Episode: 2930
Title: HPR2930: Better Social Media 04 - Diaspora
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr2930/hpr2930.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-24 13:27:54

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This in HPR episode 2,930 entitled MetaSocial Media 04, IASPERA, it is hosted by AYUKA and
in about 15 minutes long and carry my clean flag.
The summary is, IASPERA was the original alternative platform when it went up against Facebook.
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Hello, this is AYUKA, welcoming you to Hacker Public Radio and another exciting episode in my
little mini series on better social media, I'm going to take a look at another application today, but if
there are any alternative applications that I don't cover that you want to do a show about, I'm sure they would
love to have the show, or maybe you have a different take on one of these than what I've done and you could post a show to respond to that.
So today I'm going to look at IASPERA.
Now, I don't know if IASPERA was the first of the alternatives, but it was certainly the first I was aware of.
It got a lot of attention for the college students who first put it together and remember that Facebook was
originally created by a college student named Marcus Zuckerberg.
The four students, Ilya Zhitlamirsky, Dan Grippy, Max Salzburg, and Raphael Safaire, were inspired by a speech
Eben Moglin gave to the Internet Society's New York chapter, where he described centralized social networks as
spying for free.
The students chose the name IASPERA, which is a Greek word that means a scattered or dispersed population.
To reflect the idea that instead of a centralized platform, IASPERA would consist of independent nodes called pods.
Each running a copy of the free software, which is open source and licensed, under the GNU, AGPL, 3.0, license, link in the show notes.
Now, I remember very distinctly that as they were trying to get going, one of the things they were doing was doing some crowdfunding to raise money to get this project off the ground,
and one of the donors was Marcus Zuckerberg himself, who said, these guys remind me a lot of myself.
So, yeah, college students trying to change the world, so what did they do?
Well, obviously they did something a little bit different from what Marcus Zuckerberg did, they were going in a different direction.
And so, diaspora software development is managed by the diaspora foundation, link in the show notes, which in turn is a member of the free software support network.
The free software support network is run by Eben Moglin, and the software Freedom Law Center, again, link in the show notes.
Since the software is freely available to anyone, you can, if you wish, download the software and install it on your own server.
And since no one controls it, there is no entity to violate your privacy, or run ads against you, etc.
Now, a server on its own is not very social, though you could invite other people onto the server.
But the diaspora solves this by being federated, which means that the servers can talk to each other.
In that respect, I find it very similar to the old UseNet network, which is similarly federated, if not as much used these days.
The developers put it this way in a blog post, link in the show notes, and what they said is diaspora's distributed design is a huge part of it.
Like the internet itself, diaspora isn't housed in any one place, and it's not controlled by any one entity, including us.
We've created software that lets you set up and run your own social network on your own pod or server, and connect your network to the larger diaspora ecosystem.
You can have a pod all to yourself, or one for just you and your friends, or your family, giving you complete ownership and control over your personal social information, including your identity, your posts, and your photos, and how it is all stored and shared.
Or you can simply sign up at one of the open pods.
In August of 2012, the original developers handed over development to the community, and it is continued as an open source project.
One of the best ways to get started is to go to the diaspora foundation website, link in the show notes, which has a nice one, two, three process.
Step one is choosing a pod to join.
If you're going to set up your own server, you can skip this step, but for the majority of users, I think it makes sense to join an existing server.
This server will be your point of entry into the diaspora system.
Since it is a federated network, your posts can be seen by everyone you want to have see them, and you can see anything that has been shared to you, regardless of which server they are on.
So it wouldn't matter which one you choose, right?
No, there are a few considerations.
In a distributed system which no one owns, not all servers are equal.
On Facebook, in contrast, you can assume that all of the engineers are keeping the servers aligned and in top condition, well, except for when it goes down.
But in diaspora, that can vary by the system in running the pod.
The Wiki page I am looking at says, the ability to move your account from one server to another is coming soon, and that page says it was last updated 21st of November 2018.
So choose wisely at this stage.
The issues you want to consider are, number one, is the server accepting new signups.
Servers only have so much capacity, and some may not be taking on any additional traffic right now.
Look for one that advertises open signups.
Number two, software version.
Does this server keep up with software updates regularly, or does it run older versions?
I presume that anyone looking for something like diaspora has a focus on security and privacy, and that should mean applying updates pretty quickly.
Number three, physical location.
There are two reasons to care about this.
First, we know that some countries, sadly, all too many these days, have governments that want to control everything.
The server located in one of those countries might not give you the security and privacy you were looking for.
The other reason this may matter is latency.
A server on the other side of the world may add time to how your posts appear, and how soon you can see others posts.
In my view, this is not really a big concern.
Gamers can agonize over milliseconds, but on social media does it really matter if your vacation photos take an extra second or two to show up?
I suspect not.
Domain name.
Your diaspora username will contain the domain name of the server, and you might want to avoid certain names on that account.
Having one you can easily remember and share with others is a good idea.
Incidentally, this probably explains why they have not yet implemented switching accounts to a different server.
You have to have some way of switching your domain name, and you know, it gets complicated.
You might want to check the user rating.
The diaspora servers are rated by users, and you should probably take a look at those ratings before you make your final choice.
Now there's a place that has a great list of the servers.
Link in the show notes, it's called pod up time, but there's a dot between the TI and the ME.
So, anyway, link is in the show notes.
And if you go there, you can take a look at the list of servers.
So I picked one, pod.haxlers.com, which has a 99.75% up time and is located in Germany.
I clicked on the pod name and got a sign-up page and put in my email address, desired username and password.
When you click the button, you can then add an optional photo and a few of your interests.
This becomes your first post into diaspora, and people who share your interests can see the hashtags.
So if anyone wants to contact me there, my username is a hookah at pod.haxlers.com, link in the show notes, like so many things.
And I welcome more friends. I will warn you, though, that I post a lot about U.S. politics, which may not be to your liking.
But I will try to be good about using the appropriate tags.
Well, first thing you want to do is make some friends.
You can distribute your username on other social media or send emails to all of your friends.
If they are already on diaspora, you pick up a few people that way.
The alternative is search for people you know.
Other than that, finding specific people is not easy.
You can try typing a name in the search bar, but that only searches for user names and tags, not real names.
I have tried searching for people I know are on diaspora without finding them.
Other than that, tags can be your friend.
Tags identify interests, and based on them, you will be presented with posts that match those tags.
If you see posts from someone that appeal to you, go to the person's username, hover your mouse, and a pop-up window will open with a button to add a contact.
If it's someone I just like the posts of, I usually select them as an acquaintance to start sharing with them.
Meanwhile, your posts will start showing up in other people's streams, and they may start following you.
Now, diaspora uses something called Aspects, which are similar to other social networks.
They are a way of grouping your contacts, such as friends, family, work, acquaintances.
You can add a contact to any of these, or to multiple ones as you wish.
You can then send your posts to one aspect like friends, or to multiple aspects, friends, and family.
You can even send all aspects simultaneously.
If you do this, it will have the widest distribution to the people you have as contacts.
Now, the interesting feature is that in diaspora, it can be asymmetrical.
That is, you may have someone listed as a friend, and they might have you listed as a work contact.
That is interesting because of how information is shared by selecting aspects.
If you really want to go to everyone, you need to select public on your posts.
If you do this, it is a good idea to use one of the hashtags, so your post only goes to people who choose to follow that hashtag.
Now, you should probably do a little to fill out your profile if you want to connect with more people.
You can upload a picture, which will appear on your posts, but is optional.
Post some hashtag on your interests, make some privacy selections.
One interesting one is the not-safe-for-work NSFW setting.
You can make your posts by default not-safe-for-work if that is your wish.
As the site says, NSFW not-safe-for-work is diaspora's self-governing community standard for content which may not be suitable to view while at work.
If you plan to share such material frequently, please check this option so that everything you share will be hidden from people's streams unless they choose to view them.
Now, there is also ability to connect to services.
Diaspora has the ability to connect your account to Tumblr, Twitter, or WordPress.
Now, this is a capability that is available in the software, but it's up to each pod if they choose to implement it and not all pods do.
So, if that's important, that's something you need to look into before you choose a pod.
Now, in my case, I had no interest in doing this.
So, the fact that my pod, which again is hacksoars.com, does not offer this is fine with me.
To access this, click on your profile, settings, services, and you will see those options if they are available.
Now, I hope this has given you some idea of what to expect if you joined diaspora.
I think it is a smaller community than you may be used to, but that's not a bad thing if it means you can be a little more selective.
I doubt it will ever be the place to share photos with your family, though.
It's just a little harder to do than Facebook, aren't it?
So, this is Ahuka for hacker public radio, signing off, and as always, encourage you to support free software. Bye-bye.
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