Social Media and Communications Alternatives

Telegram is a messaging app with a focus on speed and security. It’s superfast, simple, and free. It is like SMS, but more powerful.

Signal is a messaging app with an unexpected focus on privacy, combined with all the features expected from a modern IM app. Signal has received a lot of praise from all around the world for its security and privacy-respecting technologies.

Jitsi (previously SIP Communicator) is an audio/video and chat communicator with full encryption that supports protocols such as SIP, XMPP/Jabber, ICQ/AIM, Windows Live, Yahoo!, GTalk/Hangouts extensions, as well as OTR, ZRTP, etc.
It can handle every firewall, and has many other useful features.

Jitsi is completely open source / free software, and is freely available under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License. It can run on your own server.

DTube is the first crypto-decentralized video platform, built on top of the Steemit and the IPFS peer-to-peer network.

Element is a secure collaboration and messaging app based on the Matrix protocol. It’s decentralised to deliver digital sovereignty, and based on an open standard for easy connections and interoperability. It is end-to-end encrypted by default.

NewPipe is a lightweight YouTube front-end for Android.

It doesn't need the YouTube-API or any Google Play Services, as NewPipe only parses the YouTube website in order to gain the information it needs.
Therefore this app can be used on devices without Google Services installed. Also, you don't need a YouTube account to use NewPipe, and it's FLOSS.

Features

Search videos
Display general information about a video
Watch YouTube videos
Popup mode (floating player)
Select the streaming player to watch the video with
Download videos
Download audio only
Open a video in Kodi
Show Next/Related videos
Search YouTube in a specific language
Watch/Block age restricted material
Display general information about channels
Search channels
1080p/2K/4K support
Local playlists
Subtitles
Livestream support
Show comments

LBRY is the first digital marketplace to be controlled by the market's participants rather than a corporation or other 3rd-party.

Matrix defines a set of open APIs for decentralised communication, suitable for securely publishing, persisting and subscribing to data over a global open federation of servers with no single point of control. Uses include Instant Messaging (IM), Voice over IP (VoIP) signalling, Internet of Things (IoT) communication, and bridging together existing communication silos - providing the basis of a new open real-time communication ecosystem.

Launch your own channel | Watch and share videos | We love our creators

Odysee provides an free open sourced and decentralized platform running on the lbry protocol to allow users to upload and share videos to people around the world

OpenStreetMap (OSM) is a collaborative project to create a free editable map of the world.

Bibliogram is a website that takes data from Instagram 's public profile views and puts it into a friendlier page that loads faster, gives downloadable images, eliminates ads, generates RSS feeds, and doesn't urge you to sign up. Bibliogram works without client-side JavaScript. If you only use one computer, you can install Bibliogram on that computer and then access the instance through localhost.

Bibliogram does not allow you to anonymously post, like, comment, follow, or view private profiles. It does not preserve deleted posts.

All of Bibliogram's code uses the AGPL 3.0 license. In short, this means that if you make any modifications to the code and then publish the result (e.g. by hosting the result on a webserver), you must publicly distribute your changes and declare that they also use AGPL 3.0.

The world's most popular modern publishing platform for creating a new media platform.

Misskey is a decentralized microblogging platform born on Earth.

Since it exists within the Fediverse (a universe where various social media platforms are organized), it is mutually linked with other social media platforms such as Mastodon and Pleroma.

Features:

• Post your ideas, discussion topics, fun moments, or anything else you want to share! Misskey supports text, emoji, pictures, videos, and polls!
• Reactions are the simplest way to respond to others' posts. Simply pick a reaction emote from the list! Reactions on Misskey are much more expressive than other social media services which only allow “liking”.
• Customize the UI to your own tastes! No UI will work for everyone, so Misskey is completely customizable. Make Misskey yours by editing the style, adjusting timeline layouts, and placing widgets.
• Organize and store your files! Want to post a picture you have already uploaded? Wish you could organize your files into folders? Misskey Drive is a solution!

Pixelfed is an image sharing platform with focus on Privacy, Safety and Security, an ethical alternative to centralized platforms like Instagram.
Federated, Ad-Free, No algorithms, No 3rd party analytics or tracking.
Can run on your own server.

Distributed social network. With focus on decentralization, privacy, interoperability.

Reddit Enhancement Suite (RES) provides several add-ons to enhance your Reddit browsing experience - each of which is configurable. You can enable/disable any of the modules, and most of them have their own options that can also be personalized.

RES is available for Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Opera, and Edge.

A free and open source alternative Reddit front-end focused on privacy. Inspired by the Nitter project.

An alternative private front-end to Reddit

Libre + Reddit = Libreddit

🚀 Fast: written in Rust for blazing fast speeds and safety
?? Light: no JavaScript, no ads, no tracking
🕵 Private: all requests are proxied through the server, including media
🦺 Safe: does not rely on Reddit OAuth or require a Reddit API Key
🔒 Secure: strong Content Security Policy prevents browser requests to Reddit

Like Invidious but for Reddit. Browse the coldest takes of r/unpopularopinion without being tracked.

Nitter is a free and open-source front-end mirror of Twitter, which allows you to consult Twitter, with a focus on privacy.

Redirects Twitter, YouTube, Instagram & Google Maps requests to privacy friendly alternatives.

An alternative front-end to YouTube

[The instance at invidio.us made by Omar Roth was closed in September 2020. You can select another instance and the project can still be found on GitHub]

Features:

• Audio-only mode (and no need to keep window open on mobile)

• Open-source (AGPLv3 licensed)

• No ads

• No need to create a Google account to save subscriptions

• Lightweight (homepage is ~4 KB compressed)

• Tools for managing subscriptions:
  * Only show unseen videos
  * Only show latest (or latest unseen) video from each channel
  * Delivers notifications from all subscribed channels
  * Automatically redirect homepage to feed
  * Import subscriptions from YouTube

• Dark mode

• Embed support

• Set default player options (speed, quality, autoplay, loop)

• Does not require JS to play videos

• Support for Reddit comments in place of YT comments

• Import/Export subscriptions, watch history, preferences

• Does not use any of the official YouTube APIs

• Developer API

"NewTube is a YouTube alternative powered by open-source software. NewTube is designed to be as efficient and effortless as possible from a user's perspective.".

PeerTube is a decentralized, free and open source alternative to video broadcasting services.

Diaspora is a federated social networking service, designed to be a more privacy-aware alternative to Facebook . Share what you want, with whom you want.

Diaspora lets you sort your connections into groups called aspects. Unique to Diaspora, aspects ensure that your photos, stories and jokes are shared only with the people you intend.

Diaspora makes sharing clean and easy – and this goes for privacy too. Inherently private, Diaspora doesn’t make you wade through pages of settings and options just to keep your profile secure.

It is based on Ruby , Ruby on Rails

Medium is a new place on the Internet where people share ideas and stories that are longer than 140 characters and not just for friends. It’s designed for little stories that make your day better and manifestos that change the world. It’s used by everyone from professional journalists to amateur cooks. It’s simple, beautiful, collaborative, and it helps you find the right audience for whatever you have to say.

Open source, self-hosted forum solution with integrations for Slack, Wordpress, and more.

WriteFreely is an open-source, minimalist, federated, self-hosted blogging platform. It was built for and by Write.as and can be used to power a similar community or just a single blog. It's lightweight enough to run even on a Raspberry Pi, it's built with Go (Programming Language) and is designed to provide a fast, minimal and elegant interface for writing.

Write.as lets you write and publish text instantly. Write a note for yourself to read later. Create a standalone article you can quickly broadcast on social media — or publish a full blog.

Write.as takes the distraction out of writing on other platforms and provides a calm place with your words. Then if you want the world to see them, it's as easy as sharing a link. Privacy is built in to every corner — you don't even have to sign up to use it. Just open the app, write something, and publish.

Mastodon is a decentralized microblogging engine.

FEATURES

• Free and open-source.
• Decentralized, no worries about a single company controlling your communications.
• Supports the standardized ActivityPub protocol
• Fully interoperable with GNU social and many other ActivityPub or OStatus platforms
• Real-time timeline updates
• Media attachments
• OAuth2 and a straightforward REST API
• Background processing for long-running tasks
• Deployable via Docker