to one another if they aren’t set up to block each other, and so that one can set up an account in multiple “instances” (installations), for the purposes of different discussions. I also don’t wanna make it seem as though this is a directly free speech option. A lot of these instances have very strict rules on content, and many of them are less “free speech” than places like Twitter and Facebook. This is another reason I listed this kind of thing last, because it’s more complex to find something that might work for people who are trying to avoid censorship, and maintain their data on a network. How these sites are set up only varies by the files involved, generally. So where can you get a better example than Gab? Let’s start with…

Mastodon

I’m only bringing this up because we’re talking about it, but it’s not really a direct replacement for Facebook, and really only analogous to Twitter. The limited characters and the fact that most of the interface is directly designed to look like Twitter, even down to the threads, means that Mastodon is built from the ground up to seem exactly like Twitter, only better. You send each other “toots”, and use it just like you would Twitter.

What I especially like about Mastodon is the fact that you can see not only a home timeline, which is where you can find who you follow, and a local timeline, which is where you can see a running timeline of everyone’s posts on the instance you’ve chosen to become a member of, but also the Federated timeline where you can see every single post that’s being posted to the entire Mastodon instance network that isn’t blocked by your instance. It means you can see a wide array of opinions, and you don’t have to follow anyone to see that wide array, and it’s a very good way to break out of an echo chamber.

This decentralization means you can get a real raw idea of the way people are feeling about a certain thing, very much like looking at a chan, only without being centralized like chans are. You can also post your posts with content warnings, and vanilla Mastodon has 500 characters as a limit, so basically two tweets in one toot. This varies between instances though, so find one that works for you, and go with that one. This is the beauty of the Fediverse – think of them like pocket communities for certain people of certain minds. Agorist Nexus could even theoretically host one. Just need the time and energy. So here’s another example…

GNU Social

It’s a lot like Mastodon (probably cause it was there first), But in addition to the features that Mastodon has, GNU also offers the option to upload different types of files than just pictures, meaning this operates a significant amount like Facebook as well. Additionally, since it’s generally designed for the more tech savvy people, it includes many more options to do things with other software that people of a techie persuasion would use, like XMPP, Jabber, open ID, and more. But this is still microblogging. So let’s play with the big boys and talk about…

Diaspora

Diaspora is like the other two, only not microblogging. You can make full-on posts, with as much detail as you want. The project was directly started as a response to the rise of platforms like Facebook, and the founders of the platform thought Facebook was an invasive, privacy stealing, time suck, which was not worth the value of all of the data that they get from people, in exchange for the loss of freedom.

The initial work for the site was the most successful Kickstarter to date, raising $200,000 in 12 days, when all they needed was $10,000. They also briefly had to do battle with PayPal, who froze their account for no reason, when they broke no rules, while they were trying to start things up. Remember, however, that Peter Thiel was one of the people who backed Facebook, so maybe he didn’t like that his company was being used to undermine one of his investments. Who knows? I certainly don’t. For legal reasons, that’s a joke.

But back to features – for those of you who remember, and may have used, Google plus, you’ll recognize one of the features they baked in, which was aspects. This means that you can organize who gets to see what, based on their presence in your aspect list. So even those in the same pod as you might not see everything you post. This privacy was built into the service, because of primary concern of those who started it was the fact that Facebook was a giant data aggregator that anyone could log into in order to see massive amounts of data. Think the Cambridge Analytica scandal. So they built in a way to make sure that only posts you wanted to be public would be public, and the rest could be “limited”. This is an excellent feature for those of us who are concerned about certain people knowing things about us all the time, and is something that many people who come from Facebook to other networks miss about Facebook. The ability to select a custom range of people who can see certain things is key to certain people’s social networking, and it definitely shouldn’t go unused just because you’re no longer on the CIA’s favorite social network. Similar networks include Friendica and Movim. So that’s it right?

ZeroNet

There are many more options, but they get sketchier and more opaque from here. The least opaque is ZeroNet – honestly a fantastic middle finger to the whole of clearnet culture. Based on the ethos of uncensored everything, instead of data being hosted on a central server, ZeroNet has the awesome capability for whole sites to be downloaded upon seeing them, and shared between people by way of peer-to-peer technology meaning that ZeroNet sites with enough support will never truly go down. And because we’re talking about Facebook specifically, one of the many types of websites that you can build using the ZeroNet infrastructure is ZeroMe, and if you do that, you can set up an entire social media presence within this infrastructure, and never be censored as long as there are enough people who appreciate what you’re putting out there to keep your data alive. It’s one of the most awesome pieces of technology I’ve seen in this space, because it empowers users to take the data they want regardless of what’s legal, and regardless of what people want. You can also run it in concurrence with Tor, which means you can be private while you do it. Sort of like running a copy of Tails in order to get access to “Those Sites”. But basically, ZeroNet is the way to rebel against censorship, and is relatively easy to set up and use, too. And you don’t need anybody’s permission, or a pod. Additional things in the works that are similar to this include the BitTorrent File System.

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That’s quite a list. And a lot of it is gonna be information that people aren’t ready to hear yet, much less adhere to. A lot of people are married to the idea of safe networks, and networks like Facebook provide a false sense of security while robbing you of security, privacy, and freedom. And people think these sites can’t possibly be bad because so many people approve of them, and so many people use them, from the lowdowns to the higher ups. There are plenty of people with those check mark verified accounts smearing these sites with a false sense of legitimacy and purpose. But these sites are data mining propaganda factories designed to control what information you see, so that they can eventually control the people themselves. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and all of these other sites, primarily existing on the surface, are only allowed to do that because they provide the status quo with a much more real sense of security then they could ever provide you. So I hope you join me on some of these networks, find which ones work best for you, and consider using them as your primary networks, instead of giving more of your lives to corporations who hate you, and who work with an evil conspiracy of elites to enslave you by increments.

It’s your freedom. If you want it.

Commun (now defunct)

Commun is interesting. While researching for this article I came across a service called Empow, which seems to do exactly what the application I’m about to discuss does. It didn’t. And that’s the reason I’m not including it in this review, as a recommendation. As much as I complain about the other ones, at least I can post on them.

Here, I waited hours for my post to go through, over the course of multiple days, and eventually just gave up. But not after contacting support, through their only effective means of communication, Telegram. For those of you who read my encryption article you know my views on Telegram. It’s a centralized chat application which has been known to close down rooms for what was being said politically. This means not only do they have access to what’s being said — meaning it’s not that secure or private — but it means that it has the vulnerability of political bias deciding whether or not all the work done in order to set up a room or build a community is shuttered entirely. So this was already a red flag to me. Whenever somebody’s tech support method is a questionable chat application like Telegram or Discord, they automatically become questionable to me. And since my customer service request is now multiple days old without even being addressed, I have no confidence in that application’s ability to do what it says.

But while I was looking, I found another blockchain based social media application called Golos.io. What I read about that was very promising, as it’s a fork off Steemit, meaning it doesn’t have any of the problems Steemit has (which I’ll cover when I bring it up shortly), and meaning that it relies on its own chain in order to do what it does. This piqued my interest, but Unfortunately I got to this massively late, as apparently this site had just shut down, and all the posts were in read only mode. So I checked around for social media to see if the site was shut down for good, and found them pushing another site entirely, presumably their next project. So I checked into that, and found something great. Commun is sort of like Pocketnet in its intended function, but instead of a stripped down interface, it has an interface much more akin to modern social media.

Additionally, it allows you to set up communities on their blockchain much like Steemit’s communities, or the communities for a site which also shuttered not too long ago called Narrative. The communities you set up are led by people who are essentially “elected” by the community by having high performing, and therefore high quality, posts. Everything you do on the site is rewarded by upvotes, which push things to the top of communities, for a cut of the community rewards. You’re also rewarded for sharing your posts on other social networks — because every link comes with an invite code — if you click the button on the post, similar to pocket net. This means that if you share posts you make on that site elsewhere, and bring people over, you have the potential to earn even more. But what I very much like about the site is its speed. It’s a clean interface, and everything loads quickly, just like a normal social network. And I can post. Take notes, Empow. So is there anything similar? Absolutely.