Vivaldi offers up a Mastodon instance for Twitter escapees

A new home on Mastodon

One of the world’s browser developers, Vivaldi, has launched its own Mastodon community, which anyone can join. Based in Iceland, the instances are protected by some of the toughest data protection in the world.

A place to hide while the bird gets baked

The sad spectacle of Twitter seemingly burning to the ground means we must look for alternative platforms, and this terrible situation is driving many (including me) to begin to use federated social network, Mastodon.

Vivaldi Social is an open discussion hub supporting federated social media.

This part of the Mastodon community federates to all the other federated communities across the overall service’s space – it’s social media without the billionaires.

Mastodon is a federated social network.

[Also read: Apple says if you can’t change the world, design it in AR]

It works a little like Twitter once did, and while it lacks some of the bells and whistles, it does offer independence. You can see it as an open network of decentralized communities that federate to each other using the Activity Pub standard.

You can choose your own community (such as Vivaldi), or even set up your own.

Also, because it is federated, you can follow and be followed by friends who are part of other Mastodon communities. To add another layer of security, Vivaldi’s servers are located in Iceland, a nation which has some of the strictest data privacy laws in the world.

Supporting the Fediverse

Vivaldi told me in a press release:

“We love the idea of a distributed social network based on open standards with no owner, no surveillance capitalism, and no tracking or profiling of users. With no system promoting posts based on their popularity or virality, or whether someone paid to promote them. And, by joining the Fediverse, we want to help it thrive by making it easier for people to join – and by providing additional server capacity to take the strain off overloaded instances.”

https://vimeo.com/771051435

Vivaldi also makes its own powerful servers, calendars, browsers, and RSS readers, and hosts its own blogging platform, a thriving forum, and a webmail service.

If you already have a Vivaldi Account, you can use your credentials to log in to the Vivaldi Social instance. If you don’t, head to vivaldi.net to sign up for a free account.

Apple could (but won’t) do this

The decision to introduce its own instance really has set me thinking.

While it is certainly not the Apple way of doing business, just how popular would an Apple instance of Mastodon be? Of course, the company has always avoided social media, but perhaps others in the publishing and software development space should consider offering such instances up to their communities. I’d certainly consider launching one here if I had the money to do so.

Meanwhile, feel free to follow me on Mastodon.

Please follow me on Twitter, or join me in the AppleHolic’s bar & grill and Apple Discussions groups on MeWe. Also now on Mastodon.