Manyverse

Social media is a commonality these days, and whether you're for or against it, facts and figures show that its role in society is quite prominent. Everyone knows of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and what have you, and wanting to keep away from them is a fair option.

The reasons for doing so are varied, but they mainly pertain to the way those sites are run. If you wanted a purely user-focused alternative that is also open-source, Manyverse looks like quite the promising solution: touted as an off-the-grid social network, the program is based upon peer-to-peer  connections to ensure everything stays between the users.

The program is structured much like any social media platform you know: there's a timeline to keep you up-to-date with what your friends are up to, and there's also a private chatting functionality. The interface and general use faintly reminds of Twitter, in that the feed and profile pages are quite similar — in a good way, of course.

There are several tools when posting to your timeline: write a message, add an image, the usual. But there's also the possibility to add a sound recording, which is not possible on mainstream social medias. You can choose to add content warnings to your post: if you're talking about a sensitive topic, adding a content warning will blur out the message body.

Users from your network can interact with your posts through comments and reacts. You can chat with your contacts privately as well, and creating and joining room servers with your friends is also possible.

As the program is based on a peer-to-peer user connection, you can either join your friends' room, or create your own. This involves using a different solution to implement a room server, and the details on how to do so are given on the developer's website.

Though Manyverse requires a bit more steps to set up than your conventional social network, the efforts are not at all in vain, especially considering the focus on user privacy.