The world is always changing, there’s no denying that. But the latest haps have many of us quite worried. Society at large seems to be hurtling towards fascism, a vocal minority of affluent and angry men propped up by big tech dragging us all deeper into the ugliest depths of humanity.

I singled out Big Tech there because it’s something that probably the majority of us are actively participating in. But it doesn’t have to be this way! In this post I will outline some of the alternatives available to the big social network platforms, hopefully giving you some inspiration to step away from these increasingly toxic places.

PixelFed - Instagram Alternative

PixelFed and Mastodon (Twitter/X alternative) are products of the burgeoning decentralised and federated ecosystem of social networks. They don’t belong to a single company, rather they are built on standards for sharing, with platforms (in the traditional sense) typically owned and maintained by individuals or small groups. As they are federated, they can all communicate with each other; Pixelfed users from one platform can effortlessly follow Pixelfed users from another platform, and even follow Mastodon users regardless of platform - it’s all interconnected. As an added bonus, there is no advertising, there are no algorithms, and privacy is actually respected.

As for PixelFed, it’s most like what used to be good about Instagram in my opinion. The focus is on sharing your own pictures, either using the grid format or if you’re so inclined, using stories with a lifetime of 24 hours.

To get started, sign up to a PixelFed server - either look around for one that tickles your fancy, or go with pixelfed.social. Sign up, and send me a follow request! You’ll find me here.

For Android users, I recommend the delightful open source PixelDroid app, which you can find on the F-Droid Store. Using F-Droid isn’t for everyone, if you prefer to keep it simple, you can grab the PixelFed app from the Google Play Store.

Mastodon - X/Twitter Alternative

It’s not my cup of tea, but it’s there if you want to ditch X (why would you not?!). I’m pretty sure everyone is familiar with the emergence of BlueSky, but if you’re after something with no big corporation behind it, I would recommend to check out Mastodon. It’s part of the same ecosystem as PixelFed mentioned above, and users of either can follow each other easily. To get started, take a look at mastodon.social

Your Own Website, RSS - Facebook Alternative

Facebook started out as a means to keep up with what your friends are up to, these days it seems to be mostly about sharing memes or news stories. You could do that on your own website! The internet was always meant to be open. It’s not difficult to put something up, you don’t need technical expertise or a lot of money. The tools to make a website have always been there, there are loads of free blogging platforms. Go out and find them!

For my website, I’m using Hugo. Pages and posts are written using Markdown, a set of simple formatting conventions for turning plain text into rich pages. Very little technical expertise is required to work with it. I do self host on a VPS, which definitely isn’t for the faint hearted, but there are loads of other options for hosting a website of your own.

RSS, short for Really Simple Syndication, is a technology that has been around for decades now. It’s gone out of fashion since Facebook and all that came along, but I’ve been using it the whole time. It allows you to subscribe to websites and view updates in an app. Check out this LifeHacker article for more information on what RSS is and how you can use it. And yes, this site supports RSS.

Signal - WhatsApp/Facebook Messenger Alternative

Signal was co-founded by one the lads who started WhatsApp and builds upon the same technologies, so it feels familiar enough. It’s open source, so it gets points for that straight away. It’s dead easy to sign up and get going. The hardest part about is convincing your chums to jump ship!

• Signal on Google Play Store
• Signal on Apple Store

Email

It’s still there! And it’s the best way to stay in touch with one another.

Final Words

Okay, it’s not exactly a comprehensive list. Many of the alternatives to the big social media sites take a bit of effort but hopefully you’ll see that the options I’ve outlined above are easy enough to pick up and run with. I hope you’ll join me in giving the ol' middle finger to toxic tech!